This week brings us a national championship rematch, sort of: On the Line

Prior to the 1998, true season national championship games were rare in college football, and national championship rematches even rarer. In fact, I could only find three (ordered by season, not the actual calendar year the game were actually played):

1973: No. 1 USC defeated No. 3 Ohio State in the Rose Bowl at the end of the 1972 season, and Ohio State pulled even the following January, although the win only pulled the Buckeyes up to No. 2 to close the '73 campaign. 

1992: A win over No. 4 Michigan was enough for the Coaches Poll to declare Washington its 1991 national champion, and a year later the Wolverines scored a 38-31 win over the Huskies. 

1997: Bizarre circumstances at the time allowed Florida to avenge a 24-21 loss to Florida State six weeks prior with a near-immediate rematch in the Sugar Bowl, where Steve Spurrier' team beat FSU and won its first national championship. That November, Florida again upset Florida State, 32-29 in the Swamp. 

We've had five rematches post-1998 and four since the College Football Playoff began in 2014. All five involved Alabama, but only one in the regular season. 

2012: After blanking LSU 21-0 to win the 2011 national championship, Alabama went to Baton Rouge and broke the Tigers' hearts again, scoring with 51 seconds left to win 21-17.

2016: Alabama beat Clemson for the national championship in 2015, but Clemson struck back in the early days of 2017. 

2017: Alabama gets revenge on Clemson's revenge, advancing to the 2017 national championship game by beating the Tiger 24-6 in a Sugar Bowl semifinal. 

2018: Stop me if you've heard this before, but after defeating Georgia to win the 2017 national title, Alabama went back to Atlanta and scored late to beat Georgia again, 35-28.

2018: In Part 4 of the series, Clemson evens the ledger with a 44-16 blowout of the Crimson Tide to win the 2018 national title. 

That's eight games total, and one in the regular season. 

All in all, teams that lost the original game are 5-3 in the following season's rematch. That's good news for Washington, although in their matchup with No. 10 Michigan (7:30 p.m. ET, NBC) the word rematch probably be in quotes.

Seventeen players touched the ball in January's 34-13 Wolverines victory, and 13 are gone. So, too, are both head coaches. Much of Michigan's staff left with Jim Harbaugh and/or took other jobs. All but one of Washington's 2023 staff is now elsewhere.

“The fact of the matter is our team is completely different,” new Head Huskie Jedd Fisch said. “The only thing that’s the same is the logo.”

In a reboot year for Washington football, Saturday's game is a massive one. The Huskies face five currently-ranked teams in their final seven games, with a road trip to the vortex that is Kinnick Stadium one of the other two. 

Saturday's game may be a rematch in name and logo only, but it's still an opportunity for Fisch to earn his first signature win at U-Dub, and could also be the difference in the Huskies making or missing a bowl game this winter. 

Additional Games:

-- Houston at TCU (7:30 p.m. ET Friday, ESPN): Houston has gone 97 offensive snaps since its last point scored. No further comment.

-- Michigan State at No. 6 Oregon (9 p.m. ET, Fox): Oregon's final pre-Ohio State tuneup comes against the team Ohio State faced last week. Here's betting the Ducks are motivated to beat the Spartans by more than last week's 38-7 margin.

-- No. 9 Missouri at No. 25 Texas A&M (noon ET, ABC): It was interesting to hear Eliah Drinkwitz so clearly speak a truth Mike Elko has been reluctant to whisper -- Marcel Reed, brother of Mizzou recruiting staffer, is A&M's quarterback. Because of that truth, I like the Aggies to knock off a Mizzou team that's been begging to lose a game all season.

-- Pitt at North Carolina (noon ET, ESPN2): Pitt averaged an even 20 points a game last year. Four games into 2024, the Panthers are north of 48. Remove the 73 dropped on Youngstown State and the 55 on Kent State, Pitt is still scoring 33 a game. 

-- Navy at Air Force (noon ET, CBS): It's the first installment of one of my favorite things in college football: the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy. Army won it last year after Air Force brought it home in 2022; Navy last won the C-I-C in 2019. Army and Navy are off to their best starts in years, while Air Force is next-to-last in yards per play.

