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The fear for Oklahoma, as it lost Lincoln Riley and jumped to the SEC, was that it would become Nebraska, a storied and well-supported program facing a hill back to prominence just too high to climb. Is that happening? Probably not. Even Nebraska’s own performance so far this year reminds us how reversible bad situations are when a university is bought in. But with Sooner hopes of playoff contention mostly snuffed before they could get off the ground, it’s time to ask what’s going wrong, and just how bad it is.
Brent Venables’s defense held its own against Tennessee last night. The unit wasn’t dominant, and the Volunteers built a comfortable enough lead that they were able to play a ball control game, but given the Vols’ upside on that side of the ball, we might look back at last night two months from now and see an OU defense that performed admirably. With high-level talent still pouring into Norman, talent which only sits one step behind that at the top of the SEC, the defense shouldn’t be an issue as long as Venables is the head coach. The issue is entirely the offense.
This is probably good. It’s easier for even the most talented rosters to go from bad to serviceable than it is to go from average to great. If Oklahoma’s defense can be great, all it might need in order to consistently make the playoffs is average play on the offensive side of the ball. It’s the inverse of the situation they had under Riley, and the inverse of the situation Riley tends to have now at USC. Oklahoma’s offense doesn’t need to get back to its Baker Mayfield era. Playing at Boise State’s level would be enough to get the team to this year’s playoff and keep the program in that sphere for a long time.
How to do that?
There’s a short-term answer and a long-term answer. The short-term answer is to play to strengths, minimize mistakes, play a field position game and not ask whoever the quarterback is next week to do too much. Commit to Jackson Arnold or don’t, but the mission is to achieve serviceability and get through the rest of the year. I’m not trying to praise the play-calling, but the biggest issues so far have been a limp offensive line and an uninspiring quarterback who’s not only uninspiring but turns the ball over a lot.
In the long term, Oklahoma needs to decide about that “commit to Jackson Arnold or don’t” piece. He’s played badly. He’s played concerningly badly. But the scouting report on his high school career was so strong and came against such strong competition that it’s a little hard to believe he himself is entirely the problem. Maybe Oklahoma’s seen enough, or maybe they’ve messed him up enough. But more likely than not, Arnold has run into some bad coaching in Norman, or at least an ineffective developmental approach. Now, Venables needs to decide whether to cut bait on Arnold, cut bait on offensive coordinator Seth Littrell, or cut bait on both. Keeping both involved in the long term plan is probably not a viable option. If Arnold was making big plays in both the good and the bad way, you could argue for he and Littrell needing more time. But when the offense is lacking across the board and the quarterback is playing low-upside, high-downside football, it seems pretty likely that one of the two is the problem. Venables needs to figure out which one and start planning to move on from that one. The line is a separate, simpler issue.
Four games is a small sample off of which to make such declarations, and I’m very cognizant of the fact that I don’t follow Oklahoma as closely as Oklahoma fans or Oklahoma media. This is an outside opinion, and I’m used to being proven wrong. But it wasn’t just Tennessee who made this offense look so rough. Houston did it too, and Houston has made nobody else look rough in any aspect of the sport of football this year. Oklahoma is one game into its SEC era. The alarm bells are already ringing. The situation is correctible, but the situation is bad.
How For Real Is Tennessee?
We knew Tennessee was at least somewhat for real. You don’t annihilate teams—even bad teams—with that kind of consistency if you aren’t capable of a high level of competition. Josh Heupel is proven, and the defense has been a longtime work in progress but one where you can emphasize the word “progress.”
Last night, then, wasn’t a signal that Tennessee’s ready to compete for a national title. Instead, it was confirmation of what we suspected: This is a team capable of taking care of business on the road against a top-20-caliber opponent. That’s not the same as being Georgia or Alabama or Texas, although the Vols could still reach that ceiling. But it’s a good place to be. A different game last night could have left us wondering whether Tennessee belongs in the top ten, just as we and plenty of others have wondered that about Mizzou so far this year. Tennessee’s performance confirmed they’re at that level. There’s a long way to go, but they’re at least a legitimate second-tier team.
One thing I wonder about, for Tennessee, is how much better they can make Nico Iamaleava, and how much better Iamaleava can make himself. He’s got at least one more year of college left to play after this one. How much can Heupel and his staff polish the product? The raw tools are undeniable, and the current performance is very, very good. But is Iamaleava good enough to push Tennessee past the talent gap which separates it from the true national championship threats?
