It's the time of year where the weekly FootballScoop College Football Preview Podcast also can include some coaching scoop and carousel nuggets.
This week's episode, previewing Week 14 in the land's greatest sport, does just that as ESPN takes its popular College GameDay show to the Notre Dame-Pittsburgh clash in the Steel City pitting two College Football Playoff-ranked Top 25 teams.
It's not simply breaking down a seismic weekend of matchups that includes the potential of delicious chaos on Friday night, if not quite the potential national ramifications expected two months ago.
Clemson visits Louisville in a matchup that was supposed to be perhaps two of the ACC's top-four College Football Playoff contenders.
Instead, Louisville is trying to keep alive its hopes of an ACC Championship Game appearance after a stunning upset-loss last week at Justin WIcox's Cal Golden Bears. The Cardinals must handle the Tigers and Rhett Lashlee's SMU squad to have a shot for a berth in the crown.
So, to potentially get to the ACC Championship, Louisville merely must defeat last year's two league title-game combatants. It's also trying to hang onto its coach, Jeff Brohm, whose representatives have engaged Brohm in contract negotiations in recent weeks, several sources have told FootballScoop, but who also continues to be linked specifically to the Penn State and Florida jobs.
But Clemson, which temporarily quieted the growing chorus of critics and not just "Tyler from Spartanburg" with last week's easy dismissal of Florida State, has plenty of its own issues. The Tigers are 4-5 overall and all the way down in 10th place in the ACC after beginning the season a consensus top-10 nationally ranked squad.
Numerous sources tell FootballScoop that significant staff changes are coming for the Tigers, who already are shuffling duties on the staff.
Oklahoma visits Alabama in what is a CFP eliminator if the Sooners lose, and it's probably the last hurdle Alabama must clear to cement itself as a de facto automatic qualifier for the sport's playoff.
Texas absolutely is in must-win territory for its game at Georgia; a third Longhorns loss would leave what seems to be no real viable path for the nation's consensus preseason No. 1 team to even advance to the CFP field as an at-large bid recipient.
And, finally, Notre Dame, No. 9 in the CFP rankings and a winner of seven in a row, visits No. 22 CFP-ranked Pitt in a long-running intermittent rivalry where the feelings of Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi -- about the Irish and about this game specifically -- are well-chronicled.
Narduzzi emphasized it's not a must-win game for the Panthers, who control their ACC destiny with league games left against Georgia Tech and Miami. Win, and the Panthers advance to the ACC Championship regardless of what happens this weekend.
But for the Panthers to be seen as a real, viable team, they must win this game. And it wouldn't hurt Narduzzi's bona fides as well; he's 0-4 against the Irish as Panthers head coach and has lost those games by a combined 110 points.
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