🎧Sports Brief: Playoff Spots at Stake in Huge Championship Week Showdowns

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian, center, along with quarterback Quinn Ewers, left, and the rest of the Longhorns, after beating Texas A&M in an NCAA college football game in College Station, Texas on Nov. 30, 2024. Sam Craft/AP Photo

Greetings sports fans, and welcome to the world-famous Epoch Times Sports Brief for Friday, Dec. 6, 2024, I’m your host, Bill Thomas.

We’ve got some rockin’ good highlights to share with you right now, championship weekend has finally arrived, and here’s what’s happening in the thrilling world of sports.

The Ducks and the Lions meet in a Big Ten “brawl for it all”; the Longhorns stampede into Hot-lanta for one last SEC roundup; and it’s win or go home in a trio of tantalizing championship deathmatches.

Also, a trifecta of pigskin enemies seek revenge in the big bad NFL, and in college hoops, a two-time defending champ looks to bounce back after an early season skid, and we’ll tell you all about it.

We’ll tear apart each one of these slammin’ good stories, but we begin tomorrow in Indianapolis, Indiana, where a pair of top-three contenders will race full-speed toward the finish line for a chunk of the Big Ten crown, and here’s how it’s all gonna pan out.

Ducks Try to Fend Off Hungry Lions in Big Ten ‘Brawl for It All’

Thanks to Michigan’s huge upset over rival Ohio State, it’s gonna be the Penn State Nittany Lions who get a crack at undefeated Oregon, and the winner grabs home field advantage and a first-round bye in the college football playoffs.

This season, the Nittany Lions have only lost once, quarterback Drew Allar is becoming a top-notch player, and Penn State is long overdue for a return to the national spotlight.

However, head coach James Franklin has a reputation for stumbling and bumbling whenever there’s a big game, and it doesn’t get much bigger than this.

On the other side of that finely manicured, well-watered green pasture—who are we kidding, it’s artificial turf—the mighty Ducks are led by versatile QB Dillon Gabriel and a brutal defensive line that doesn’t mind doing a little tango with their opponents. They haven’t just been beating teams, they’ve been absolutely mauling, terrorizing, and destroying them, and they’d hate to blow their chance at scoring a perfect season this late in the game.

So you know, the winner takes a three-week holiday while the loser gets to host an extra game in a couple of weeks against a lower-seeded playoff opponent—and we don’t mean the New York Giants.

Scootin’ along now to another great weekend slugfest and this one’s a rematch in Atlanta between a pair of hard-hitting, battle-tested former champions, and here’s the down and dirty.

Horns Look for Payback Against Dawgs in SEC Rematch

The Texas Longhorns are charging through their first season in the SEC, they’ve only lost once, and tomorrow, they get another crack at the Georgia Bulldog team that beat them down just a couple of months ago.

You may have noticed that we talk a lot about the Longhorns. That’s not because we like them, or think they’re great, or dig those sporty logos on their helmets—it’s because Academy Award-winning movie star and all-round good guy Matthew McConaughey is one of their biggest fans. All right, all right, all right!

If you got a problem with that, you should go out now and buy yourself a jarful of that Gold Bond medicated powder, because the red hot Horns are absolutely itching for this rematch, and by the time they’re done throttling Georgia, the Dawgs won’t be able to sit down.

So you know, both Texas and Georgia are gonna make the playoffs, win or lose, but thanks to last week’s marathon, the Bulldogs now have an excuse when they get tired in the second half. Somebody get that crew a bucket of blankets and pacifiers.

Either way, the Bulldogs will be a tough out in the tournament—and the Horns can do everybody across the planet a huge favor when they smack the chip off their shoulder in tomorrow’s absolutely brutal slobberknocker.

Staying on point, there’s a trifecta of other “go hard or go home” conference clashes with everything on the line this weekend, and here’s what’s cookin’.

It’s ‘Win or Go Home’ in Brutal Big 12 Battle

Tonight on the blue Smurf Turf in Idaho, one-loss Boise State takes on the Runnin’ Rebels of Nevada Las Vegas for the Mountain West Conference championship. If the hometown Broncos eke out a victory, they’ll storm into the playoffs with a surprising first-round bye.

Meanwhile, tomorrow night in the ACC championship game, Dabo Swinney and his Clemson Tigers will face the SMU Mustangs.

By the way, you should know that SMU is the real deal and Clemson is there by sheer luck alone. Last week, the Tigers lost to South Carolina and if it weren’t for a blunder by Miami, they’d already be cooked—and by cooked, we mean well-done.

However, none of that really matters now—whoever wins this snoozefest goes on to live another day and play another game.

Also tomorrow, Arizona State and Iowa State tangle in the Big 12 championship—otherwise known as the “Who Cares?” bowl. So you know, it’s being held at the 80,000-seat AT&T Stadium, 24 people are expected to attend, and the tailgating has been canceled due to lack of interest—but actually, I think it’s gonna be a pretty good game.

The winner earns the right to lose in the first round of the college playoffs against whichever big bully doesn’t get a first-round bye.