Another thing, going off that talent gap:
Tennessee, like a lot of SEC schools, has a few five-star athletes and a decent number of four-stars. They’re not loaded with them, though, the way the four best teams are loaded with them. There was a lot of talk about this with USC early in the season. “What happens when the first string loses a couple pieces and you start getting into their depth?” I think you can ask the same question about Tennessee. By the time they get to Athens in November, how different will their depth chart look compared to what we saw last night?
Speaking of USC…
I don’t think yesterday needs to be the worst thing in the world for USC. They got punched in the mouth, rallied back under duress, and came very close to winning the game. Miller Moss wasn’t excellent but he didn’t play badly, and we’re gathering again that Michigan’s defense is probably very good. (Hand up: I’d started doubting Michigan’s defense.) There are criticisms of USC’s ability to stop runs everyone in the world knew were coming, and those criticisms are both valid and concerning. Michigan’s offensive line is not what it was last year, and USC will see a lot more operations like that one before it finishes its Big Ten and Big Ten-adjacent slate. (Talkin’ about Notre Dame, folks.) Still, the Trojans went into the Big House and lost a coin toss of a game. That’s not that bad.
I think Lincoln Riley’s USC narrative has three things holding it back: There are the longstanding criticisms of his inability to get over the hump at Oklahoma. There’s the distaste for him nationally stemming from how he left Oklahoma. There’s his very successful first year on the job. In other words: There is a focal point upon which to target criticisms, people are more willing to criticize him than they are to criticize someone they like, and expectations were set too high because USC got lucky in Riley’s first year.
Had Lincoln Riley not won eleven games and produced a Heisman Trophy in his first season in Los Angeles, 8–5 records last year and this year (they’re tracking for that again) wouldn’t be met with so much scorn. We’d view the program as one making progress coming off a grueling end to the Clay Helton era, one which culminated in USC’s 2022 recruiting class consisting of just eight recruits. (It ranked behind Coastal Carolina’s on 247). Riley’s 2024 team is most likely better than his debut Trojan squad. It will almost definitely finish with a poorer record. That year, USC’s toughest wins were against Oregon State, UCLA, and the Drew Pyne edition of Notre Dame. The schedule sucked, the record got inflated, and expectations shot upwards. A perception arose that Riley had transferred the entirety of the Oklahoma program over to Los Angeles, right down to the bolts on the benches. He didn’t. This was a rebuild. He’s still rebuilding, and USC should still be fine.
What USC needs to do is keep getting more bodies into their system and hone the program-wide focus. D’Anton Lynn has the Trojans playing much better on the defensive side of the ball. That’s still going well. It’s not enough just yet, but it’s hard to see how anything could be enough, given how bad this unit was last season. The recruiting isn’t where it needs to be to win a national championship, but it’s good enough to get back into the top ten. For real this time, too. Not in the way they were in the top ten the year Caleb Williams won the Heisman.
What do I mean by program-wide focus? We’ve theorized a lot about this with Texas, and we’ve heard talk from inside Texas’s athletic department which confirms many there share our impression: Steve Sarkisian has his program focusing better than it ever focused under Charlie Strong or Tom Herman, and possibly better than it focused under Mack Brown, or would have focused under Mack Brown were distractions as potent then as they are today. The theory of what could separate Texas from Georgia this year and Texas from Alabama over the long term is that Texas is treating its players like professionals and getting professional commitment in return. It’s easy to treat college players like professionals. It’s harder to get them to focus like professional athletes.
Los Angeles and Austin are not the same. Los Angeles is bigger than Austin, with plenty more enticements than Central Texas offers. But Texas football players are a bigger deal in Texas than USC football players are in Southern California, and they would be even if USC was coming off the Reggie Bush era. There is a lot that could be going wrong for Texas, and the fact it isn’t speaks highly of the discipline within Sark’s program. Lincoln Riley needs discipline like that, and he needs it more at USC than he did in Norman. It’s not just keeping everybody alive on the roads. It’s about all the little things we used to only hear about when athletes officially went pro, the sleep and nutrition and full-lived dedication to winning championships. When we look towards long-term risks accompanying USC, a lack of institutional focus is the biggest potential pitfall. NIL support comes second—USC’s not as much a football school as the teams it’s trying to beat. But even that points back towards it being off-field stuff which could really torpedo Riley’s tenure. On the field, things are going well enough that this can work. Off the field, we think they’re going fine, but we don’t really know.
