The college football season heats up on Saturday with a stacked slate of ranked matchups, and a leader will emerge in for the Group of Six’s College Football Playoff berth.
Meanwhile, in college basketball, a star Big Ten guard’s recent major accolade could be a promising sign for the upcoming season. We break it all down in the latest Weekly Syllabus.
Six ranked matchups highlight CFB’s Week 4 slate
This Saturday’s college football is stacked with six Associated Press-ranked games, the most since 2023 conference championship weekend, according to ESPN College Football’s social media account.
The SEC features in four, including No. 1 Texas (3-0) and quarterback Arch Manning’s trip to No. 14 Tennessee (3-0), where his uncle, Peyton, played quarterback from 1994-97.
No. 4 Ole Miss (3-0, 1-0 in SEC), coming off a dramatic win over former head coach Lane Kiffin last Saturday, travels to The Swamp to face No. 21 Florida (3-0, 1-0 in SEC), which is a three-point favorite.
“There’s a lot of good drugs out there,” Gators coach Jon Sumrall quipped in response.
No. 10 LSU (2-1, 0-1 in SEC) and No. 23 Texas A&M (2-1, 0-1 in SEC) are trying to avoid 0-2 starts in conference play in a primetime showdown in Death Valley.
The most surprising ranked matchup is in Starkville, where breakout No. 24 Mississippi State (3-0, 1-0 in SEC) quarterback Kamario Taylor and the Bulldogs host No. 19 Missouri (3-0).
In the Big Ten, meanwhile, No. 17 Iowa (3-0) seeks just a fourth win all-time in Ann Arbor against a ranked Michigan
and first since 2002. No. 12 USC (4-0, 1-0 in Big Ten), which is 5-13 against ranked opponents under head coach Lincoln Riley, hosts No. 20 Oregon (2-1).
Through three weeks, Boise State (2-1) and Western Michigan (2-1)* have emerged as the country’s most impressive Group of Six squads after going on the road and losing by a combined eight points to Oregon and Michigan. In Western Michigan’s case, it was robbed of a 12-7 win at Michigan after officials incorrectly gifted the Wolverines an extra second.
“They’re an undefeated football team,” Boise State head coach Spencer Danielson correctly noted when previewing the battle of the Broncos on Monday.
According to ESPN’s Football Power Index, Boise State and Western Michigan top their respective conferences, the Pac-12 and MAC, in odds of making the playoff. Boise State leads all G6 teams in playoff odds (19.9 percent), while Western Michigan is sixth (five percent). The winner of Saturday’s game could have the inside track to the mid-majors’ automatic berth.
Blue Ribbon announces its men’s CBB preseason national player of the year
The college basketball season is right around the corner, and Blue Ribbon recently shared that Michigan State Spartans guard Jeremy Fears Jr. was named its preseason national player of the year.
He joins recent winners Braden Smith (2025), Mark Sears (2024) and Zach Edey (2023); each went on to receive first-team All-American honors that season. The 2025-26 All-Big Ten selection is coming off a breakout junior year when he averaged 15.2 points per game and led Division I in assists (9.4 per game). Based on the success of previous Blue Ribbon preseason NPOYs, Fears could be in store for an even bigger senior campaign, putting Michigan State firmly in the national title picture.
