A few college football teams have reached the halfway point of their season. More will reach that threshold this week. It’s not a sport where time is linear. There is still plenty of season left. But we are deep into this college football season, and no answer to who is the country’s best team sounds all that convincing. Georgia continues to either sleepwalk or struggle. Texas pulled away from Kansas, but Kansas is little without Jalon Daniels. Michigan pounded Nebraska, but Nebraska likely won’t make a bowl, and it’s confusing to see a team run through Nebraska after letting Bowling Green and Rutgers hang around through halftime. Penn State is our best guess, but they trailed at Northwestern shortly before halftime themselves. The transitive strength of Ohio State’s win at Notre Dame is as dubious as USC’s defense. Oklahoma’s schedule to date leaves the same questions as Oregon’s and Washington’s.
There is a lot of fun to this. There are sixteen remaining undefeated teams in the Power Five, and a believable path to 12–0 exists for as many as twelve of that crew. We don’t know what’s going to happen, and in many ways that’s what college football fans have requested, frustrated enough with the trophy handoffs between dominant SEC powers that a strong majority requested playoff expansion, a move unlikely to introduce new champions but guaranteed to add different characters to the post-Thanksgiving mix. We don’t have a dominant team, though. We need to be clear about that. Either the bad college football teams are much better than they’ve been, or this year is more 2014 and 2017 than 2018, 2019, 2020, or 2022. By January, it’s possible Georgia will be rolling through any comers. Right now? The only defiance they’re showing comes in their refusal to look good against mediocre teams.
A few big things from Week 5, then a look at where it left the playoff picture:
Pac-12 Cannibalization, Volume II
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Utah wouldn’t have won with Cam Rising. He’s a good quarterback, and his injury is and has been meaningful, but Oregon State outgained the Utes nearly 2-to-1, handing over 100 yards via penalty and still carrying a 21–0 lead late into the fourth quarter. What does this tell us? Utah is much as they’ve been for a few years now: They’re good, and they’re tough, and if they’re the Pac-12’s best team than the Pac-12 doesn’t have a national contender. Thankfully, for any still holding stock in positive Pac-12 perceptions, we don’t currently have much cause to think Utah is the Pac-12’s best team. Oregon and Washington are the favorites there, and USC offers plenty of reasons to believe. What we saw on Friday night was not that the Pac-12’s best team isn’t good enough to make a national dent. It’s that Utah isn’t good enough to make a national dent. Utah, for 2023, is relegated to making local dents. If it responds to this loss like Oregon State responded to its own, it’s going to make a lot of local dents.
Oregon State rallying like that is a little kindling on the fire. The Beavers looked dead in the stream, but through that quality of a bounce back and the path the Pac-12 affords OSU from here, it’s realistic they’ll welcome Washington to Corvallis sitting at 9–1. It isn’t going to be easy—there are trips to Tucson and Boulder and a visit from UCLA—but based on what we’ve seen, Oregon State is going to be favored every week from here until Washington. Like Utah, they don’t appear good enough to make a national dent. But their chance of reaching the playoff stage is alive.
Notre Dame’s Escape
One of the two best games of the weekend, accounting for stakes, came in Durham, where Duke spent the second half making Notre Dame’s offensive and defensive lines each look like they’d gone twelve rounds with Ohio State seven nights prior. After grabbing control early, the Irish wore down, the Blue Devils resembling Oregon State in their toughness and their strength. It’s hard to know what to make of Sam Hartman’s performance, given Notre Dame’s receiving woes, but he made the play when it mattered, setting up Audric Estimé to finally break one off and give Notre Dame a lead they only needed to keep for 31 seconds.
For playoff purposes, it does keep Notre Dame alive, but it’s beginning to appear that the value of their one extra game so far has passed the tipping point from help to hindrance. Against NC State, Notre Dame looked like it benefited from the cohesion that experience built. In Durham, Notre Dame looked tired. That’s a bad sign with a trip to Louisville and a visit from USC coming up next.
Colorado Is a Wild Card: USC Edition
What to make of USC’s performance? To answer that confidently, we’d have to know what to make of Colorado. We don’t. We still don’t know what Colorado is. USC had the game put away late in the third quarter, and games where the team would need an onside kick and a touchdown and the extra point all in two minutes—and that, just to force overtime—aren’t as close as a seven-point margin sometimes looks. But allowing 564 yards to a team battling for bowl eligibility isn’t a good look for an already maligned Trojans defense. Did they let off the gas? Probably, sure. But that’s the third time this year they’ve done that, and in the context of the defensive issues last year, it doesn’t look great. The really good teams—the national championship contenders—might let off the gas, but if they do, they’re good enough that it doesn’t show up in the final score. These guys look like a Lincoln Riley team. There is good and bad to that.
Georgia, Michigan, Texas, Washington, and Penn State
Michigan looked good. Texas provided mixed results. Penn State pulled away in the second half. Washington was never in trouble but didn’t exactly dominate. Georgia was in legitimate trouble at Auburn.
It’s possible Auburn is going to spring some upsets, improve as the season goes on, and come into the Iron Bowl ranked and carrying all sorts of momentum as it prepares for Hugh Freeze’s second year. It’s possible Georgia is pacing itself. That seems to be the narrative UGA is encouraging. But as with USC letting off the gas: Pacing may be a thing great teams do, but it shouldn’t look like this. Michigan can say it’s been pacing itself and generate some nods. When Georgia says it, at this point it sounds like an excuse. Georgia looks like a team with a first-year quarterback and a lot of complacency. The potential will always be there, right up until whatever postseason game or games this team plays. But that potential continues to go unfulfilled.
