Week 14 Recap

Photo courtesy of Randy J. Williams/Getty Images

As the regular season comes to an end, the excitement level in college football is only just heating up. In this week’s blog, I’m going to highlight the final week across each conference and preview next week’s conference championship games. I’ll also give my final thoughts on who I believe should win the Heisman Trophy, and wrap up by outlining what should be an outstanding College Football Playoff this year.

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The South Eastern Conference 

Things started early Friday for the SEC as Ole Miss handled the Egg Bowl with ease. Jumping out to a first-quarter lead gave the Rebels the cushion they needed to coast to yet another victory over Mississippi State. This is now Ole Miss’s fifth win in their last six tries—their only defeat coming in Mike Leach’s final coached game before he passed away two weeks later. Ole Miss finished the season 11–1 and 7–1 in conference play, with their only loss coming on the road at Georgia, a game they actually led entering the fourth quarter. The win set them up for a potential trip to the conference title game if both Texas A&M and Alabama lost.

Georgia had the afternoon slot on Friday in a game that did not matter for SEC title implications; win or lose, they were already locked into Atlanta since their game against Georgia Tech is not a conference matchup. Good Old Fashioned Hate lived up to its name, turning into a true slugfest that featured six field goals and just one touchdown. Neither team could capitalize on the other’s mistakes, and Georgia escaped with a 16–9 win. They also finished 11–1 and 7–1 in SEC play, their lone loss coming at home to Alabama. Thanks to holding the head-to-head tiebreaker over Ole Miss, the Bulldogs could sit back, relax, and wait to see who they would face in the conference title game.

Texas A&M needed only to win their final game to go 8–0 and reach their first SEC title game. The problem? They had to do it on the road in Austin—where Texas has won 47 of the previous 61 meetings. The trend continued. A&M’s first-half lead disappeared quickly after halftime, and two fourth-quarter interceptions by Marcell Reed sealed their fate. The Aggies suffered their first loss of the season in their final game. Oddly enough, the loss might not be the worst thing for them; now eliminated from the SEC title game, they gain an extra week of rest and will almost certainly host a first-round playoff game.

With the A&M loss, an Iron Bowl win would send Alabama back to the SEC Championship for the first time since 2023. While that might not sound like a long drought, Alabama hadn’t missed back-to-back SEC title games since 2010–2011. On paper, this year’s game against Auburn should have been an easy win, but Jordan-Hare at night brings chaos. The 5–6 Tigers tied the game at 20–20 early in the fourth quarter. Alabama then produced a nearly eight-minute drive that included two fourth-down conversions—the final one a fourth-and-two at the Auburn six that resulted in a touchdown. Had they failed, Kalen DeBoer would be sitting on the hottest seat of the century. Auburn still had a shot, driving down the field with under a minute to play, but as star receiver Cam Coleman fought for extra yards, the ball was punched out, sealing Alabama’s trip to yet another SEC title game.

Elsewhere in the conference, Vanderbilt earned its first 10-win season in school history with a strong second half against in-state rival Tennessee. Oklahoma used a late touchdown pass to Isaiah Sategna to beat LSU by four and keep their CFP hopes alive. Kentucky and South Carolina both embarrassed themselves in rivalry games against ACC opponents, while Florida flipped the script and beat theirs. Arkansas finished the season 0–8 in SEC play after a 14-point loss to Missouri, officially earning the title of worst SEC team of the year.

Next week’s title game in Atlanta is a rematch of the September 27th meeting in Athens, where Alabama won a second-half defensive battle 24–21. Since then, both teams have rolled—minus Alabama’s performance against Oklahoma. Georgia hasn’t had a real scare, and Ty Simpson has blossomed into a true Heisman contender. Georgia is nearly a lock for the CFP regardless of the result, but things aren’t as simple for Alabama. Currently sitting as the last at-large team in the field, a loss to Georgia would give them a third loss. It’s hard to imagine the committee punishing them for playing an extra game they earned, but if I were Alabama, I wouldn’t test that luck—especially not with a blowout. Georgia has never beaten Alabama in an SEC title game, but I think that streak ends this year. Give me the Dawgs in a 27–17 win.

Week 13 Recap

Photo Courtesy of Getty Images 

The week before Rivalry Week is a traditionally slow week of college football. While it is before Rivalry Week, there are usually a few big rivalries played, this year only one was played between Stanford and Cal. Most handled their non conference opponents with ease, some with less than ease but still won. And 22 of the top 25 won their games, the other three weren't too fortunate. 

