With the first College Football Playoff Rankings scheduled for this upcoming Tuesday, it's getting down to the wire for teams with hopes of winning the national championship. On Saturday, there are three significant rivalry games featuring top-five teams, but none of them have spreads under two touchdowns. As a result, if there are any upsets, they will be major ones.
Both of the day's major Big Ten rivalry serve as bookends. The first real test of the season for No. 2 Ohio State will be against No. 13 Penn State, but Caesars Sportsbook still has the Buckeyes as 15.5-point favourites. Although the Nittany Lions have already lost a game this season, they do have home field advantage against a rivalry they have had difficulty defeating in recent years.
The fourth-ranked Michigan team welcomes Michigan State as a 22.5-point favourite in the nightcap. The Wolverines are focused on staying unbeaten before their matchup with the Buckeyes in the regular-season finale, while the Spartans are only trying to prevent their season from completely imploding.
The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, featuring No. 1 Georgia and Florida, is sandwiched between the SEC on CBS Game of the Week. The Bulldogs' 22.5-point advantage is the biggest in the rivalry's history, and they enter having had a bye week while the Dawgs had one after defeating Vanderbilt and Auburn by a combined score of 97-10 the previous two weeks.They haven't yet managed to recapture their former grandeur under new coach Billy Napier.
We will have a lot better idea by the time Saturday's games are over of what the initial CFP Rankings will resemble on Tuesday. From the first kickoff through the end of the day, stay tuned to CBS Sports for coverage of college football. Here are our professional predictions for the top games in Week 9.
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