National Game of Interest (Week 11)

We swung for the fences last week and whiffed. FSU and tOSU played for style points and dominated their opponents, easily covering the (seemingly but apparently not so) ridiculous point spreads on which we were relying. We're now 8-11 in our national picks, and things won't get any easier with this week's National Game of Interest: No. 3 Oregon (-10.5) at No. 5 Stanford.

The pick: Oregon -10.5

Why you should care: The PAC-12 is the second best conference in college football, and Oregon and Stanford are the class of the PAC-12. They've won every conference championship since Pete Carroll left USC for the NFL, and they have won both PAC-12 Championship Games. This game is essentially a play-in for the Rose Bowl, if not the BCSNCG.

Rationale: Since Chip Kelly took over Oregon's offense in 2007, the Ducks are 4-2 against the Cardinal. Their wins have come by 23, 21, 7, and 24 points. And, despite Kelly's flight to the NFL, this iteration of Oregon is the toughest yet. They're scoring 55.6 points per game, nearly a TD better than last year. They allow a conference-best 16.9 points per game, which is also 4 points less than they allowed last year. Plus, Oregon will be looking to reclaim the number 2 spot from FSU, which will require some style points. This isn't Stanford's year.

Bonus pick: Under 74 in Oklahoma-Baylor. Oklahoma and Baylor boast the Big 12's best defenses. While that might not be saying much in the grand scheme of things, a statistically inferior Kansas State squad held Baylor to their season-low ("just" 35 points). Since Oklahoma is only scoring 31 per game, math tells me that we should see 66 points or fewer.

Go Dawgs!