At 9 a.m. Pacific on November 29, 2025, Oregon's Big Ten title-game path kicked off in Ann Arbor. The Ducks would not play Washington for another three and a half hours.
Oregon entered the final Saturday with a 15% chance to reach the Big Ten title game. Across 50,000 simulated seasons, that chance would be 75% with a Michigan win and 0% with an Ohio State win. Michigan had only a 20% chance to pull it off, so this was not a prediction dressed up as advice. It was a plain rooting call: if Oregon wanted to play for the conference title, root for Michigan and understand that the hope was a long shot.
Ohio State won 27-9. Oregon beat Washington 26-14 later that day, but its Big Ten title-game path was already gone. Its playoff path was not. The Ducks entered the next week with 97% playoff odds and made the field.
That is an "other game": a game your team is not playing that can still change what your team's season becomes. Your team plays one game, but several other results can change its path. Fan Watch's rooting guide finds the ones worth your attention.
Which other college football games matter to your team?
Some are obvious. If the team one place ahead of you loses, that probably helps. The hard part is sorting the entire Saturday slate, catching the conference tiebreaker you did not know was live, and separating a measurable swing in your team's path from a game that is important nationally but changes little for you.
For every game with a measurable effect, the engine compares your team's odds across the simulated seasons where the home team wins with the seasons where the away team wins. It checks the questions that are still alive for your team: Can you reach the conference title game? Can you make the playoff? Can you earn a first-round bye? Can you improve your seed? The full method and its limits are on the methodology page.
The bigger the gap between the two outcomes, the more the game matters to your team. A conference opponent losing can open a place in the standings. A team you already beat can protect the value of that win. A playoff competitor losing can open one of the spots that does not go to a conference champion. If the outcomes barely change your path, the game does not get promoted into homework.
National importance and importance to your team are different things. The biggest game on the broadcast schedule might change nothing for you. A game between two teams you would ordinarily ignore can decide a tiebreaker that does.
What if your team's hopes point in opposite directions?
The same Ohio State-Michigan game pulled Oregon's two goals in opposite directions. A Michigan win was much better for Oregon's Big Ten title-game hopes, but an Ohio State win was better for Oregon's playoff odds: 78% with an Ohio State win, compared with 70% with a Michigan win.
There was no universally good result. The title-game effect was far larger, a 75 percentage-point swing compared with an 8 percentage-point playoff swing, so the Week 14 Oregon guide put Michigan first.
That is where the guide earns more than the obvious "root against the team ahead" call. It shows which hope each game changes, how much it changes, and whether the requested result is plausible. The rooting logic and the forecast are separate: "Michigan helps" was settled by the paths through the standings; "Michigan has a one-in-five chance" was the size of the hope.
A second schedule, without more homework
I spent years doing this by hand. The point of turning it into Fan Watch is to make Saturday smaller, not give you another spreadsheet. Your own game stays first. The other games are ordered by what they can do to your season, with the winner to root for, the reason, the kickoff, and the channel. After the games, the recap says which wishes landed and how your odds moved.
Oregon's game was at Washington that Saturday. Its Big Ten title-game schedule started three and a half hours earlier in Ann Arbor.