Michigan’s Sigh of Relief
USC might only end up an 8–5 team this year, but they’re not a bad team. That’s good news for Michigan, who needed that win desperately. We’ve seen how bad Michigan can get. We saw it under Hoke and we even saw it under Harbaugh not too long before the program figured things out. We talk so much about college football as a whole-university effort, because that’s what it is. Michigan, as a formal and informal institution, was primed for a crash landing. They may have ejected Davis Warren from the cockpit just in time.
This isn’t to pin too much on Warren. Some of the criticisms of him—including our own—have been mean and possibly unfair. It wasn’t Warren’s fault that Moore tried to run a conventional offense when he didn’t have the quarterback to run it with. Yesterday, Michigan shifted to an offense which can match its better quarterback, and it paid dividends. It probably won’t work against Ohio State. Michigan will probably lose badly to Ohio State this year. Ohio State rebuilt itself to beat last year’s Michigan and compete against the SEC, and if Ryan Day doesn’t do his turtle impression at the wrong time, Ohio State will get to do both those things. But this year’s Michigan, a sort of 2023 Michigan Lite, can still hold its own against most of the Big Ten’s best. That’s exactly what it did yesterday.
It was fun to see Kalel Mullings run the football. The whole operation was so aggressive and so physical. Night games have a magic to them, but there’s something so cinematic about twilight on the gridiron. Watching USC’s colors burn in the setting sun and listening to the Big House lose its mind was the kind of sports theater which college football delivers better than any sport except for possibly playoff baseball. It was a beautiful, beautiful second half, right down to the double fumble which nearly cost Michigan the game.
Where does Michigan go now? They have a convenient matchup with Minnesota next week before a tricky pair of road games at Washington and Illinois. That’s the immediate future. They’re still fighting an uphill playoff battle, but our model does have them up past 35% again in playoff probability. 9–3 probably won’t be enough, but 10–3 might be.
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What’s Up With Missouri?
Tennessee is probably for real, but Mizzou is probably not. We can think highly of the work Eliah Drinkwitz has done in Columbia, and we do, but this is not a seriously good football team. Its better performances last year and its Luther Burden III factor and its advantageous schedule all combined to give Mizzou a lot of expectations, but in two games now against teams from the worse half of the Power Four, it’s looked fragile and lost. Watching Missouri play football is like watching someone try to drive a stick-shift for the first time.
The Tigers might get away with some of this. They go to College Station next week, but Texas A&M just almost got popped by Bowling Green, and after that Mizzou should be favored six of the seven times it takes the field. Even with the kind path, though, the likelihood now is that they find a way to lose three times, and that they end the season not in playoff contention. If they do manage to wiggle their way in, they currently look like a great draw for someone else.
It’s not that Mizzou is bad. It’s that Mizzou isn’t good. That’s ok. They’re Mizzou. It would be a feat to build a nationally competitive football team at Mizzou, and we wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Drinkwitz will one day do it. But in September 2024, Mizzou is not good at football.
Elsewhere in the SEC:
Texas and Mississippi both rolled, though Arch Manning looked like a redshirt freshman making his first career start at times.
LSU got a slight scare from UCLA but handled business in the second half. They’re on track for a 7–6 final record, but a weird South Alabama team comes to Baton Rouge next week. There aren’t any obvious annihilations on Brian Kelly’s schedule, and given his recent track record of beating teams who are worse than his, he could very well tightrope through this and even make a playoff push. But we’re wary of the potential for a spiral, and it’s easy to see his seat heating up in even the 7–6 scenario.
Speaking of hot seats: Florida got a necessary win, as did Arkansas, meaning Mississippi State and Auburn are the reeling programs for the week. Is Hugh Freeze going to be ok? It’s only Year Two, but Auburn’s projected to miss a bowl again. The incoming recruiting class is great and might still get meaningfully better. We aren’t saying Freeze is already on the hot seat or that he has any realistic chance of getting fired this offseason. We’re just saying to keep an eye on that marriage. There is nothing redeeming about Freeze beyond his ability to win games. If he doesn’t start winning them soon, and if he then has issues retaining players against the transfer portal? Auburn might—probably smartly—act fast.
Who’s Going to Challenge Ohio State?
We knew Michigan wasn’t up to the challenge of competing with Ohio State for the Big Ten title, and we received confirmation yesterday it won’t be USC. Unless Ohio State fizzles, then, or unless someone surprises, either Oregon puts up a fight, Penn State puts up a fight, or the Buckeyes run into the Rose Bowl untouched.
