College football: Big-5 glance

Big-5 futures

Steady — Utah — Historically plays well in Provo

Steady — BYU — Going for 4 seasons with 10 wins

Steady — Utah State — Idaho struggling as of late

Up — Weber State — Got some momentum

Up — Southern Utah — Well done, coach Lamb

Player of the week

Trevyn Smith, running back, Weber State

While the senior's play has been down overall from last year's remarkable season, he improved in a victory last week against Northern Arizona (107 yards rushing with 2 TDs.) He'll need to replicate that against the Tribe.

Game of the week

Weber State at William & Mary

This is the most important game — after the big one, of course. The Wildcats snuck into the playoffs; can they pull off a Real Salt Lake and dive deep into the FCS playoffs?

Talk of the subdivision

Atlantic Coast Conference

One year after sending a record 10 football teams to bowl games, only seven Atlantic Coast Conference schools will meet the standard of six victories needed for bowl eligibility. That leaves the ACC two teams short of filling its nine bowl affiliations and has made the selection process even more convoluted for the EagleBank Bowl in Washington, D.C.

Now in its second year, the bowl planned to feature Army against the ninth team from the ACC. But Army (5-6) must beat Navy (8-3) on Dec. 12 to be eligible. The ACC won't be able to uphold its end of the matchup.

"There are still so many unknowns out there," said EagleBank executive director Steve Beck, who might be tasked with finding two alternate teams. "I'm going to be watching three, four, five games this weekend, and it's like I have no control over anything."

Creating matchups for some of the 34 bowls can be chaotic, but the move of the Army-Navy game to a week after the rest of major-college football has completed its season has made this year even crazier. If Army loses to Navy, the EagleBank has arranged to take a team from Conference USA to fill the spot. Still, a C-USA school will spend a week in limbo.

"I think it's problematic for a lot of reasons. All the other bowls will be decided the week before," C-USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky said. "But we feel pretty good about our situation because there are enough bowls for all of our eligible teams."

—USA Today

Quotable