Editor’s note: Send questions for future Mailbags to stewart.mandel@fox.com. *** Between the Belmont, the NBA Finals, the Women’s World Cup, NCAA softball and baseball tournaments and, I’m told, hockey, televisions are overflowing with riveting sporting events right now. Which leaves those of us in college football land to sit around and talk about games we’ll probably be watching several months from now. Stewart, in examining the 2015 power 5 conference schedules, can you pick the single biggest game per conference? Example: Florida State at Clemson could not only determine the champion of the ACC’s Atlantic Division, but both teams could be undefeated going in — it may also determine the conference’s representative in the playoff. — Thomas Moore, Raleigh, N.C. While I could answer this question the way you asked it, the answers for the most part would be fairly unoriginal. Like FSU and Clemson, I’d just be picking the presumed top two teams in each conference, provided they’re on each other’s schedule. Why don’t I take it a step further and try to guess which single conference game will have the biggest impact on the entire country. But before I do that, we should probably establish a precedent. Because the CFP has made it more difficult for one game (not including conference championship games) to make or break a team’s season like it could in the BCS, everybody essentially gets one mulligan. With that in mind, the retroactive answer to this question for 2014 was Baylor’s 61-58 comeback win over TCU on Oct. 11. It ultimately cost the Big 12 a playoff spot and opened the door for eventual national champ Ohio State — not that we could have known that at the time. While that game should be huge again this year, I’m looking north to the Nov. 21 Michigan State-Ohio State game in Columbus. For one thing, it could make or break the Buckeyes’ repeat chances. While the first year of the CFP taught us that how you play matters more than your record (see Florida State), we don’t yet know how the committee would treat an otherwise dominant team that loses a game that late — not to mention misses out on its conference title game. Meanwhile, the Connor Cook-led Spartans could be in prime contention entering that contest as well, especially if they beat Oregon at home in Week 2…
Continue Reading: Mailbag: Why Michigan State-Ohio State is the biggest game of 2015