Penn State played Kent State, which is slightly less challenging than playing Columbia right now. (I’m not kidding, Movelor would have the second-worst team in the Ivy League favored against Kent State.) So, not a lot of developments on that front. One team who did make noise? Illi-noise. I’m sorry. They made nois, I guess.
This Illinois team should not be good enough to challenge in the Big Ten. Movelor, our model’s rating system, is higher on them than ESPN’s SP+ or FPI is, and even it only has the Illini projected to finish 8–5. Despite a record of 4–0, Illinois’s playoff probability is around 1-in-40.
What’s something Illinois can do?
Illinois can be a gigantic pain in the ass.
This tradition has been lost in recent college football. We don’t have as many pains in the ass as we used to have. With the glaring exception of Notre Dame, most top-15 programs handle their business these days. But a physical team with a gutsy quarterback and a coach who’s never scared? That’s not a lot of fun for Penn State next week, or for Michigan in four weeks, or for Oregon in a month. The annoying irony here is that some strong performances from Illinois would hurt the Big Ten, because college football has turned in large part into a competition between conferences to see who can produce the most playoff teams. If you have a love/hate relationship with the Big Ten, though, or if you can set aside how boring a six-bid SEC would be, Illinois might be your preferred instrument of chaos these next few weeks. These guys are going to be annoying, which makes them a great test for Penn State.
Indiana and Rutgers are 4–0 and 3–0, and FPI raised some eyebrows this morning when its update ranked the Hoosiers 15th in the country. Is that a big number? Yes, but Curt Cignetti’s good at what he does, and UCLA looking competitive-ish against LSU cast the IU win out west in a different light. This weekend should provide the best measuring stick on the Hoosiers so far, with Maryland headed to Bloomington. For Rutgers’s part, Virginia Tech is quite bad, but Rutgers did beat them and now gets a primetime opportunity on Friday to make a little noise against Washington. The Scarlet Knights are executing well. They’re making a lot out of what they have.
On the Washington topic: Northwestern’s trip to Seattle was a weird game from the onset, but it did allow the Huskies to get their feet back under them. Washington’s probably not a bad team. It’s weird to see them ignored so much so far.
Iowa had a nice showing bringing home Floyd of Rosedale, while Michigan State almost got a big road win in Chestnut Hill. (Jonathan Smith’s team is lively. Keep an eye on them for pain-in-the-ass status.) Purdue might not be the worst team in the world, but they’re in the running. I’m not sure how they kept that 17-point loss to Oregon State as close as it was given the things they were doing on offense. It’s shocking to see Hudson Card performing so badly. How many people are to blame at Purdue, and will they win a second game this year?
Clemson Still Has Something
It’s important to remember how much the ACC benefits perception-wise from the steep fall-off after its first few teams. That said, it’s hard to blow out mediocre teams, and Clemson and Miami were both up to the challenge yesterday. They’re running in such a different lane from the Big Ten and SEC contenders that it doesn’t make a ton of practical difference yet whether they’re in the top eight nationally or merely the top 15. Eventually, it’ll matter, and so we’re trying to figure it out, but we can let the data come in. Cam Ward continues to dazzle for Miami. Cade Klubnik and the Clemson offense are showing legitimate life.
The third ACC contender right now, Louisville, has flown under the radar to this point. They didn’t dominate Georgia Tech, but Georgia Tech was good enough for that to be an impressive victory. Tyler Shough has yet to throw an interception this year.
Right now, our model’s projecting the ACC as likelier to get two bids than one. Whether they do or don’t will hinge in significant part on what the Cards do this coming weekend in South Bend. Win that game, and the ACC’s rolling, with that Clemson loss to Georgia the only blemish upon the faces of its big three. Lose that game, and the league becomes more cannibalistic in its nature, with less at the table to be shared.
Stanford and SMU both got nice wins, even if both those programs are already into make–progress mode. Boston College had a fun victory, and sometimes fun can matter. There’s enthusiasm around the program right now, and enthusiasm is good. Duke and Pitt both got to 4–0, and comfortably at that. There are a lot of teams in the ACC, and that makes it easier to find teams who are doing well, but among its large middle class, there are flashes of encouragement. It’s helpful in the short term to have that fall-off after the top. It helps put teams in the playoff. But it’s not actually a good thing for anyone involved, least of all the schools who themselves are struggling. So, the flashes of hope from the large ACC middle class are encouraging. Maybe Duke can be something. Maybe Pitt can get back to national relevance.