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More ACC Cannibalism 

Georgia Tech was the first ACC team with a chance to punch its ticket to the conference title game. All the Yellow Jackets had to do was win a home game against a Pitt team that had been blown out by Notre Dame the week before.

While Pitt was blown out, that loss wasn’t a conference game, and the Panthers also sat near the top of the ACC standings with just one conference loss. People expected a close game, but I don’t think anyone — certainly not me — expected Georgia Tech’s first five drives with Heisman hopeful Haynes King to produce one first down, eleven total yards, and an interception. And when they got the ball for the sixth time, they were already down 28–0.

Pitt came out swinging, clearly intent on making a statement, and they did just that. They moved the ball with ease throughout the first and second quarters. Their defense brought pressure, flustering King in a way no one else had all season, forcing bad throws and capitalizing on mistakes from the former Heisman contender.

The Yellow Jackets fought back, though, scoring twice before halftime to cut the Panthers’ lead in half. Just a week ago we watched Texas A&M come back from 30–3 — why not Georgia Tech from 28–0? When Tech forced a punt to start the second half, it felt like a touchdown drive would bring the stadium fully back to life. As they marched into the red zone, you could almost feel the building belief, the energy rising with each snap.

Then King dropped back from the Pitt 5-yard line, felt the pressure, and forced a throw into the end zone. It was intercepted and returned 100 yards by Braylan Lovelace. What could have been a seven-point game instantly became a 21-point deficit again, and all that momentum Georgia Tech had spent a quarter building vanished in seconds.

A resilient Yellow Jacket defense still fought to get the game back within seven with just over four minutes remaining. They hadn’t allowed a touchdown since early in the second quarter, and one more stop would have given the offense a chance to tie or even win the game. Instead, a defensive breakdown at the worst possible time opened a lane for Pitt running back Ja’Kyrian Turner, who sprinted 56 yards for the game-sealing score.

So what does this mean for the ACC title race? Three teams now sit at 6–1 in conference play: Virginia, SMU, and Pitt. Virginia plays Virginia Tech this week, SMU faces Cal, and Pitt plays Miami. I’m not going to pretend I can predict the outcomes — especially in this conference — but if next week somehow avoids ACC cannibalism, the title game would be Virginia vs. SMU. Miami, the highest-ranked ACC team, is essentially eliminated from both the conference title game and the CFP. The ACC should at least be thankful that the American Conference’s chaos is even worse; otherwise they’d have to sweat out whether they’d get a playoff spot at all.

I believe the ACC champion will still get into the playoff. However, it’s becoming increasingly likely that the champion won’t finish inside the top 12. That would leave them stuck as the 11-seed, forced to travel into a hostile environment to face a top-tier opponent desperate to prove they deserved a first-round bye.

Look out, ACC. 

Week 12 Recap

Photo courtesy of Troy Taormina/Imagn Images

As the clock inches closer to the finale of the regular season, you can feel the hands speeding up across college football. For some teams, their personal clocks have already struck midnight — dreams fading as the magic wears off. Others are still out on the dance floor, the music blaring, refusing to let the night end. No one knows exactly when last call will come, but one thing is certain: if you’ve got a chance to make a move, now is the moment to take it.

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Drama in the SEC

It seemed the clock might have struck midnight in Norman three weeks ago when the Sooners couldn’t finish a second-half comeback against Ole Miss. Combine that with the embarrassing loss to Texas two weeks earlier, and Oklahoma suddenly had no margin for error with a brutal stretch of games still ahead. Fast-forward two weeks, and road trips to Neyland and Bryant-Denny usually go about as well as a bad dream.

Coming off a strong win at Tennessee and a timely bye, Oklahoma now faced what many argued was the best team in college football since Week 2. Florida State’s collapse since beating Alabama in Week 1 hasn’t helped the Tide’s résumé, but after that confusing opening loss, Alabama had rattled off eight straight wins—four of them against ranked opponents.

This looked like the perfect setup for Alabama to notch another ranked win and strengthen Ty Simpson’s Heisman case. But a former Heisman frontrunner returning from injury had other plans.

John Mateer capitalized on a muffed punt by Alabama receiver Ryan Williams, scooping it up and sprinting 20 yards to give Oklahoma a 17–7 lead midway through the second quarter. Alabama answered with a touchdown of its own, but a blocked field goal as the half expired meant the Tide went into the locker room trailing for only the second time all season. A crisp 75-yard touchdown drive on their first possession of the second half briefly restored order.

And then the Tide’s offense decided it was done for the day.

