#1 Miami, #4 Notre Dame Meet Saturday

It’s been 38 years since the classic Catholics vs. Convicts showdown in NCAAF between Notre Dame and Miami-Florida, and this weekend we will be treated to an encore between the top-ranked Hurricanes and Fighting Irish in front of Touchdown Jesus.

Plus, we look at Which Company Has the Best AI Model at the End of November, Who Will Headline Coachella in 2027, and preview #13 Tennessee-#6 Kentucky NCAAF on Saturday, the NFL Madrid Game between the Falcons and Bengals, and NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race on Sunday, and the Bills at Vikings game on Monday Night Football.

One of the biggest games on the 2026 NCAAF schedule comes this weekend when QB Darian Mensah and #1 (AP) Miami (8-0) heads to Notre Dame Stadium (Artificial Turf) in South Bend, IN, to face QB CJ Carr and Notre Dame (7-1) on Saturday night (NBC, 7:30 EST/6:30 CST/4:30 PST).

In Week 9, ND needed to rally in the second half to dock Navy (35-13) in a game that was close at halftime at The Razor in Foxborough, Massachusetts, but saw the Midshipmen shut out in the second half. Miami held off a game North Carolina team (38-35) in ACC play at Chapel Hill.

Here at The House That Rockne Built, traders at Novig in the Miami at Notre Dame Winner market had Notre Dame (67%) solid favorites over electric WR Malachi Toney and Miami (34%). The Sydney Sweeney-friendly exchange had ND 5.5-point favorites with the Total at 57.5.

These two met back on October 15, 1988, in that famous “Catholics vs. Convicts” game, also played at South Bend in northwestern Indiana, where then-#4 Notre Dame ended #1 Miami’s 36-game winning streak in a thriller (31-30). This should be another classic.

In the last 5 meetings between these two, Notre Dame is 3-2 SU/ATS (2010-2025), but the Canes have won the last 2 meetings. The team that has won the game outright in the last 5 meetings has also covered ATS. The Under is 3-2-0, going 2-0-0 in the 2 games played in South Bend.

On the year, the Over in Notre Dame games is 7-3-0, despite an Under vs. Navy in Week 9. The Overs in Miami games have been even more profitable, going 9-1-0 in the last 10 and winning 5 straight times in games averaging 67.0 PPG. The forecast calls for brisk 50°-46°F temperatures.

The 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Championship and The Chase playoffs will come to an end with the running of the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Homestead-Miami Speedway (Asphalt) in Homestead, Florida on Sunday, November 8 (TV—NBC, 3 EST/2 CST/1 MST/12 PST).

The Chase started with Denny Hamlin holding the lead in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Standings but changed when defending champion Kyle Larson reeled off three wins in the playoffs to take a 30-point lead over Hamlin into the second-to-last race at Martinsville on November 1.

The Chase race winners were Christopher Bell (Cook Out Southern 500), Kyle Larson (Enjoy Illinois 300, Hollywood Casino 400, YellaWood 500), Joey Logano (Bass Pro Shops Night Race), Tyler Reddick (Freeway Insurance 500), and Chase Briscoe (South Point 400, Bank of America 400).

At Martinsville on November 1, it was Byron who finished first, followed by Elliott in a 1-2 Hendrick Motorsports finish. Larson was 9th and now holds a 67-point lead (2469-2402) heading into this final race. Blaney, Briscoe, Logano, and Reddick were all eliminated at Martinsville.

To pick the winner here at this 1.5-mile oval with 1,760-foot straightaways in the Sunshine State is a stock car crapshoot, and Larson and his No. 88 Chevy Camaro SS don’t have to win to be champ, so driving smart will be the JR Motorsports pit crew mantra on Sunday.

Expect the hungry 2nd-place Bell to try the hardest to capture the checkered flag at Homestead, with Logano, Larson, Reddick and Briscoe possibly having some say on who wins the championship. Larson appears to hold on mathematically, but Logano is my forced pick to win.

Predicting what flower a bee or a hummingbird will choose is usually an exercise in futility, while predicting which young wildebeest a pack of hyenas may attack and ultimately kill and eat is easier, as you have more information watching the potential targets. Flowers don’t care. Young prey does.

In the ‘Which Company Has the Best AI Model End of November?’ market at Polymarket US, traders gave Google (71%) the best chance of ending the month with the best ranking at the arena.ai Text Arena (Overall).

Following were Anthropic (27%), OpenAI (2%), and Meta (1%), with SpaceX AI, Z.ai, and Alibaba all registering less than 1 percent at the prediction market. Several factors explain why Google is the leader now, including its integration of AI Mode into Google Search.

Google DeepMind’s Gemini 4 Carbon—released in October—ranked #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence index (59), a new top-ranked AI. And yet no one can use it yet. Why? Watch this. Gemini 4 Carbon is designed to find and fix security flaws.

Gemini 4 Carbon replaced members of the Claude 5.5 family (Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5), which were all the rage in September in this rapidly changing robot race. In September, there was a flurry of releases including Google’s Gemini 3.8 Flash, Meta’s Muse Spark 1.3, and OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra.

Google also had the top-ranking AI model in October. In the HLE-Diamond Score competition, the Gemini 4 Carbon scored 69.1% (Reasoning: 79.6%, Knowledge: 58.6%), while Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scored 67.9% and Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scored 64.0%.

While competitors rely on third-party Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), Google has its own custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), controlling the full stack from chips to cloud data centers. Google is much more than we all think about and has changed all of our lives.