Florida State finally won a game, holding off Cal, but I think the proper response is still befuddlement at how FSU is this bad. Cal’s won some games and is by Cal standards quite good, but those are low standards. Florida State’s still likelier to miss a bowl than make one, and given the state of that ACC middle class, that’s nuts.
BYU Shook Up the Big 12
BYU’s decisive upset of Kansas State didn’t clear out the Big 12’s contenders or knock Kansas State entirely out of the race. There are still plenty of teams who can win this conference, and K-State is one of them. What the win did do, though, is combine with Utah’s victory in Stillwater to clear the space around Utah. The Big 12 has been in a co-favorite situation. Now it has one favorite, and that favorite is Utah.
We’ll get to what happened in Provo in a moment, but Kyle Whittingham’s program mostly dominated Oklahoma State. The final score was only a field goal apart, but the Pokes were never seriously in the game in the second half. Utah outgained their hosts by nearly 200 yards while playing a true freshman backup quarterback who looked the part. The Utes’ ground game wore down and then tore up Oklahoma State. Cam Rising’s what can elevate this team to a threat against almost anybody, but even without him, the Utes are a force to be reckoned with, and entering a western stretch of schedule with an idle week next week, Utah’s in position to run away from the Big 12, at least in the regular season.
Helping that cause, of course, is the Kansas State combustion later last night. This isn’t the first time K-State’s done this under Chris Klieman. It hasn’t been uncommon in his years there to see the Wildcats lose a game they really shouldn’t have lost, or to lose a game badly that should have at least been very close. Kansas State is a very good team on the aggregate, as they have been for a few years now. Kansas State has not yet figured out how to sustain the winning. Avery Johnson is an exciting figure, and he’s still learning, but he and the rest of the Wildcats looked rattled and overmatched.
What we have now, rather than a setup with three teams jockeying at the front and a pack behind them, is one leader and then a much more potent second tier. Our model has all of K-State, Oklahoma State, UCF, Iowa State, and BYU with better than a 1-in-9 playoff shot, and most of them have a better chance than that. Within Movelor’s top 30, seven teams come from the Big 12. (Arizona’s the seventh, and their playoff shot isn’t much worse than 1-in-9.) It’s a deep, tight conference, and it’s primed to beat the crap out of itself but maybe Utah will, after this key road win, manage to stay out of the fray.
Lower down the ranks, Colorado and West Virginia both had dramatic comebacks. The thing about Colorado being built in the image of Deion Sanders is that when things go well, it looks amazing. Shedeur Sanders makes a huge play. Travis Hunter makes a huge play. It’s a little like watching Ohtani back on the Angels, with Hunter’s two-way nature adding to the parallel. So, of course Colorado won in dramatic fashion, with a sensational drive from Sanders capped by a sensational catch by LaJohntay Wester to tie things up, and with Hunter then forcing the game-winning fumble at the goal line in overtime. How else could it be?
West Virginia’s showing couldn’t match Colorado’s for narrative heft, but the Mountaineers came back after a lengthy weather delay and made themselves the latest team to break Kansas’s heart, rallying from an 11-point deficit over the game’s final five-ish minutes. You can’t kill the Neal Brown era in Morgantown.
You might be able to kill the Dave Aranda era in Waco. I don’t know what exactly went wrong, and we should acknowledge how close Baylor was to a relieving 3–1 start, but they coughed that game away in Boulder, and it was one they more likely than not needed to achieve bowl eligibility.
In quieter results, Cincinnati shut out Houston, while Texas Tech has had a couple encouraging weeks. We’ll talk more about Iowa State on the site soon in a dedicated post, but they broke out some fun smashmouth stuff against Arkansas State, including the Maryland I, an I-Formation with four backs instead of three..
Notre Dame Is Now 1–1 Against the MAC
Notre Dame survived this time against a visiting MAC opponent, and it was never all that close, but the Irish didn’t look sharp offensively early, especially in the passing game. They seem committed to Riley Leonard, and looking at what he does on the ground, it makes sense why, but the question, for as long as they’re relevant this season, is going to be how honest they can keep defenses with better physical attributes than Purdue’s. Miami–Ohio and Northern Illinois might both fit that description—Purdue is gallingly slow and weak—but better front sevens are coming, and those might be front eights or front nines given how one-dimensional of a player the Irish landed in their rumored two-million-dollar man.