Alabama’s next three drives produced a total of 15 yards, two punts, and a fumble. Fortunately for them, Mateer and the Sooners weren’t exactly lighting up the scoreboard either—but they were steady enough to kick a field goal and retake a 23–21 lead.

Down two with seven minutes left, Alabama needed its first consistent drive of the afternoon. Starting at their own six-yard line, the Tide steadily moved the ball until the first play after the two-minute warning, when Simpson was sacked by linebacker Kip Lewis—the first negative play of the series, and the one that knocked them off script. Faced with fourth-and-six under a minute to play, Simpson’s pass to Ryan Williams was broken up, and Oklahoma stunned Alabama for the second straight year.

It’s hard to say Oklahoma has fully survived its gauntlet when Missouri and LSU still remain, but both games are at home, and both teams look far different than they did a month ago. At 8–2 overall and 4–2 in SEC play, a trip to Atlanta is a long shot—but the CFP remains very much alive. With two more wins, the Sooners would have one of the strongest résumés in the country.

Alabama, meanwhile, enters a much stranger situation. Despite also sitting at 8–2, this was their first conference loss. They still have to visit Auburn—and no matter how bad Auburn is, Jordan-Hare is where rational football goes to die. If Alabama wins and Ole Miss beats Mississippi State, Georgia, Alabama, and Ole Miss would all finish 7–1 in conference play (and maybe Texas A&M if they upset Texas). At that point, the SEC tiebreaker apparently comes down to “record against the highest-placed common conference opponent,” which is a very official way of saying “good luck figuring that one out.”

How far Alabama drops in the rankings will be interesting, especially with one of their losses now looking terrible. There will absolutely be SEC/Alabama bias baked into the discussion, but Kalen DeBoer’s Alabama hasn’t exactly made the playoff committee’s job obvious.

Week 11 Recap

Photo Courtesy of Barry Reeger/AP

A few weeks ago, I wrote a follow-up on my midseason predictions for conference champions. In the two weeks since, almost all of those predictions have gone up in smoke. Outside of a handful of top teams, nobody seems interested in grabbing the season by the horns. Wishy-washy play and losses to teams they shouldn’t be losing to have left a long list of programs stuck in limbo, unsure whether this year is shaping up to be a success or a letdown.

Week 11 added even more teams to that dreaded middle space, and it let a few others escape it in ways we haven’t really seen this season.

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Turmoil on the Atlantic Coast

Just one week after ACC front-runners Georgia Tech and Miami suffered losses to unranked opponents, the hypothetical storm made landfall again. This time it swallowed then-undefeated Virginia and one-loss Louisville, both losing at home to make the pain sting even more.

Virginia, who had technically not lost a conference game since their lone defeat came in that bizarre “non-conference game” against NC State, walked in at 7-1. Their résumé wasn’t bulletproof, though. Their best win was against Florida State, who turned out to be more train wreck than titan, and four of their last five wins were by one score. Still, the CFP committee put them at 14 on Tuesday night, good enough to make the playoff bracket as the fourth-highest ranked conference champion.

But the clock struck midnight. The Cavaliers couldn’t escape the Demons of Wake Forest.

Virginia went just 3-for-14 on third down, and the nine points on the scoreboard told the same story. Yet, down only seven with two and a half minutes left, they still had a chance to rewrite the whole afternoon. They marched down the field and set up a third and six from the Wake Forest 8. An errant throw that was somehow caught kept the drive alive, but Trell Harris couldn’t get out of bounds. With no timeouts, Virginia scrambled to the line for a fourth and three snap with 13 seconds left. The fade fell incomplete, and Jahmal Edrine couldn’t outjump the three Demon Deacons draped around him.

Almost at the exact same moment, one state to the east, Louisville found itself tied 23-23 with Cal. After a shanked punt by the Golden Bears, the Cardinals were just ten yards from their kicker’s range with a timeout to spare. One smart play from veteran quarterback Miller Moss was all they needed. Instead, he was sacked, Louisville burned their last timeout, and a short in-bounds completion afterwards killed any shot at a game-winning field goal. Overtime beckoned.

Louisville went backward on its first possession and settled for a field goal just to extend the game. It was good, but the defense still had to deliver. Knowing what you need to do and being able to do it are two very different things. Cal marched straight down the short-field overtime setup, never losing yards, and faced a fourth and goal from the three. Justin Wilcox kept his offense on the field. Jacob De Jesus dove into the endzone, putting the final stamp on his 153-yard night and giving Cal the win.