Some rare markets have more than one winner, and that’s what we have with the Who Will Headline Coachella in 2027? market. At Kalshi, volume reached $423,649 by November 3, with American singer SZA (96%) already a bond at 99 cents to be one of the show’s headliners.

Coachella 2027 is scheduled for two weekends (April 9-11, April 16-18) this coming spring at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. The four headliners at Coachella 2026 were Justin Bieber, Karol G, Sabrina Carpenter, and Anyma.

Also getting money from traders at Kalshi to headline this time around were Australian multi-instrumentalist Tame Impala (81%), English singer Dua Lipa (76%), and Canadian hip hop icon Drake (15%).

Getting little ‘Yes’ action and longshots to be one of the four headliners at the iconic music festival were Miley Cyrus (14%), Radiohead (14%), Olivia Rodrigo (13%), Tate McRae (11%), Rihanna (9%), Daft Punk (8%), The Kid LAROI (7%), Don Toliver (7%), NF (7%) and The Marias (7%).

The idea? Get Tame Impala and Dua Lipa before the price rises too much, as buying SZA now is meaningless. But the other two were announced, and why they aren’t at 99¢ is beyond me, with TMZ naming the troika, saying BTS and Rage Against the Machine both declined.

In an unlikely NCAAF Week 10 collision between two teams with CFP aspirations on Saturday, #6 Kentucky (7-1, 5-1 SEC) heads to Rocky Top to sing with #13 Tennessee (6-2, 3-2 SEC) in a big SEC showdown at Neyland Stadium (Grass) in Knoxville, Tennessee (ESPN, 6:15 ET/5:15 CT/3:15 PT).

This date is much more important to the hosts, Tennessee, who, with 2 losses already, can’t afford another ‘L.’ At the same time, Kentucky has shocked the world and made it into the Top 10 in a conference loaded with big names and expectations, where the Cats weren't predicted to do much.

At Polymarket US, traders have Tennessee (68%) the home chalk over QB Kenny Minchey (14 TD, 1 INT) and upstart Kentucky (33%). Online sportsbook DraftKings had Tennessee as solid 6.5-point favorites over Kentucky, with the Total (Points) sitting at 58.5 (TENN -238, KEN +195).

Using the last 10 series meetings as a handicapping tool, we find Tennessee is a predictable 8-2, and a soul-sucking 7-3-0 ATS against Kentucky, winning 5 straight SU and going 4-1-0 ATS in the process. The Over went 6-4-0, cashing in the last 3 consecutive meetings.

Kentucky has upset some good teams this season (Texas A&M, South Carolina, LSU, Oklahoma), and the Wildcats (32.9 PPG, #42) are a team to keep your eyes on like the Big Ten’s UCLA, the Big 12’s Utah, and the ACC’s Wake Forest. The defense isn’t that great, though (24.8 PPG, #76).

Tennessee is always dominant at Neyland, going 33-10 since 2020 at Rocky Top, but one of those setbacks was to Kentucky, as the Cats scratched them in 2020 (34-7) and won’t be scared of the situation. Kentucky was 40% to be a CFP Qualifier at Kalshi, with Tennessee at 28% (Nov. 4).

The NFL continues its European vacation on Sunday when the Atlanta Falcons (3-5) collide with the Cincinnati Bengals (5-2) at Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid, Spain, in the NFL Madrid Game (NFL Network, 9:30 ET/8:30 CT/6:30 PT) and your classic bird vs. cat battle on the Iberian Peninsula.

In Week 8, QB Joe Burrow and Cincinnati hosted the Titans. They continued to impress on offense (29.4 PPG, #2) in a 43-36 OT win, which saw Cincy amass 510 Total Yards, while QB Michael Penix Jr. and Atlanta were pathetic vs. TB, being shut out 16-0 as Penix was 8-for-24 with 4 picks. Ouch.

At Novig, the Bengals were favored (61%) over RB Bijan Robinson and the underdog Falcons (40%) at the home of Spanish Primera league’s Real Madrid early Sunday. Cincinnati was a 3.5-point favorite at Novig with the Total at 52.5 in mid-week trading (November 4).

In the last 5 meetings between these two teams (2006-2022), the Bengals are 3-2-0 SU/ATS vs. the Falcons. The Over is 4-1-0, with WRs Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins part of 459 passing yards in the Bengals' 35-17 home romp over the Dirty Birds on October 23, 2022.

Both teams are better than they were last year, and what stands out for Cincinnati is how well the defense has played (20.3 PPG, #8). For Atlanta, the pleasant surprise has been the emergence of Penix, helping the Falcons (24.7 PPG, #20) have a chance in the lousy NFC South.

It’s impossible not to like another Over here, with so many great skill guys in the mix like Robinson, WR Drake London, and TE Kyle Pitts Jr. for Atlanta and the aforementioned speed twins Chase and Higgins for Cincinnati. But beware, as both were 5-5-0 O/U their last 10 games into Week 7.

The question is: can the Bengals' improved defense slow down the likes of Penix, Robinson, London, and Pitts? The answer is probably not, with this game being at a massive stadium and on a field neither team has ever played on. Can both teams score 27 en España? Si señor.

➠In the next edition of The Prediction Report, we will look at the prospects of the Fed raising rates one more time in 2026, the Time 2026 Person of the Year market, Which Countries Will Have a Recession Before 2027, and preview the 2027 World Series Winner futures market, the #18 USC-#6 Indiana NCAAF game on Saturday, and the Patriots vs. Lions NFL Munich Game on Sunday.