In other semi-independence, Washington State isn’t ranked again today, and I for one am upset. AP voters ranked Boise State and Texas A&M ahead of them, which would be fair if AP voters were basing this off of how good they think teams are. AP voters have Illinois ahead of them as well, though, and they had NIU ahead of them entering this week, which would be fair if AP voters were basing this off of how accomplished teams are. Beating Washington in Seattle is more impressive than beating Nebraska in Lincoln. Anyone paying attention should know that. AP voters think they pay attention to the whole country, but they don’t, and their lack of awareness of that fact leads them to legitimately mess up some teams’ seasons.
With most teams, the AP poll thankfully does not matter, but as we continue to say, Washington State is really beholden to perception this year. The playoff committee is going to evaluate Washington State more subjectively than any other team in the country because of their unconventional conference status. Narrative matters, and since not many on the committee are watching WSU play yet, the AP poll is going to be their first impression of the Cougs. That’s going to be the anchor which determines how high they can rise if they continue to win.
Washington State can get in the poll if they beat Boise State, and none of this matters if they don’t. But their résumé is underranked right now, and that’s a sign that it will continue to be underranked, and frankly this is really lazy stuff from a lot of people. If you aren’t going to take the poll seriously, why vote in it at all?
What’s the solution? Networks should stop leaning on the poll when putting little numbers next to teams’ names. Seriously. The little numbers matter. Networks should use different rankings, rankings with some cohesive and consistent logic. We need an alternative. We’ll get to work on that.
James Madison Up, Memphis Down
One week after Memphis established itself as the Group of Five leader, the Tigers went down in Annapolis, at one point allowing Blake Horvath and the Midshipmen to score touchdowns on five straight possessions. Memphis isn’t out of it—the AAC still commands a lot of respect from the committee (relatively), and Memphis isn’t a bad team—but the torch is passed to James Madison, who hung 70 on North Carolina in an early breakout for Harrisonburg’s Bob Chesney era.
We wrote last week about the Sun Belt’s poor playoff chances, and the collective chances remain poor. James Madison is the lone remaining unbeaten in the conference, and given the Sun Belt’s depth, we should expect more cannibalism to come. Still, JMU’s got the best résumé in the Group of Five so far, and with only five unbeaten mid-majors left in the FBS (JMU, Army, Navy, Liberty, and UNLV), there’s a very good chance whoever grabs the Group of Five’s guaranteed playoff spot will be at least a one-loss team. Right now, the Dukes have the inside track for that, so long as they can keep it.
Liberty isn’t exactly a sleeper in this realm, but they’re certainly a team to watch, erasing an early deficit against East Carolina late last night after a weather delay of their own. Still, the Flames’ schedule isn’t tough enough to expect much national respect, and it’s unlikely they’ll actually go undefeated. Movelor hardly has them favored on the road this coming weekend against App State, and the line should be within a possession on three of their remaining six conference games.
Northern Illinois went down, as expected but earlier than expected. There was no game on NIU’s schedule it couldn’t win, but there were plenty that we knew would be tough. Meanwhile, Toledo lost after another weather delay—this one at Western Kentucky—and an unfortunate fumble blown dead (Toledo would have returned it for a touchdown and likely won the game). Bowling Green sure is spunky, and the MAC might be lively, and conference titles are something worth fighting for. But this is not the year we see a MAC team reach the playoff field.
One team to keep an eye on:
Tulane righted the ship, hanging on against Louisiana to get back to .500. With losses against Kansas State and Oklahoma, there’s a good chance a 10–3 Tulane would outrank a lot of hypothetical 11–2 Group of Five teams, and possibly even some at 12–1. Their path is rough—they’re south of a five percent playoff shot, per our model—but it’s possible.
SEMO!
Last, and kind of least (the FCS’s top tier is better than Conference USA, but we don’t do a whole lot of Conference USA talk), the FCS:
Southeast Missouri State upset Southern Illinois. That was the big highlight of the weekend. Incarnate Word handily dumped Northern Arizona, and Idaho survived Abilene Christian, and Monmouth got a nice win against an FBS team in FIU. But SEMO knocking off SIU was the big one. Movelor’s new FCS top ten:
1. South Dakota State (+20.9)
2. North Dakota State (+14.4)
3. Montana (+10.8)
4. Idaho (+9.2)
5. Montana State (+8.4)
6. Villanova (+7.2)
7. South Dakota (+6.0)
8. Sacramento State (+4.7)
9. Incarnate Word (+4.4)
10. Southern Illinois (+3.2)
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Plenty more as the week goes along, but for the time being, here’s our model’s latest bracketology and here are its updated playoff probabilities.
Bark.
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