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We’ll have more on last night’s other games a little later on, and some will earn mention in tomorrow morning’s Week 8 recap. For the moment, though, let’s talk about something with very little national impact, or at least very little short-term national impact:
Florida State is 1–6 now.
When Florida State lost to Boston College, the possibility of the Seminoles missing a bowl game started to pop up in conversation. There’d been little quarrel about their preseason top ten ranking, and it was easy to give Georgia Tech and Boston College each a lot of praise following their respective upsets. But Notre Dame, Clemson, Miami, and Memphis all remained on Mike Norvell’s to-do list, and FSU hadn’t exactly responded to adversity at all last winter, let alone responded to it well.
Florida State is 1–6 now.
They do still host Charleston Southern, so they should get a second win, as while this is not 2016’s Florida State, this is also not 2016’s Charleston Southern. They also still get to play both UNC and Florida at home, each teams who might be preparing for a coaching change. This number will change based on what Miami does today, but even next week, Movelor—our model’s rating system—is poised to call the ‘Noles just 12-point underdogs. Twelve is a lot of points, but that game shouldn’t be a cakewalk for Miami.
Unless Florida State really does quit.
If Florida State really does quit, Florida State might go 2–10.
Plenty of teams see players opt out for bowl games. What happened for FSU ahead of their pulverization by Georgia was not outside the normal bounds. But given how much respect FSU said it deserved, it was noteworthy, and it’s justifiably being viewed as a turning point under Mike Norvell. It gets at something bigger, too:
It’s harder to build a good team on the football field than it is to build a good roster through the transfer portal. Coaches like Mike Norvell, Lincoln Riley, and Deion Sanders can land a lot of talent through transfers. So far, though, we’ve seen teams use transfers more effectively when they’re plugging holes, as opposed to becoming the bones of the team. We see this in basketball too. It’s not that there’s any moral deficiency surrounding the transfer portal. It’s that college sports are exercises in culture and cohesion, things which are difficult to manufacture overnight. Maybe soon we’ll see a coach take an all-star team and win it all. But until it happens, all signs point towards these teams having a lower ceiling, and in certain cases—cases like Florida State’s—a disastrously low floor.
It would say a lot about Norvell if he could pull this season together and go 5–7. It might also say a lot if FSU really does go 2–10.
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The big one last night, if you missed it: BYU survived Oklahoma State in an electric factory of a football game.
Oklahoma State lost starting quarterback Garret Rangel, saw Ollie Gordon get banged up, and still would have won had it tackled better on what became BYU’s game-winning drive. BYU turned the ball over three times, let Oklahoma State backs and receivers run through their defense with full heads of steam, and still came together to mount a ferocious game-winning drive in the final minute and change. The best play on the drive was Chase Roberts holding onto a fourth down pass on BYU’s side of the 50, but a close second was Jake Retzlaff cutting back upfield when it looked like he might go out of bounds on a scramble, netting BYU twenty much-needed yards at the expense of only a few seconds once the Cougars executed the quick spike.
BYU is now 7–0, and while the path forward looks clear, things are not what they appear. Here are the current Movelor spreads on every BYU game from here on out, plus the Cougars’ expected win probability if those spreads don’t change:
- BYU –5.6 at UCF (70.3%)
- BYU +1.3 at Utah (45.0%)
- BYU –12.8 vs. Kansas (87.7%)
- BYU –4.8 at Arizona State (67.6%)
- BYU –17.7 vs. Houston (93.8%)
The nice thing for the Cougars is that they don’t necessarily need to win all of these to make the College Football Playoff. They’re only barely likelier to go 4–1 from here than 3–2, though, and that’s a challenge, especially since they’d probably be an underdog in the Big 12 Championship, sitting four points worse on paper than both Iowa State and Kansas State entering games today. It’s a tough upcoming schedule, even if nobody among the five is ranked right now.
Still, BYU parties on, with a magical moment to tuck into the scrapbook for when all’s been said and done this fall.
Elsewhere around the country, the big news was Oregon shutting out Purdue 35–0. There were questions about the Ducks getting trapped in West Lafayette. We understand why they were asked. We asked them ourselves. But Oregon took care of business, and Purdue looked more like this year’s Purdue than last week’s Purdue. Movelor now has Oregon the third-best team in the country, moving ahead of Alabama in power rating.
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On to the day ahead. Here’s what else we have for you:
- Our Week 8 Preview.
- Our Dakota Marker preview.
- Our latest College Football Playoff Bracketology.
- Our model’s playoff probabilities.
- Movelor’s Week 8 spreads.
Bark.
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