The ACC now has four teams sitting at 5-1 in conference play: Georgia Tech, Virginia, Pitt, and SMU. Duke sits at 4-1, though the Blue Devils just dropped their third non-conference game to fall to 5-4 overall. With only three weeks left before the conference title matchup is decided, the race is wide open. But the idea of any champion finishing inside the top 12 feels almost as unlikely as predicting which team will even get there. If not for the chaos happening in the American and Mountain West, the ACC would be sweating bullets about whether they’ll get even one team into the playoff.

I’ll be rooting for Duke to make a run. Imagine a team that lost to Tulane and UConn crashing the playoff party.

Week 10 Recap

Photo courtesy of Kenneth Richmond / Getty Images

I’m going to start today by saying that ESPN is an absolute joke.

If I ever had any aspirations of writing for ESPN in the future, I’m probably putting an end to those chances right now — but I have to say it.

As a YouTube TV customer, I was informed that all Disney-owned networks would be taken off the air because of a contract dispute. I was then flooded with what can only be described as shameless propaganda across every ESPN platform, with employees begging fans to “save their networks.”

I firmly believe this is no coincidence. ESPN recently launched a new streaming service — separate from the ESPN+ I already pay for — called ESPN Unlimited, which gives access to all ESPN channels.

Why are there two streaming services from ESPN, you ask? One word: money.

Now, ESPN wants to charge Google more to carry their content on YouTube TV, and Google didn’t agree. This whole dispute just happens to perfectly highlight ESPN’s new streaming platform — one they can promote heavily, get people to sign up for, and then jack up the price later.

When I first subscribed to ESPN+ back in 2020, I paid $60 a year. My most recent bill was more than double that — an increase of over 100% in less than five years. Don’t be fooled. ESPN and Disney are the villains here, trying to squeeze more money out of consumers while caring less and less about the actual product they put out.

Thankfully, thanks to my loving parents who still pay for cable, I was able to log into the ESPN app through their account and watch games yesterday.

And speaking of ESPN’s “innovations,” they’ve been bombarding us with Multiview ads — bragging about a feature they didn’t even invent and are years late to implement. So, I decided to check it out. During the morning window of college football, the only Multiview options available? European soccer.

What. A. Joke.

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No One is Safe November 

Enough about large corporations trying to ruin the great sport we love — let’s get back to young adults moving the football up and down the field and filling the pockets of… different large corporations tied to education.

As the calendar turned to November, chaos reigned across college football. Outside of the top two teams in the nation, it was pure madness. Six ranked teams lost to either unranked or lower-ranked opponents — three of those losses coming inside the top 10. Even teams that survived, like Georgia, Virginia, Louisville, Michigan, and USC, didn’t do so without at least a little anxiety along the way.

One of the key games of the week featured Vanderbilt, riding high on their newfound top-10 ranking, traveling to Texas to take on a Longhorns team I had all but written off as an SEC contender. With Texas’s soft SEC schedule to this point — their only quality win coming against an Oklahoma team I was already skeptical of — I didn’t think Arch Manning had it in him to deliver in a big game. Meanwhile, Vanderbilt had been riding the ever-energetic (and maybe cocky) Diego Pavia to a 7–1 start. The last thing I expected to see after three quarters was a 34–10 Texas lead.

Texas came out firing, scoring on their first play from scrimmage and forcing a turnover on their first defensive possession. When Eli Stowers finally found the end zone for Vanderbilt, it only cut into a 21-point lead. It seemed like the game was out of reach when Vanderbilt scored to make it 34–17 in the fourth quarter. But a one-play drive made it 34–24, and suddenly the Commodores had life. Another touchdown cut the lead to three, and with no timeouts left and under a minute to go, Vanderbilt’s upset hopes came down to an onside kick. Executed perfectly, the ball pinballed around between Longhorns and Commodores until it looked like Vanderbilt’s special teams would fall on it—only for it to be knocked out of bounds by no more than six inches. The comeback fell short, and Texas held on.

Texas now finds itself 4–1 in SEC play, with its only loss coming to Florida — a result that looks worse every week. Not playing Alabama or Ole Miss (both ranked ahead of them) helps their chances of reaching Atlanta for the second straight year. They do, however, still face Georgia and Texas A&M in two of their remaining four games. The task is simple: just win.

Vanderbilt’s luck seems to have run out. Now 3–2 in conference play, they’ll try to rebound, with only Tennessee remaining as a ranked opponent. A 10–2 season is still very much in play, which would be the first in program history. That might not be enough to reach the playoff, but it would certainly spark a conversation.