I’m sorry, but I can’t in good faith give an in-depth breakdown of Big Game. I just don’t believe that Cal can beat Stanford, and more importantly, I don’t think there are any interesting matchups to go through.

Barring an upset of literally epic proportions, Stanford will beat the Bears, likely by three touchdowns or more. I’m not saying an upset can’t happen, but I can’t possibly predict how that upset would take place.

For those reasons, I’m going to go off the regular path of this column to go through this weekend’s football games taking place outside of Stanford Stadium that could have significant impacts on the Cardinal’s bowl destination.

The big game of the weekend in college football is one of those that could impact Stanford: the Big-12 matchup between No. 10 Oklahoma State and No. 4 Baylor. The Baylor Bears are likely to play in a BCS bowl no matter what happens on Saturday, but Oklahoma State is on the bubble. Teams need to be ranked in the top 14 of the BCS to be eligible for at-large selections to a BCS game, so a blowout loss to Baylor could potentially move the Cowboys out of contention. If Oklahoma State can play Baylor close or upset the Bears, both of those teams could end up in BCS bowls, sending Stanford to the Alamo Bowl or worse.

If the Big-12 doesn’t send two teams, Stanford could still be undone by the No. 2 team out of the Big Ten. The two contenders for this spot are No. 19 Wisconsin and No. 13 Michigan State.

Michigan State is unlikely to lose Saturday against Northwestern (4-6, 0-6 Big Ten), but anything can happen on the road in the Big Ten. A loss to a team like Northwestern, which would be the Spartans’ second loss of the year, would certainly knock Michigan State out of contention for an at-large BCS berth.

Wisconsin is significantly more likely to lose this weekend. The Badgers head into hostile territory to take on No. 25 Minnesota. The upstart Golden Gophers are playing great football as of late and are technically still alive for a berth in the Big Ten Championship, so you can expect that the atmosphere in Minneapolis will be raucous. Many experts have projected Wisconsin as the team most likely to earn the final BCS at-large bid, so a Minnesota win could be a huge boon to Stanford’s hopes.

The final piece of the puzzle, which isn’t as relevant this weekend due to cupcake matchups, is that Stanford needs the favorite team in each AQ conference — besides the SEC — to win its conference. If No. 2 Florida State, No. 3 Ohio State or No. 5 Oregon is upset in its conference-championship games, it will probably still earn an at-large bid while the team that beat it will earn the automatic bid, leaving Stanford out of the hunt once again.

Looking at the complexity of the above scenarios, it is easy to see how precarious Stanford’s position is right now. Help could be on the way, however, as early as Saturday, and that’s part of what makes college football so intriguing. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Sam Fisher is employing voodoo magic to bring down Oklahoma State, Michigan State and Wisconsin. Let Sam know what he should do if that fails at safisher ‘at’ stanford.edu and follow him on Twitter @SamFisher908.