Clay Travis’s Starting 11: Oklahoma Handles Michigan, Gators Swamped

College football always delivers.

Even on weekends when there don’t seem to be a ton of stellar match-ups, someone inevitably rises to the occasion and makes us all tune in. This week, that team was Alex Golesh’s South Florida Bulls, who waltzed into Gainesville as nearly three-touchdown underdogs and pulled off an epic win with a final play field goal for the victory in the Swamp. And just like that, as we will discuss below, there’s an SEC head coach on an even hotter seat than Kalen DeBoer.

We’ll get to Billy Napier in a moment, but let’s not overlook what Alex Golesh has done at South Florida. The Bulls have notched back to back top 25 wins, first by blowing out Boise State and now by draining the swamp. Up next for the Bulls? Miami. What a three-game stretch to begin a season. This Gators win, at a minimum, probably guarantees Golesh, who came to South Florida after a stellar stint as Tennessee’s offensive coordinator under Josh Heupel, a huge payday in the offseason. He’ll be at the absolute top of many coaching lists, and it’s hard to believe he won’t take one of them.

Heck, he may even end up the next Florida Gator coach.

Now let’s talk Billy Napier and get rolling with the Starting 11.

1. The Gators finished last season on a roll to keep Billy Napier in his job, but this loss will take him immediately back to the hottest of hot seats

And now Florida stares down the barrel of these next four games: at LSU, at Miami, Texas, and at Texas A&M.

Even a supremely talented college football team would be lucky to go 2-2 against these four teams.

And the Gators now figure to be underdogs in all four of these games.

What would Florida do if Napier’s team is 1-5 or 2-4 at the halfway point of the season?

And even at the halfway point, the back half of the season still features games against Georgia, at Ole Miss, Tennessee and Florida State.

I’m not kidding about this, there’s a strong argument that the Gators are playing one of the toughest regular season schedules in the history of college football, maybe the toughest.

That kind of schedule demands discipline, which was missing all day in Gainesville. As bad as the Jalen Carter spitting incident was against the Cowboys on Thursday night, at least it didn’t happen on the final drive of a game with two minutes left and your team nursing a one-point lead! Given the circumstances, this is one of the dumbest penalties in college football history, right up there with the Gator shoe toss back in the day.

It only took one week, but Kalen DeBoer is no longer on the hottest seat in the SEC, Billy Napier is.

2. Oklahoma took control of the Michigan game early, never trailed, but was sloppy enough to keep it close

John Mateer is the real deal at quarterback. I don’t think Oklahoma can run him as much as they did tonight all season long — he had 19! carries — but I do think he’s elevated the Sooners into a top half SEC team.

Tonight he passed for 270 and ran for 74, he was basically the entire OU offense.

He reminded me of a bigger Tim Tebow, which is about the highest praise I could give anyone.

So how high is the Sooner ceiling with him at quarterback?

Well, OU should be 5-0 when the Texas game gets here in October.

Then you have this stretch after Texas: at South Carolina, Ole Miss, at Tennessee, at Alabama, Missouri and LSU.

I mean, that’s an absolute murderer’s row of games, probably seven straight top 25 opponents to finish the season.  

The Sooners probably need to get to 10-2, which would mean finding a way to go 5-2 in those seven, to make the playoff. That seems like a high hurdle to reach, one I wouldn’t bet on them achieving. But the fact we can even mention the playoff as a possibility is an improvement over last season. Mateer, it’s fair to say, is a vast improvement over Jackson Arnold.  

Meanwhile, Michigan has one, ONE!, more top 25 team on their schedule for the rest of the season right now — at Ohio State, so I don’t think Wolverine fans need to panic. But what do we think of the Wolverines after tonight’s game? Well, Bryce Underwood was about what I expected tonight. Slow to read defenses, not crisp against the blitz, and unable to take advantage of the big play opportunities down the field because the game was just moving too fast for him. He finished 9-for-24 for 142 yards with no touchdowns. He made two or three throws that impressed me early in the game, but basically vanished for most of the second half.

Now Underwood is big and strong and will get much better from here. And, as noted above, the schedule is lenient.

So 10-2 is still very feasible.

I just think 9-3 or 8-4 are more likely, which is why I would bet Michigan doesn’t make the playoff too.

Honestly, if Oklahoma doesn’t turn the ball over twice on knucklehead plays this game isn’t that close. Which is why, turn your heads Nebraska Cornhusker fans, I think you’ll beat Michigan in two weeks in Lincoln and party like it’s the 1990’s all over again.  

3. The Arch Manning overreactions after week one were, predictably, absurd

I know the opponent was San Jose State, but Arch tossed four touchdown passes in five minutes, ran for another touchdown, and generally looked like what he is — a young quarterback with great talent who flashes glimpses of elite playmaking ability and then, sometimes, misses throws he shouldn’t miss.

But what I noticed watching the entire game on Saturday was, even when he’s inaccurate, it appears to me he’s making the right reads.

That is, you can work with a young quarterback who doesn’t always make the perfect throw, but a quarterback who doesn’t see the throw he should make is a far more difficult project.

Arch gets two more weeks to work himself into offensive shape — UTEP and Sam Houston are up next — before heading on the road against a Florida team that suddenly doesn’t look so fearsome.

I’d still bet on Arch being one of the best quarterbacks in college football this season.  

4. Missouri and Kansas, aka the Border War, was a fantastic game, one of the best of the day if you like shootouts

Mizzou came surging back from a 15-point deficit to win by 11 and set the table for a huge game against South Carolina in week four that will likely leave one of these SEC teams 4-0 on the season and firmly in the playoff mix as we enter October.

