College football Week 14 recap – The 20 best games of Rivalry Week

Rivalry Week, college football’s most reliable source of chaos and upheaval, wasted no time this season.

By the time the Black Friday games kicked off, Tulane had already let a potential College Football Playoff bid slip through its hands, and Toledo had lost to Akron for the first time in 16 years. And things only grew more anxious from there.

We saw maybe the game of the year (Georgia-Georgia Tech) on Friday night, and we saw the No. 2 (Ohio State) and No. 6 (Miami) teams in the CFP rankings entering the weekend fall Saturday. No. 5 Notre Dame needed a pair of length-of-the-field pick-sixes to survive USC. No. 8 Tennessee had to rally after falling behind 14-0 within the first five minutes of its game with Vanderbilt. We got a strangely easy last-second touchdown in Winston-Salem. We got a game-winning hook-and-ladder in the Division II playoffs!

The most impactful Championship Week ever is just a few days away, but before we shift gears to that, we have to pause and reflect on what we just saw. Here are the 20 best games from the best weekend of the 2024 season to date.

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Heisman of week

You had to feel for announcer Joe Tessitore. The stakes in this game were pretty clear: If Georgia won, the Bulldogs would almost certainly clinch a spot in the College Football Playoff, because they would probably rise too high in the CFP rankings to fall out even with a loss in the SEC championship game. If they fell to the hated Yellow Jackets, however, they would likely be in a win-or-go-home scenario in Atlanta on Saturday. Every announcer wants to nail the call on the final play, but when the Dawgs and Jackets went a combined 3-for-14 on overtime 2-point conversions, each blowing chances to clinch the game, it was one false start after another for Joe Tess. “Georgia, for a spot in the playoff! No.” “Tech, with a chance to wreck Georgia’s playoff hopes! No.” “No.” “No.” “No.” “No.”

That the offenses misfired at the end of the game was a huge role reversal from what happened early on. Georgia Tech gained 563 yards, with Haynes King throwing for 303 yards and two touchdowns and rushing for 110 and three more scores. The Yellow Jackets led 17-0 at halftime and should have led by more — they finished each of their first three drives of the game inside the Georgia 30 but got just three points out of it.

Still, they…