Meanwhile, the bumbling Miami Hurricanes blew their big chance when they dropped a close one last week in Syracuse, and they’re already whining about missing out on the big show, even before they’ve been officially eliminated.

Time now for another Sports Brief Host commentary: Hey crybabies—people want winners, not whiners. If you wanted to play in the tournament that bad, you should’ve played harder—and won the game. Just saying. Now back to our program.

Let’s meander uptown now to the big bad NFL where revenge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing, and here’s what you need to know.

Revenge Is on the Menu for Familiar NFL Foes

On Sunday, the first-place Seattle Seahawks fly to the desert for a battle with the Arizona Cardinals, who are just one game back in the mediocre NFC West. The Cards motto is “protect the nest” and Kyler Murray and the birds better not lay an egg or that team’ll be served up scrambled with Tabasco sauce and a bucket full of all-natural Spam.

Over to Pittsburgh now, where the Steelers get a chance to even the score against the lowly Cleveland Browns. After getting shocked by Cleveland a couple of weeks ago, we guarantee they’ll be ready and waiting to pummel the Browns into submission. Get out the way... the Steel Curtain comin’ through!

By the way, it helps that turnover machine Jameis Winston is playing quarterback now for the Browns, and last Monday night, he tossed three interceptions, including a pair of pick-sixes.

Host commentary: Hey Jameis, so you know: Your team is the one with the orange helmets. You throw to those guys. ORANGE HELMETS. And now back to the program.

To close out the weekend slate, next Monday night, the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs are gonna host Jim Harbaugh and the rough and tumble L.A. Chargers at what used to be called Arrowhead Stadium.

I have no idea what it’s called now, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s going to be cold, the crowd will be rowdy, the barbecue will be messy, and Taylor Swift will be annoying.

So you know, it’s gonna be obnoxiously loud, and the lucky Chiefs will sleepwalk through three quarters before pulling a rabbit out of their hat with mere moments to spare to clinch the division.

We have time for just one more gripping story today and this one involves college basketball and the shocking demise of the two-time defending champions, and here’s all you need to know.

Defending Champs Plummet in College Hoops Rankings

You may not be aware of it, but the college basketball season has already been underway for about a month now, and this season is shaping up to be a wild, topsy-turvy barnburner.

Last week, the two-time defending champion Connecticut Huskies dropped three straight in Maui, and this week, they slid all the way down to number 25 in the rankings.

Earlier this year, head coach Dan Hurley turned down a gazillion bucks to coach the Los Angeles Lakers, and following this horrendous start, he’s probably rethinking that decision.

There’s still plenty of time for UConn to right the ship, but their early season struggles have knocked the bloom off the rose, and you can be certain that the rest of the roundball sharks now smell blood in the water.

As you know, early season tournaments often spell trouble for some of the big boys and so far, leading contenders Houston, North Carolina, and Gonzaga all have taken tumbles down the ladder.

Meantime, the nation’s top-ranked team is Kansas. They’re led by gigantic Hunter Dickinson, and earlier this week, even the mighty Jayhawks got beaten for the first time this season when they lost to Creighton.

You should know that so far, the SEC looks very strong, Duke’s freshman sensation Cooper Flagg is living up to the hype, and March Madness will be here before you know it.

The season is still young and there’s a long way to go, but for today’s Sports Brief team, it’s time to call it a day.

But before we go, we’re going to close up shop today with one of our favorite sports quotes, and this one comes to us from former pro football quarterback Joe Theismann who said:

“Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

Joe was a legendary player for a ton of years and he even won a Super Bowl with the Washington Redskins, but according to our writer Davey Ross, Einstein’s first name was not Norman, it was actually Melvin.

And now it really is time for us to saddle up and get ready for tomorrow’s fantastic lineup by marinating some bratwurst, soaking some Buffalo wings in hot sauce, and prepping a dozen varieties of salty potato chips. It’s all about football and healthy vittles.

Please don’t cry, we’ll be back next week with another edition of the almost award-winning Epoch Times Sports Brief, and if you can’t wait til then, you can always listen to this episode twice, or even three times, or 11, or ... however many times you want. And there’ll be no additional charge.

If you have any thoughts or comments about this program, we’d love to hear from you, and you can find us at [email protected]—but only if you have generous, gushing, complimentary kudos for the extraordinary, multi-talented Sports Brief crew—all two of us.

For all of us here at The Epoch Times Sports Brief, I’m Bill Thomas.

The Epoch Times Sports Brief program is written each week by Dr. Davey Ross, PhD in Sports Briefology.

Mr. Ross is a self-described football fanatic who once drove all the way from Burbank, California, to Rome, Italy, because he’s a die-hard USC Trojans fan. Wrong Coliseum, Davey.

Thank you for making us your one-stop source for a concise, almost-accurate, and engaging rundown of all the sports stories you absolutely need to know about.

Enjoy another great weekend of sports, stay safe, have a superb day today, and don’t forget to keep your eyes on the game. Bye for now.