AAC Expert Picks: Week 12

Some of the AAC Football Fever staff members have been hand selected to give their weekly picks for each American Athletic Conference game.

Blake Lovell, Mitch Wilcox, Jay Saunders, John Nestor, Zach Rastall, and Al Burke will test their knowledge by contesting me each and every week for bragging rights (and maybe a gratifying pat on the back) at the end of the season.

If you haven’t noticed already, the AAC is a strangely difficult conference to predict. Honestly, who knew Tulane—which had scored 14 points or less in five straight games—would put up 31 and topple the (tied for) first-place Houston Cougars? PUT YOUR HAND DOWN, LIAR.

Who thought that UConn, fresh off a closely contested loss at then-No. 18 East Carolina (31-21) and a ground-breaking win over the reigning AAC and Fiesta Bowl champion in UCF (37-29), would lay an egg against an Army team that had previously lost to Wake Forest, Yale, and Kent State?

What about Memphis, which had to travel to play the Temple Owls—who were feeling themselves following their Week 10 win over the Pirates—in Philadelphia on Friday night? Did you see that 66-yard, last-second drive that decided the game coming against a defense that ranks No. 42 in the NCAA in total yards allowed?

And how about Tulsa’s 40-20 win over winless SM—hahahaha, O.K., O.K., you got me there.

Simply put, we’re 77 days into the 2014 college football season, and still have relatively no idea on how the rest of the AAC games will play out. However, we might finally have a better read on things after this week’s slate of games, which features a clash between conference heavyweights and an intriguing November out-of-conference battle with a Power Five program.

On to the picks:

Matchups	Tyler Waddell	Blake Lovell	Mitch Wilcox	Jay Saunders	John Nestor	Zach Rastall	Al Burke
ECU at Cincinnati
Tulsa at UCF
Temple at Penn State
Memphis at Tulane
USF at SMU
Record	53-16 (.768)	56-13 (.812)	53-16 (.768)	53-16 (.768)	53-16 (.768)	56-13 (.812)	53-16 (.768)