By the way, and I’m calling my shot here, Mizzou is going to beat Alabama on October 11th in Columbia.

And I’m taking the over in that game too, because I’m not sure this Mizzou defense is stopping anyone good all season.

5. Iowa State bombed another 50+ yard field goal to beat Iowa

And Army bounced back from losing to Tarleton to beat Kansas State on the road in Manhattan.

I know because I sat here on my couch and watched games from noon eastern until after midnight. In fact, I’m writing the Starting 11 while watching the end of the UCLA-UNLV game.

Run the ball, Dan Mullen!

6. Mississippi State won an improbable victory — scoring on a 58-yard touchdown pass with thirty seconds left to beat Arizona State

This was a phenomenal win for Jeff Lebby in Starkville and also, in conjunction with Vandy’s win at Virginia Tech and Oklahoma’s win over Michigan, should pretty much slam the door on the SEC stinks attacks that arose after the Texas loss at Ohio State and the Alabama loss at Florida State. Honestly, the only poor performance against a power conference opponent this year, I’d argue was Alabama at FSU. But it’s also possible Florida State is pretty good. Time will tell.. (Florida’s loss to South Florida is clearly the worst loss of any SEC team so far this season.)

The SEC has been better, by far, than any other conference in power four matchups this season. The records don’t lie: The SEC is 8-2 against non-conference power four teams while the Big 10 is 5-3, the Big 12 is 4-6 and the ACC is 2-9.  

By the way, credit to Arizona State for the way they played in this game.

They got down 17-0 on the road in a raucous environment. It would have been easy to fade into the cowbell clanging chaos, instead the Sun Devils took control of this game for most of the second half and barring a busted coverage error late, they would have gotten a big road win.

Having said all of this, Mississippi State was picked to be the worst team in the SEC and they just beat the team picked to be the best in the Big 12. That seems pretty significant.

7. I don’t know how good Joey Aguilar is going to be, but I’ve seen enough to know the Vols have won the quarterback trade with UCLA

Tennessee hung 72 points on East Tennessee State and Aguilar, who only played in the first half, was 23-of-31 for 288 yards passing and two touchdowns. Several of these incompletions were just flat out drops. Much like with Mateer at Oklahoma, I don’t know how the Vols will handle the tough teams on their schedule, but I’m confident the Vol offense will be better this year with Aguilar than it would have been with Nico. Aguilar is running this Josh Heupel offense right now better than Joe Milton or Nico did the past two seasons. This is the best it has been since Hendon Hooker. The pace is fantastic.  

Now that might change in a hurry against Georgia next weekend — I’ll be at the game for Fox’s Big Noon — but with Nico losing his second straight game as UCLA’s quarterback — this time on the road against UNLV by throwing an interception on the final drive, I think you can reliably say Nico made one of the most awful decisions of the NIL era to leave a better team with a better coaching staff and be paid more money for worse players, worse coaches and less money.

At 0-2 NIco will struggle to get his UCLA team bowl eligible.

It’s possible the wheels really come off and UCLA is a 2-10 caliber team this year.  

Meanwhile Joey Aguilar is 2-0 and will be the starting quarterback for the best game of next weekend, with over 100,000 Vol fans cheering like crazy for him, against Georgia.

And he’s already endeared himself to Vol faithful as an underdog we all want to see succeed.

I don’t know how to quantify what that value is, but it’s something pretty special.  

8. Good lord, Oregon obliterated Oklahoma State. And Clemson survived

I feel like the Ducks are completely under the radar this year, no one is talking about them at all.

But what I saw them doing to Oklahoma State is illegal in fifty states.

Dan Lanning’s team plays angry, he has that Nick Saban-like ability to find a slight and use it to motivate his team until they are furious at their opponent.

I mentioned Michigan’s schedule up above, but, man, other than a road game at Penn State, there’s no one that can run with the Ducks, I don’t think. They only have two current top 25 teams on their schedule: Indiana and Penn State.

The Ducks should be big favorites to make the playoff.  

On the other side of the country, Clemson fought back from a 16-0 deficit to Troy to keep their playoff hopes alive.

But Tiger fans should be nervous. Clemson hasn’t looked anywhere near as good as FSU and Miami have.

9. How will an Alabama fan spend the $2 billion if she wins the powerball?

Buying out Kalen DeBoer’s contract.

Then she’ll also help her church out.

This is why SEC football is the best.

Maybe she could also help the Gators with their buyout too.

10. My Outkick Top Ten

Remember, I only rank teams based on what we see from them on the field, not what we expect to see. So early in the season, I give precedence to road and neutral site wins over power conference opponents and then also power conference wins at home too. That’s not a perfect system, but it works pretty solidly by the time you get to October. In the meantime, it can lead to substantial fluctuations week to week at the start of the season as long time readers of the Starting 11 have gotten used to, but this also inevitably provokes HOW DO YOU NOT HAVE GEORGIA IN YOUR TOP TEN TAKES in comments everywhere on social media.

With that in mind, here’s my current top ten:

1. Ohio State
2. LSU
3. Miami
4. Oklahoma
5. Florida State
6. South Florida
7. Mississippi State
8. Auburn
9. Tennessee
10. Vanderbilt

11. My SEC power rankings 1-16

I rank my SEC teams the same way, giving precedence to power conference wins and conference performance as the games start to stack up.

With that in mind, here we go:

1. LSU
2. Oklahoma
3. Mississippi State
4. Auburn
5. Tennessee
6. Vanderbilt
7. Texas
8. Alabama
9. South Carolina
10. Ole Miss
11. Missouri
12. Georgia
13. Texas A&M
14. Arkansas
15. Kentucky
16. Florida