-- Iowa at No. 3 Ohio State (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS): Remember that time Iowa dropped 55 on Ohio State? That was the second-to-last time these teams met, way back in 2017. The Hawkeyes are looking for their first win in the 'Shoe since 2017. 

-- Auburn at No. 5 Georgia (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC): “Look, people misunderstand. They think you’re just coach-speaking when you talk about Auburn,” Kirby Smart said Tuesday. “These guys, they’re not getting stopped. They’re turning the ball over." "Preach, brother," Hugh Freeze responded, presumably. Anyway, Georgia hasn't lost games in consecutive weeks since Smart's first season.

-- No. 23 Indiana at Northwestern (3:30 p.m. ET, BTN): Among teams that have played four FBS games, Indiana is fifth nationally in Brian Fremeau's net points per drive, winning each exchange by 2.42 points. Northwestern, by the way, is 80th. 

-- App State at Marshall (3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN+): We take no sides here at Scoop HQ, but it'd be nice to see App State have a great day considering all that program has been through in the last week and a half.

-- Rutgers at Nebraska (4 p.m. ET, FS1): I don't want to alarm anyone in Lincoln, but if the Huskers want to reach their first bowl since 2016, they might need to win this game. If we can chalk UCLA up as a win, that gets Matt Rhule's team to five. Their remaining games elsewhere: at No. 23 Indiana, at No. 3 Ohio State, at No. 11 USC, vs. Wisconsin, at Iowa. You see any guaranteed wins there? I'm not saying the Huskers are guaranteed to go 0-5 through that stretch, but no one gags away wins like Nebraska, either.

-- West Virginia at Oklahoma State (4 p.m. ET, ESPN2): West Virginia looks to remain with the six Big 12 teams unbeaten in conference play, while OSU is looking to avoid an 0-3 start to its Big 12 season.

-- No. 1 Alabama at Vanderbilt (4:15 p.m. ET, SEC Network): Theoretically, Alabama is next.

-- Colorado State at Oregon State (6:30 p.m. ET, The CW): Too early to count this toward the Pac-12 standings?

-- No. 15 Clemson at Florida State (7 p.m. ET, ESPN): Brock Glenn gets the start for Florida State at quarterback. If FSU wins, does that make Seminole Nation feel better, knowing that the season might be salvageable, or worse, imagining what might've been had Mike Norvell not rode DJ U for so long? Clemson is averaging 55 points a game since the Georgia loss. 

-- Utah State at No. 21 Boise State (7 p.m. ET, FS2): The good: Ashton Jeanty plays before 10 p.m. ET. The bad: He plays on FS2.

-- No. 4 Tennessee at Arkansas (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC): Arkansas has had a flair for the dramatic so far this season; Tennessee hasn't played a close game this season. What does Bobby Petrino have cooked up for the nation's No. 1 yards per play defense?

-- No. 11 USC at Minnesota (7:30 p.m. ET, BTN): A Minnesota road trip in early October is far preferred to late November. The Gophers have one of the nation's stingiest defenses and one of the most plodding offenses. Can PJ Fleck find the right formula for a 17-14 win?

-- UCF at Florida (7:45 p.m. ET, SEC Network): It could get beyond ugly inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium if Florida loses a third game, all at home, two to in-state schools, to open the season. As must-win of a non-conference game we'll see all season. 

-- Kansas at Arizona State (8 p.m. ET, ESPN2): Lance Leipold already had to send a message to the Jayhawk fan base acknowledging their frustration at the team's subpar start. Once you've done that, where do you go next if your team then slinks to 1-5, which is where KU will be with a loss?

-- No. 8 Miami at Cal (10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN): The debut of ACC After Dark also brings us a national introduction to the Calgorithm. 

"Cal in the ACC is very strange," Avinash Kunnath, told ESPN. "There's no two ways around it. And it's not going to be something that's going to be easy for a lot of older [fans] or people who have been in the Pac-12 for 50 years. But I think the one thing our community has done is -- we live in the weird."

God bless college football.