College football Week 12 preview: Take our pregame quiz and catch up on essential reading

The Athletic has live coverage of Notre Dame vs. Pitt from Saturday’s college football action.

Just three Saturdays remain in the college football regular season before conference championships are decided and the Playoff bracket gets set.

What do you need to know about Georgia-Texas, Pitt-Notre Dame, Alabama-Oklahoma and the Week 12 slate? Test your trivia knowledge and catch up on pregame reading below.

Pregame reading

• Justin Williams ranks the top 10 games of Week 12, Manny Navarro makes his oddly specific predictions and our staff makes picks against the spread.

• No. 9 Notre Dame at No. 22 Pitt (noon ET, ABC). Will Pitt get beat 110-10? Pat Narduzzi says it doesn’t matter much because it’s not a must-win for Pitt (7-2, 5-1 ACC), which is trying to get to the ACC title game in a convoluted conference championship race. For Notre Dame (7-2), every game is equally important, though this is the toughest one remaining. The Irish likely need to win out against Pitt, Syracuse and Stanford to make the Playoff after starting 0-2. The biggest challenge for Notre Dame on Saturday? Slowing down a Panthers team that has won five in a row since freshman Mason Heintschel took over as quarterback. The Irish will hope for more big plays from star running back Jeremiyah Love after his dazzling run against Navy.

• No. 11 Oklahoma at No. 4 Alabama (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC). It’s Alabama’s last SEC home game of the season, another spotlight game where football and fashion collide on sorority row next to Bryant-Denny Stadium. On the field, Alabama has righted the ship since its opening loss to Florida State, with a 90 percent chance to make the Playoff after eight consecutive wins. How do the Crimson Tide go about building a roster in their post-Saban world? General manager Courtney Morgan explains their strategies for player retention, the portal, money and more. For Oklahoma, it’s effectively an elimination game — but a Sooners win would help keep the chaos scenario of seven SEC teams making a CFP case in play and complicate a potentially messy SEC title race.

• No. 10 Texas at No. 5 Georgia (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC). Arch Manning visited Georgia as a recruit four times, but he chose Texas. Things continue to work out just fine at quarterback for Georgia anyway, as Gunner Stockton has emerged as an effective dual-threat for a Bulldogs team that is closing in on a Playoff bid despite not being as dominant as usual on defense and relying on more comebacks than expected. The stage is set for what could be one of the biggest games Sanford Stadium has seen this century against Manning and Texas, the preseason No. 1 clinging to Playoff hopes that require at least one win over Georgia or Texas A&M (perhaps both?). Austin Mock’s projections give the Longhorns just an 8 percent chance of making the field, though that would jump to 35 percent with a win in Athens.

In case you missed it

• What happens when college football games are only for the rich? Some faithful fans are finding out, as Matt Baker reports. Meanwhile, Michigan and the Big Ten are fighting over a multi-billion-dollar investment proposal.

• Texas Tech’s offseason roster investments are paying off, as the Red Raiders are up to No. 6 in the College Football Playoff rankings after dominating BYU.

• Joe Rexrode ranks potential national champions by how palatable they would be, our bubble watch looks for this year’s Miami (late-season flop) and Arizona State (late-season surge) in the CFP race and Austin Mock tries to find the most chaotic but still-technically-possible brackets in his model’s 100,000 simulations.

• No coaches were fired last weekend, but there’s plenty of news to follow on the coaching carousel. Chris Vannini’s latest notebook details the legal battle between Brian Kelly and LSU as well as Lincoln Riley’s USC future, and here’s what Bruce Feldman and Ralph Russo are hearing about Lane Kiffin, Penn State, Virginia Tech and more. And after Auburn fired Hugh Freeze, Seth Emerson wonders where the Tigers now fall in the tiers of the SEC.

• This week in quarterback analysis: Which quarterbacks could be on the move in the transfer portal? Our latest Portal Buzz details some notable names to keep an eye on. … NFL execs are fretting over the potentially lackluster 2026 NFL Draft class at quarterback. … Antonio Morales checks in on how freshman quarterbacks are performing. … Austin Meek and Nick Baumgardner break down the film of the most high-profile freshman starter, Michigan’s Bryce Underwood. … Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza leads Ohio State’s Julian Sayin and Alabama’s Ty Simpson in our Heisman straw poll.

• Mendoza’s clutch drive to beat Penn State ended with one of the best catches you’ll ever see from Omar Cooper Jr. Fox Sports’ Gus Johnson described it as one of the most memorable moments of his career.

• Ohio State is No. 1 in the CFP, the AP poll and The Athletic 136, and it’s methodically breaking opponents down with an intentionally slower pace — and the unstoppable gravitational pull of receiver Jeremiah Smith.

• Columnist Will Leitch has something to admit: As UNC pulled off a second straight ACC win, he found himself … cheering for Bill Belichick? The Tar Heels are now two wins away from bowl eligibility. Scott Dochterman has them in the Birmingham Bowl against Tulane.

• As uncertainty about future College Football Playoff formats drags on, life gets even more complicated for the bowls.

• Stewart Mandel’s mailbag tackles the Indiana vs. Texas A&M debate for No. 2, the legal mess at LSU and much more.

• South Florida now has the best Playoff odds from the Group of 5 in Mock’s model. Joe Rexrode has the story of USF coach Alex Golesh’s secret weapon: his high school chemistry teacher and principal.

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