Welcome to Championship weekend: the made up weekend to expand college football’s shadow into December and to line the pockets of a few conferences that have title games. But even though these conference title games are a huge money grab, at least we get one last weekend of games that will decide who goes to what glorified scrimmage in a warm weather city (aka a bowl game).

Thursday, December 3^rd

America, welcome to Oregon and all the Civil War has to offer. This might be the best rivalry game on the west coast. Mike Riley has brought Oregon State to the brink of their first Rose Bowl berth in 45 years and Oregon looks to get back for the first time since the 1994 season. Oregon is a huge favorite as they are at home and dominated in this game last year in Corvallis, but the Beavs have Jaquizz Rodgers back and hopefully the game will be very entertaining.

• Arkansas State @ Western Kentucky (Sun Belt TV, 7pm) – Todd Kalas, Derek Rackley (Will Air on CSS, CST)
• Oregon State @ Oregon (ESPN, 9pm) – Chris Fowler, Craig James, Jesse Palmer, Erin Andrews

Friday, December 4^th

The MAC has brought the ESPN family of networks many entertaining games through the years and the Chippewas’ battle with the Bobcats could be another one. CMU has Dan LeFevour who has been the best player in the conference for the last two years and hopes to knock out Frank Solich and Ohio.

MAC Championship: Central Michigan v. Ohio (ESPN2, 8pm) – Joe Tessitore, Rod Gilmore

Saturday, December 5^th

At noon Eastern on Saturday the ESPN/ABC networks will all have a game and two of them are meaningful. The alleged best game will be the defacto Big East title game between Cincinnati and Pitt, and if Matt Millen drives you to turn the volume off you can head to ESPN2 and hear Ron Franklin and wish Ed Cunningham would stop talking as Houston and ECU battle for the Conference USA title.

• Cincinnati @ Pittsburgh (ABC, Noon)- Sean McDonough, Matt Millen, Holly Rowe
• West Virginia @ Rutgers (ESPN, Noon)- Dave Pasch, Bob Griese, Chris Spielman
• Conference USA Championship: Houston @ East Carolina (ESPN2, Noon)- Ron Franklin, Ed Cunningham
• Fresno State @ Illinois (BTN, 12:30pm)- Wayne Larrivee, Chris Martin, Charissa Thompson
• San Jose State @ Louisiana Tech (ESPN Plus, 2pm)- Trey Bender, Jay Taylor (Will Air on CST, MASN)

The only people watching USC/Arizona will be fans of the two schools as the rest of America’s college football watchers will be listening to Verne and Gary with their Tebow kneepads on promote the Gators to the point of making the rest of America vomit. However, the winner of the SEC title will play in the Rose Bowl on January 7th against Texas or TCU.

• New Mexico State @ Boise State (KTVB, 3pm) – Mark Johnson, Tom Scott, Justin Corr
• Arizona @ USC (ABC, 3:30pm) – Mike Patrick, Craig James, Heather Cox
• SEC Championship: Florida v. Alabama (CBS, 4pm) – Verne Lundquist, Gary Danielson, Tracy Wolfson
• California @ Washington (CSN California+/FSN Washington, 6:30pm) – Barry Tompkins, Mike Pawlaski/Tom Glasgow, Mack Strong, Jason Stiles, Jen Mueller

In the primetime window we will see if Nebraska can pull the upset and keep Texas out of the national title game and a meaningless ACC title game will be played in Tampa that again no one outside of Atlanta or Clemson will watch because they both lost to middling SEC teams last weekend. For the insomniacs, Wisconsin will travel to Hawaii and play into the wee hours of Sunday AM.

• Florida Atlantic @ Florida International (Sun Belt TV, 7pm) – Todd Kalas, Derek Rackley (Will Air on CST)
• Big XII Championship: Nebraska v. Texas (ABC, 8pm) – Brent Musburger, Kirk Herbstreit, Lisa Salters
• ACC Championship: Georgia Tech v. Clemson (ESPN, 8pm) – Brad Nessler, Todd Blackledge, Erin Andrews
• South Florida @ Connecticut (ESPN2, 8pm) – Mark Jones, Bob Davie
• Wisconsin @ Hawaii (ESPN2, 11:30pm) – Terry Gannon, David Norrie

Have a great weekend; enjoy the games and thanks to Awful Announcing for the week’s TV Schedule.