College football Week 15 preview: Picking conference championship game winners

Welcome to college football's conference championship weekend.

The upcoming week is loaded with notable matchups, and it all gets underway Friday night when No. 10 Boise State hosts No. 20 UNLV in the Mountain West Championship Game. Kickoff for that matchup is set for 8 p.m. ET on FOX.

The Power 4 conferences take center stage on Saturday as Iowa State takes on Arizona State in the Big 12 title game, Georgia battles Texas in the SEC championship, Penn State goes up against top-ranked Oregon in the Big Ten title game, and Clemson closes out the night against SMU in the ACC title matchup.

FOX Sports college football writers Laken Litman, RJ Young and Michael Cohen are here to answer the biggest questions heading into conference championship weekend:

Big Ten Championship Game: Oregon vs. Penn State – Who is your pick to win this game and why?

Laken Litman: Oregon. 

The top-ranked Ducks have been the most consistent and most dominant team in the country for the majority of the season. After a slow start to the year, Dan Lanning got his team, made up of a chunk of transfers, into a rhythm. Oregon is led by QB Dillon Gabriel, a likely Heisman Trophy finalist, who is creeping closer to breaking college football's all-time leading passing mark (former Houston quarterback Case Keenum currently holds the record with 19,217 yards, and Gabriel enters the weekend with 18,140 in six years).

Penn State has a top-notch defense and could easily also be undefeated if not for a close loss to Ohio State on Nov. 2. But the Nittany Lions have not won a conference title since 2016 (when Saquon Barkley was on the team) and have a history of falling short in big games.

RJ Young: No one has beaten Oregon, including an Ohio State team that