Week 2 viewing guide: Breaking down/predicting Michigan vs. Texas, plus other key games from around the country
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The wait is almost over, and Michigan’s first marquee matchup since its National Championship win back in January will arrive Saturday at noon.
This week’s viewing guide will focus heavily on Michigan’s big game against Texas, which is the premiere game of the entire college football slate, as evidenced by all of college football’s big pregame shows setting up shop in Ann Arbor. But this week, I’ll also be including the weekly power rankings in here rather than having it be a separate post.
With Tuesday’s Stock Watch post now being a new weekly staple and also covering the Big Ten as a whole, it felt like a little overkill having those go out on back-to-back days, so I’m rethinking the content posting schedule a bit. But all components of the coverage I promised at the start of the season will still exist — I’m just toying around with different packaging options.
Last week was a great start prediction-wise. I missed the first Big Ten game of the weekend (North Carolina beat Minnesota by two thanks to a missed last-second field goal) and also missed the last Big Ten game of the weekend (USC picked up an impressive win over LSU in Las Vegas). But I got the other 16 conference games right in the middle, and did well against the spread in the process. Overall for the week, I went 19-2 straight and 12-8-1 against the spread when you add in my three marquee non-B1G matchups — Georgia’s win over Clemson, Notre Dame’s upset on the road over Texas A&M and Miami (FL)’s road drubbing of Florida. This weekend’s slate isn’t as enticing in terms of big games, but there are still plenty of watchable matchups and some potentially exploitable lines to go after.
Per usual, I’ll be breaking down/predicting Michigan’s game, the three best non-Michigan Big Ten games and the three best non-Big Ten games for this weekend’s slate. Then I’ll have rapid-fire picks (both straight and against the spread) for all other Big Ten games, meaning there will be 20+ predictions. Here are the running standings for this fall so far for the sake of transparency.
2024 results
Michigan games
Straight: 1-0
Against the spread: 1-0
B1G games
Straight: 16-2
Against the spread: 9-8-1
Overall
Straight: 19-2
Against the spread: 12-8-1
And with that, let’s get to the picks (and the power rankings)
