College football is unpredictable and delightful, which is why we live for what happens on Saturdays. Week 13 wasn’t the flashiest weekend, but we still learned quite a bit about some of the season’s most relevant teams.
Each Sunday, I’ll publish my biggest takeaways from the college football weekend. I’ll highlight the most interesting storylines, track College Football Playoff contenders and specifically shout out individual and team performances that deserve the spotlight.
1. We’ve got to fix the college football schedule.
Week 13 was the most boring weekend of the season — by far. It had two ranked-on-ranked matchups (in Oregon-USC and Missouri-Oklahoma), and both games were decided by multiple scores. The higher-ranked team dispatched the lower-ranked opponent by doing what it does best. Ho-hum.
The rest of the slate was uninspiring, with most of the SEC taking on cupcakes and 12 FBS teams idle. Obviously, it’s going to be a relatively uninteresting weekend when No. 3 Texas A&M, No. 4 Georgia and No. 10 Alabama play teams that have a combined 4-30 record. But there are a few other factors that led to a blah weekend.
First, everyone had two byes this season with the way the calendar broke down, and the second, it’s the fault of these megaconferences. The SEC and Big 12 have 16 teams apiece. The ACC has 17, and the Big Ten has 18. As they grew bigger, all the Power 4 leagues also eliminated divisions. So, there are now bloated conferences with scheduling matrixes, and schedules within leagues are imbalanced. That’s how you end up with Texas A&M only playing teams that finished in the bottom half of the SEC for the first two-and-a-half months of the season.
We’ve got to figure out a way to fix this and ensure that there are compelling games on the penultimate weekend of the regular season. Rivalry weekend is going to be awesome, but this was the worst possible appetizer for it. And that’s a shame.
Heisman race heating up entering rivalry week
Who has emerged as the Heisman Trophy frontrunner? Nicole Auerbach and Joshua Perry discuss after Week 13.
2. Jeremiyah Love should get a trip to New York City at the very least.
Love deserves serious consideration to win the Heisman Trophy outright, but at a bare minimum I hope that he’ll be a finalist. There have not been three better players in college football this season than this Notre Dame running back. There may not be any current college football players better than Love, if we’re being completely honest.
With just one game to go the regular season, Love has rushed for 1,306 yards and 17 rushing touchdowns. He’s got 1,580 total yards from scrimmage and 20 total touchdowns. His numbers would be even better if he didn’t split carries with Jadarian Price, who is also one of the best running backs in the sport. Comparing him to Price actually helps underscore just how special Love is and has been. He almost certainly has been the most outstanding player in college football this season, electrifying and physical at the same time.
Still, this is going to be an uphill battle for Love. The conversation surrounding the Heisman Trophy this season has been almost exclusively focused on quarterbacks. Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza is the current frontrunner, but Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin is just behind him. They’ll likely square off in the Big Ten title game in two weeks, so that could — and maybe should — ultimately decide the Heisman winner. That is a totally defensible approach to a race that still feels fairly wide open. But I hope my fellow voters don’t forget about the running back that won’t be playing during conference championship weekend.
Highlights: Love dominates vs. Syracuse
Jeremiyah Love was an efficiency monster in Notre Dame’s blowout over Syracuse, rushing for 171 yards and three touchdowns on just eight carries.
3. Oregon is Oregon, and USC is still USC.
The College Football Playoff selection committee already thinks quite highly of the Ducks, who checked in at No. 7 in the latest set of rankings despite having zero wins over ranked opponents. Well, now they’ve got their signature win — a 42-27 victory over No. 15 USC, thanks to an explosive offense and stingy-enough defense — to solidify their resume and, likely, a spot in the CFP. As long as Oregon beats Washington next weekend, the Ducks will host a first-round game at Autzen Stadium. They’ll be dangerous in the CFP because of how many ways they can beat you (with or without their top weapons in the passing game).
The flip side of Saturday’s result? USC showed it was not ready to take its next step forward. Its defense is still not capable of getting stops against the best offenses in the country. It cannot get even one singular stop when it needs one. For as entertaining and explosive as Lincoln Riley’s passing offense is, it’s not going to be enough to carry this program into the CFP unless it’s paired with a reliable rushing attack and a dependable defense.
Oregon boosts CFP resume by beating USC
Nicole Auerbach and Joshua Perry break down Oregon’s victory over USC.
4. Georgia Tech just cost itself a shot at the College Football Playoff.
And there’s no one for the Yellow Jackets to blame but themselves. Their defense has been incredibly disappointing over the past three weeks, costing them the game against North Carolina State and nearly blowing the game against Boston College. Pitt scored early and often (and on defense) on Saturday night, and even an inexplicable fake punt called by Pat Narduzzi didn’t ultimately cost the Panthers.
It was just that kind of day for Pitt — and that kind of day for Georgia Tech, which squandered a golden opportunity to make the ACC championship game and play for the league’s automatic bid. Was Brent Key distracted by open jobs elsewhere? Were there just flaws that Haynes King single-handedly covered up for much of the season? It’s hard to pinpoint the exact cause of the collapse, but it’s disappointing regardless.
5. All the coaches who are supposed to be big names for the upcoming carousel keep losing.
It’s like clockwork this season. A big job opens, names get put on candidate lists … and those potential candidates suffer a bad loss that would make it harder for another school to hire ‘em.
We’ve seen it with Jeff Brohm, whose Louisville team has now lost three consecutive games and fallen off a cliff weeks after knocking off then-unbeaten Miami. We’ve seen it with Matt Rhule after Penn State opened up (when Nebraska inexplicably lost to Minnesota). We’ve seen it with Jedd Fisch after Florida opened (when Washington lost to Wisconsin, which hadn’t beaten a Power 4 team in 11 tries). Tulane coach Jon Sumrall saw his Green Wave get blown out by UTSA the same weekend Auburn opened. Rising star Alex Golesh, the USF coach, dropped multiple games over the second half of the season as SEC jobs continued to open. Eli Drinkwitz’s Missouri team has lost three of its last four games among speculation about him potentially going to Penn State or Florida. Not to be outdone, Key’s Georgia Tech team got embarrassed in a 42-28 loss to Pitt on Saturday — which knocked the Yellow Jackets out of CFP contention — after his name was connected to similar open jobs.
It always matters how you finish the season when we’re talking about who gets hired and where. And we’ve had a bunch of big-name coaches slump to the finish line.
