College Football 2018: 3 reasons to be excited about Week 12

Despite the slew of cupcake games and less-than-stellar matchups, Week 12 of the college football season will deliver plenty of excitement.

Week 12 doesn’t have the glitz and glam of past weeks around college football. There’s hardly a ranked versus ranked matchup to be found on the schedule. However, there are plenty of reasons to tune in this weekend and enjoy the last weeks of the college football regular season. Time really does fly right by when you’re enjoying pizza, wings, and college football.

Tulane versus Houston at 8 p.m. on Thursday night on ESPN could be quite the fun ballgame. Tulane has managed to put together a rollercoaster year while the Cougars are down but not out. Houston still holds at top 50 rankings per the S&P+ while Tulane is sitting at 84th. Don’t forget about Memphis at SMU on Friday night at 9 p.m. on ESPN2. The Tigers have the nation’s eighth ranked offense per the S&P+ and are a fun team to watch put up big points.

At noon on Saturday, Northwestern travels to Minnesota to get momentum before heading into their rivalry week battle against Illinois. The Wildcats need two wins to take any positive vibes into defeating Michigan or Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game. Also at noon (ESPN News) will be USF at Temple which could see 800 yards and 80 points of offense.

At 2:30 p.m. Notre Dame will try to hold onto their playoff hopes against Syracuse- but we’ll cover that in more detail later. At 3:30 p.m. on ESPN Miami looks in the face of semi-rival the Virginia Tech Hokies. The ‘Canes are on a four-game losing skid and Tech just dropped a game to Pitt, this could be a disaster all around.

At 8 p.m. on the Longhorn Network Iowa State travels to Austin, TX to face the Longhorns. This isn’t a diamond in the rough game per se, but it’s one of the few games where two AP top-25 programs face off. It’s a shame it’s not on FOX or another broadcast network. ISU’s defense could put a stop to the Longhorns offensive production and are known for upsetting teams on the road.