Here’s my question about Caleb Williams:
What if he’s bad?
I know he isn’t *bad* bad, but he had a *bad* bad game, and six months is a long time to hold onto presumptive top pick status if you aren’t going to play like the best draft-eligible player. Notre Dame’s defense? It’s good. But that was ugly from Caleb Williams, and USC’s schedule this year is a two-act play. The first act? Beat up on Try to beat up on some really shitty teams. The second act? Take down Get dismantled by strong competition. More on USC in a bit (they don’t have the worst vibes this morning by any stretch, which is a feat), but we had to give Caleb Williams a mention. It’s not his fault they anointed him prematurely, and he did deserve the Heisman he won. But he didn’t have to put the crown on his own head, and his dad didn’t have to tell GQ he was going to go something higher than first overall.
The vibes this morning, from worst to best:
North Dakota State
The Bison are down bad. They’re down so bad. The Bison dynasty is crumbling before our eyes.
I don’t know if it helps or hurts NDSU that they don’t play South Dakota State for another three weeks. I do think they’ll make the playoff—all they probably have to do is split with SIU and UNI, if this is a normal enough FCS year—but last year they looked worse than SDSU, and this year they look worse than all sorts of teams. That’s new.
This is an especially bad look for people like me, people who love the city of Fargo and jumped on the NDSU bandwagon because of that. That, and the notion NDSU should have been ranked in every AP Poll there for a few years. You never want to be a fairweather fan, but being a fairweather fan at the FCS level is especially strange.
NDSU disappointment scores, scale from 1 (hypothetically losing close to a good FBS team) to 10 (the Red River hypothetically just caught on fire and Godzilla came out and ate everybody):
- The South Dakota loss: 5
- The North Dakota blowout loss: 8
- Trey Lance’s NFL career falling apart: 3
- Carson Wentz’s NFL career falling apart: 11
Washington State
Blowouts stink. Blowouts when you still thought you might compete for a conference title really stink. Blowouts when you still thought you might compete for a conference title in the conference that just left you whipping in the wind must be horrible. I cannot imagine how sad this cursed day is for Washington State fans. Just one week after the last loss, too! We need FEMA to go in and give every Coug an Edible Arrangement.
Oh, and Washington got their biggest win since 2000. That can’t help.
Louisville
You always know that Pitt might get up to something, but you never want it to happen to you. It’s like being in a cafeteria with a Tasmanian Devil. Something is going to turn out badly, but you just pray it turns out badly for someone else.
The Cards were that someone else last night.
In some ways, Louisville was simply reminding us they’re exactly as advertised: Wildly inconsistent, often within individual games. But in others, this was the death of Louisville’s hopes and dreams. Louisville was realistically thinking playoff after last week. Now they’re hoping they don’t end up in a bowl with an embarrassing sponsor. And they have to think about the basketball team! They were trying to get to December without having to do that. Football was a great distraction for Louisville, but only while it lasted.
Colorado
We did not forget about you, Colorado. No chance in hell we’d forget about you.
My question about Caleb Williams was, “What if he’s bad?” My question about Colorado is, “Would they have stormed the field if they won last night?” The precedent was set: You win in two overtimes, you storm the field. Those were the rules. The hunch is that this storm would have proceeded the same way as the Colorado State storm, and the same way as Notre Dame’s storm last night after beating USC: Slowly, led by the freshmen.
Colorado didn’t win, though, and it’s looking likelier that they lose out than it is that they make a bowl game. This isn’t bad. That program was so deep in the dumpster that a 4–8 season with wins over TCU and Nebraska is a rousing success, and recruiting is going to be great for next year. But this Colorado season has never been about reasonable takes, and that is Colorado’s own doing. Nobody has been less reasonable about Colorado than Colorado.
USC
My next USC question is, “Do USC fans know they’re bad?”
USC was already playing so badly, and had so much schedule left, that our guy who covers the playoff picture had them in the same category as Duke after last weekend. But USC didn’t know that. Bettors knew it—Notre Dame was favored by a few points—and Washington and Oregon probably knew it, but USC had no idea. USC kept taking the College Gameday evaluation at face value, just like last year. Then, just like last year, reality had its say.
