Earlier this week, ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit took to task college football’s various actors for stacking the scheduling deck during certain weekends while leaving others barren.
“You’re thinking, why wouldn’t we have somebody, instead of the Big Ten in their own silo and the SEC in their silo, the Big 12 and the ACC, wouldn’t it be great if we had a commissioner’s office to just, let’s spread some of these games out,” Herbstreit told SI‘s Jimmy Traina Thursday.
Herbstreit makes points—it is undeniably irritating that two box-office matchups in Oregon-Penn State and Alabama-Georgia kicked off at the same time Saturday. However, these are the kinds of weekends that elevate college football from recreation to high art. Four top-25 games spread over three blocks of time wrought with College Football Playoff implications—what could be better, even if two have to conflict?
“All investigations of Time, however sophisticated or abstract, have at their true base the human fear of mortality,” man of the hour Thomas Pynchon once wrote. In this vein, here’s hoping your team this Saturday successfully postponed its CFP mortality another 60 minutes.
Welcome to Week 5’s winners and losers.
For as long as there have been big games to look ahead to, college football teams have been looking ahead. When No. 8 Florida State visited Virginia Friday, it was merely playing a part in one of college football’s oldest dramas—that of the so-called “trap game.” The Cavaliers, markedly improved in year four under coach Tony Elliott, caught the Seminoles seemingly looking to next Saturday’s game against No. 2 Miami. The result: a 46–38 double-overtime win despite being outpointed in every major statistical category.
Syracuse is the home of the Mets’ Triple-A affiliate, and perhaps that Major League Baseball team’s up-and-down nature has infected the gridiron Orange. Let’s review: Syracuse a) lost badly to Tennessee in its opener, b) nearly loss to UConn at home, c) functionally eliminated Clemson from the national conversation this season, and now d) lost 38–3 to Duke (also at home) without injured quarterback Steve Angeli. Even without Angeli, the Orange have all the makings of a loose cannon; expect a surprise for an unsuspecting Georgia Tech, the Hurricanes or Notre Dame later this season.
No. 21 USC’s trip to No. 23 Illinois served as a credibility check for both teams—the Trojans had played a slight schedule to date, while Indiana humiliated the Fighting Illini 63–10 last Saturday. In front of in-form Fox announcer Gus Johnson—neither fanbase will forget his unhinged “Holy Chicago!” call—Illinois edged out USC on a 41-yard field goal from Naperville, Ill., native David Olano. Relying on the transitive property is risky, but Hoosier fans have to be happy that the victim of their team’s signature win seems unlikely to completely fall off a cliff—especially after Indiana’s own tight 20–15 win over Iowa Saturday.
Arkansas took a gamble hiring Pittman away from Georgia in Dec. 2019; while well-liked in the football world, he had not held a head coaching position since a junior college gig in the early 1990s. For a little while, it looked like the Razorbacks may have struck gold—it took five games for Pittman’s team to crack the Top 10 for the first time in nine years. Four years after Arkansas’s magical start to 2021, the Razorbacks are running in place. A 56–13 Fighting Irish win over Arkansas led Pittman to admit via Jack Allen of KATV-TV in Little Rock, Ark. that he is “mad at me, to be perfectly honest.” He’s likely not alone in the Natural State.
Every week now is seemingly a referendum on the ACC—its health, its financial state, its future, the morale of its fanbases. If the purpose of college football is to entertain, on the other hand—how soon we forget that!—the league is doing just fine. In addition to Virginia’s upset, the Yellow Jackets and Louisville weathered gut punches from Wake Forest and Pittsburgh to remain undefeated. The Demon Deacons led Georgia Tech 17–3 at the half, and the Panthers led 17–0 after the first quarter. Neither of the league’s ’21 division champions were able to close the deal.
UCLA’s dark night of the soul has perversely captivated fans this season, and on Saturday the Bruins lost their most promising remaining contest—falling 17–14 to Northwestern after a late rally fell short. Winless seasons are rare for the sport’s true powers—notable teams to endure them include Alabama (1955), Auburn (1927 and 1950), Michigan (1881), and Texas A&M (1948). While UCLA isn’t a football blue blood by any stretch and the season remains young, an 0-12 campaign would be a significant historical blotch—the Bruins’ worst-ever football record, for now, remains a 1-9 mark in 1940.
Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin received enough publicity this week to make Cameron Winter blush—thanks partly to an all-encompassing E:60 profile by ESPN’s Ryan McGee and partly to his daughter Landry announcing her relationship with LSU linebacker Whit Weeks. With family supremacy on the line Saturday (in addition to the small matter of the SEC race), Kiffin rose to the occasion. Riding Ferris State transfer Trinidad Chambliss’s hot hand, the Rebels dialed up a gutsy 4th-and-3 killshot in the final two minutes as their quarterback found tight end Dae’Quan Wright for a 20-yard gain. Ole Miss, a genuine national title contender, visits No. 5 Georgia on Oct. 18.
Saturday’s Ticker Curiosity of the Day award goes to San Diego State and Northern Illinois’s clash of… future Pac-12 and Mountain West foes. In a game where the winning team averaged four yards per play, the Aztecs bested the Huskies 6–3 on kicker Gabriel Plascencia’s go-ahead field goal at the final buzzer. The most recent instance of an FBS team combining for nine or fewer points in one game also involved San Diego State, which lost 6–0 to Nevada in 2023. The most recent time before that, in 2019, also involved the Aztecs. Would you believe that this team once was known for its high scoring?
No. 7 Oklahoma sat out this week—the Sooners will warm up against Kent State next Saturday before battling No. 10 Texas—but still managed to make humorous news. As star quarterback John Mateer underwent hand surgery this past week, Sooner fans rushed to celebrate Mateer’s surgeon—Dr. Steven Shin, one of his field’s preeminent American practitioners. The Brown product (his team lost 41–7 to Harvard on Saturday) found himself the subject of all manner of hype videos and memes across multiple social platforms, despite Ben Cohen of The Wall Street Journal writing in 2020 that “he barely follows sports.” Only in college football!
Just over a week ago, Auburn led a terrific Oklahoma team 17–16 with about seven minutes to go. How quickly this game can turn. The Sooners scored and won that game by seven, and could watch from their couches as Texas A&M held the Tigers to 177 yards of total offense in a 16–10 victory. Not since their quadruple-overtime loss to No. 3 Alabama in 2021 had Auburn gained so little yardage. Like Pittman, coach Hugh Freeze termed his team’s performance “unacceptable” (via Justin Ferguson of The Auburn Observer) and criticized his own; like Pittman, he’ll have to lead his team amid growing fan discontent.
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