College Football Rivalry Week 2021: Schedules for big Friday & Saturday games

Thanksgiving weekend is perhaps the best weekend in college football. Conferences are consistently scheduling their biggest rivalry games for this weekend, and this week has some tremendous games on the docket to help decide who will advance to conference championship games around the country next week.

In the Big Ten, the West will be decided in part by the most-played rivalry in the sport. Wisconsin and Minnesota meet in Minneapolis on Saturday to decide who will keep Paul Bunyan’s Axe for another year. If Wisconsin wins, they win the West once again and will head to Indianapolis next week. Simple! But if Minnesota wins, the division is up for grabs depending on the results of the Iowa-Nebraska game on Friday and potentially Purdue-Indiana on Saturday.

Here’s how the scenarios break down:

• Wisconsin wins West with: Wisconsin win OR Iowa loss and Purdue loss
• Iowa wins West with: Iowa win and Minnesota win
• Minnesota wins West with: Minnesota win and Iowa loss and Purdue win

The Big Ten East is much easier to define, as the winner of the weekend’s only top-five matchup — #5 Michigan hosting #2 Ohio State — takes the East.

In the SEC, an Alabama-Georgia matchup in the title game is already locked up, but both teams will play in-state rivalry games this Saturday. The Bulldogs will play Georgia Tech in Atlanta, while Alabama heads to Auburn for this year’s edition of the Iron Bowl.

Finally, the Big XII has the only other game of the weekend between two ranked teams, which features Oklahoma and Oklahoma State in the annual Bedlam rivalry. The Cowboys already have a spot locked up, and will play either Baylor (if both Oklahoma State and Baylor win this weekend) or Oklahoma in a back-to-back (with a Sooners win or Baylor loss).

Join us all Friday and Saturday long as we follow along with all of the action from Rivalry Weekend!