Like Colorado, USC isn’t in a terrible spot. They have one of the most successful active coaches in college football; they have tons of recruiting advantages; their offense isn’t clicking but offers plenty of reason to believe it will. USC isn’t going to go 6–6, either. But they aren’t going to make the playoff, and they probably won’t win the Pac-12, and they’re going to enter the Big Ten coming off a season as the sixth-best team, tops, in an 18-team league. Just ahead of Iowa.
Lincoln Riley’s only in his second year. Things should be fine. But the theory that “actually, it’s hard to win at USC,” is growing some legs.
Ohio
Ryan Day has been screaming for weeks about Ohio vs. Everybody, but even that voice of support from within the state couldn’t save the Bobcats, who took a terrible loss to Northern Illinois and royally screwed up their MAC title hopes. It was one of those losses that means more than the loss, because to lose that game, you have to be pretty bad. That’s the bigger problem for Ohio. It’s not that they lost to NIU. It’s that they were capable of losing to NIU in the first place.
West Virginia
Didn’t forget you either, WVU. That was mostly just a letdown, but you thought you’d escaped Dana Holgorsen and you hadn’t. He looms over you. He might always loom over you. He isn’t good enough for you to let him loom like that.
Alabama
We’re into the territory where winners and losers mix. Alabama? Technically, a winner. Technically. They’re dangerously close to NDSU on the empire arc. This is Macedon right after Alexander the Great’s death.
Wisconsin
Oh boy, Badgers.
The thing you wanted to be able to do, if you’re a Wisconsin fan, was win one last Big Ten West title and get a good laugh in at Iowa’s expense. You have grander hopes in the big picture, but you have a first-year coach, so for the moment you just wanted to reestablish the status quo and head out of this era with as good a taste as you could manage.
You didn’t score a touchdown yesterday.
That’s supposed to be *their* thing!
Oregon
The good thing for Oregon is that everything about yesterday’s classic seems to set the stage for a rematch in the Pac-12 Championship. The other good thing is that you kind of outplayed Washington? The game came down to fourth-down conversions, for various reasons, and Washington converted and you didn’t, but games like that don’t always break the better team’s way. Oregon went to Seattle and almost beat one of its biggest rivals in a top-ten game. Nobody should think Oregon is worse than they thought yesterday, unless they were super high on the Ducks or low on the Huskies. Oregon lost, but they hardly lost.
The bad thing for Oregon is that they’ll probably lose at Utah in two weeks. That’s how the Pac-12 works, right? And then they’ll have two losses and Washington will have one when the Pac-12 Championship does roll around, and either the Ducks will get bumped out by a tiebreaker or the game will be an exercise in making sure the Pac-12 misses the playoff one last time. That’s the bad thing for Oregon.
James Madison
JMU is undefeated and finally stomped someone after spending most of the season hemming and hawing and struggling to twist the knife. They’re postseason-ineligible, though, because those are the rules*, and it’s already starting to feel like a missed opportunity.
The bright side for JMU is that there’s no reason to believe they won’t be good again next year, when they’re through the transition and can play in the postseason. The other bright side is that who cares whether you win the Sun Belt if you go 12–0. Plenty of teams win the Sun Belt. A lot fewer teams go 12–0. But success is fleeting, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s all for nought. JMU needs to do the improbable and go 12–0 under the shadow of people telling it that going 12–0 doesn’t matter.
*Those of you with JMU ties arguing against the NCAA are in the right. Your team is getting hosed. Those of you with no JMU ties who are arguing against the NCAA are in the wrong. JMU is not getting hosed. Most of you are just blindly assuming the NCAA is always bad because that’s what Jay Bilas told you.
The FBS transition rule exists for good reason, and if you take the rule away and let even more teams transition up a level, eventually the biggest programs are going to want a division of their own again, and that’s not going to be within the NCAA. That’s what’s going to break college sports apart. There are one billion teams in Division I. The NCAA’s trying to stem the flow so they can stop the inflation and keep the power players in the fold. When the time comes to awkwardly enforce the rule? Everyone loses their shit at the NCAA. This always happens. Fans ask for something, the NCAA works on it, and fans lose their mind at the NCAA for working on it. It’s fine for fans to do it, but a lot of media folks are doing it who should know better, and when the college football superleague comes and the NCA* *********t breaks apart, those folks are going to pretend they don’t have blood on their hands. They’re going to blame the NCAA. Right now? They’re getting mad at the NCAA for doing something to try to right the ship.
Iowa
I would like one of those cool infographics showing at what point yesterday every Iowa fan realized they’re going to go 11–1 and get obliterated in the Big Ten Championship. I would like a second cool infographic showing how everyone would feel about this. It would be so funny if they somehow won the Big Ten Championship 2 to 0 and Brian Ferentz got fired for not coming anywhere close to the prescribed season point total. It would be the funniest thing ever. And I don’t think Iowa fans would disagree! I think they would maniacally laugh and then get ready for their team to go take a big dump on the field at the Sugar Bowl and make Georgia roll around with them in it.
Oklahoma State
Call an ambulance, but not for Mike Gundy. Less than a month after getting trounced by South Alabama, Oklahoma State finished a home sweep of the Sunflower State. The Pokes are now tied for third in the Big 12. Everything is fine again. It isn’t good or anything, but it’s fine, and you can work with fine.
Notre Dame
The thing Notre Dame did last night was not “resurrect the season.” It was not “get out of the offensive funk.” It was not “prove they’re a good team.” But they did blast their biggest rival, and they confirmed they have that great defense, and they made us ask if Caleb Williams maybe shouldn’t be viewed as 100% certain to be the number one pick just yet. They had a lot of fun, and they had a great moment, and college football’s more about all of that than it’s about the playoff.
What’s best about this for Notre Dame is that the sillily dramatic crowd who always wants to fire every coach (this exists in every sport with every program, we’re not trying to say Notre Dame is different) is going to shut up for a few weeks. That’ll be nice for some people we know.
Ohio State
Even happier about Notre Dame’s win? Ohio State. If Notre Dame made Caleb Williams look like *that,* how good is Kyle McCord? What a great transitive win for the Buckeyes. And that’s even before considering how every playoff-peripheral team that goes down increases the likelihood of the Big Ten East putting three teams in the playoff and making us all like it.
Penn State
Penn State won 63–0 yesterday over an FBS opponent.
That sounds fun.
UNC
Do we hate UNC here because they turned down the NIT, or is turning down the NIT just the kind of thing they’d do because that’s who UNC is without a gentleman of a head coach to temper their worst impulses? I think it’s a mix. Because for as cool as Roy Williams is, they did a lot of cheating and whining and mocking their own athletes’ intelligence when he was in charge.
Anyway, UNC beat Miami pretty comfortably last night, and that’s a baseline for a team if they’re even going to be ACC Good™ (it’s like beer goggles), but UNC doesn’t know that. UNC feels great today.
Duke
I Think You Should Leave reference:
You know when Tim Robinson’s character orders all that food at the drive-through in the pay–it–forward scheme, gets his car stuck on the curb trying to flee the man confronting him, and then says, “Oh. I can just run.”?
Well, Duke had to play NC State without Riley Leonard and Duke got on the curb and said, “Oh. I can just beat the everloving piss out of this team’s offense.” I don’t know how we found ourselves in a world where Duke is good, but we are in that world. Duke is good.
Washington
You beat one of your archrivals and you beat your quarterback’s secondary Heisman competition and your quarterback’s primary Heisman competition went down in a blaze of embarrassment. Washington, you had the best day in the FBS yesterday. But you didn’t have the best day in Division I. Not quite. Because…
North Dakota
The Fighting Hawks are 2–0, and they scored nine goals this weekend, and oh yeah North Dakota also has a football team that just thumped the greatest program in their realm. But mostly the nine goals part. UND hockey, exciting start.