Oregon and Oklahoma
This is less true of Oregon than Oklahoma, but UO and OU have each offered virtually no reason to doubt so far yet are not getting the national attention their consistent excellence should warrant. There’s been occasional slop—Oregon trailed Texas Tech by two scores entering the fourth quarter in September; Oklahoma was stuck in a low gear against Cincinnati last week—but Big 12 talk is all about Texas and Pac-12 talk has more Washington and USC than there’d be if offseason expectations were removed from the equation. In other words: With their latest huge wins, Oregon and Oklahoma both continued trucking.
The FCS Got Weird
There wasn’t much to note in the Group of Five. Fresno State, Air Force, and Tulane all won without too much trouble, and the Sun Belt slate saw leads change hands but the better teams win. One step further down, though, things got messy. North Dakota State lost in the Fargodome.
North Dakota State has some home losses on its recent résumé. Those losses, though, have all either come during the Covid year, come to South Dakota State, or come to James Madison, back when JMU was still in the FCS. The last time the Bison lost a home game that didn’t fit inside one of those categories, it was 2015, and it was to the same team that beat them this weekend: South Dakota. The Coyotes, who’d rolled through St. Thomas and Lamar but failed to mount a fight against Mizzou, went north to Fargo and came back with NDSU’s head on a stick. It’s not the kind of thing that cements South Dakota as the new FCS king—South Dakota State was already well ahead of NDSU on paper—but it goes to show where this Bison program is at. From the final Craig Bohl years through Chris Klieman’s tenure, North Dakota State averaged exactly one loss per year. Deep enough into Matt Entz’s time that the program is squarely his, NDSU has two titles in four years, but it’s missing its marks more dramatically in between. Even taking the Covid season out of the equation, Entz’s teams are averaging more than a loss per year, and likely around two losses per year by the time this season is done. That is still very good, but it is not dynastic. Empires do fade.
In the Big Sky, Northern Arizona made Montana look a little better for their Week 4 disaster, nearly pulling the same trick over against Sacramento State, whom they led in the fourth quarter. I don’t know what’s going on with the Lumberjacks, but they’ve been a different team these last two weeks, and they almost made the Hornets do the same soul-searching as the Griz. Up in Cheney, Idaho took down Eastern Washington in a track meet, keeping the Vandals front and center in the national scene as a potential SDSU/Montana State challenger.
The Ivy League had some top ten-quality teams in recent years, but we thought it had fallen off, and we said as much on Friday as we previewed the weekend ahead. Harvard raised eyebrows, though, picking off Matthew Sluka three times at the Worcester WooSox stadium en route to a 38–28 upset of Holy Cross, a fringe top ten team itself. There is something fun about good Ivy League football.
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As for the College Football Playoff…
Our model has conveniently sorted playoff contenders into two camps. There are the core contenders—those with better probabilities than 1-in-5—and there are the believables, a collection of any number of teams (it’s very subjective) sitting below that threshold but above zero. We’re going to talk about eleven of those believables, and we’re going to talk about the other undefeated FBS teams, and we’re going to talk about the teams whose playoff hopes disappeared. First, though, we’re going to start with the big guys. Ten teams are above that 20% probability. They have a combined one loss. That loss came from another one of the ten. You can probably guess which it was.
Penn State: 56.3%
Penn State remains a curiosity as much as it remains a contender. Movelor has them rated as the best team in the country. SP+ has them 13th. They beat Northwestern by 28 on the road, and they managed to not look impressive while they did it.
The nice thing about Penn State is that because they play Ohio State and Michigan in the regular season, we don’t have to ask too hard how good they are. We’re going to find out. For now, our model loves them, and our model’s an outlier about that.
Florida State: 42.5%
How good is Florida State? That’s a more relevant question. Movelor has them 11th, and Movelor is again on the high side here. SP+ has the Seminoles 18th. FPI does have them 10th, but even that is not national champion territory. What we do know about these guys is that from here, the schedule is weak. With Clemson and LSU in the rearview, Florida State doesn’t face another team currently in the Movelor top 30 until the ACC Championship, and even then, it’s possible they’ll draw someone past 30th in that table. Florida State had a front-heavy schedule, and it managed it, and if they can avoid mistakes from here they’re going to make the playoffs unless enough people on the committee find the fortitude to say, “Wait a second, we’re supposed to pick the four best teams. Or at least the four best résumés.” Going 13–0 in the ACC these days isn’t something any of these top-fifteen teams can’t do. It’s a feat, and it’s an accomplishment, but it doesn’t mean Florida State is one of the best teams in the country. They have to do more to make a case for that.
The ’Noles were off this weekend. They get Virginia Tech on Saturday.
Ohio State: 42.0%
Unlike Notre Dame, Ohio State got a week off after that dogfight, and with that added hindsight, you have to imagine the Buckeyes feel good about where they stand. With Notre Dame surviving Duke, the Irish are projecting to finish 9–3 even in bad scenarios, and their average final ranking in our scenarios is a healthy 13th. Ohio State has a good win and they haven’t even gotten to the meat of their schedule. These guys might be the best team in the country. The same can be true of any of these ten, but that doesn’t make it less true of Ohio State.
Oregon: 32.9%
The opponent in question whom Oregon rolled was Stanford. The Ducks now get a week off before a massive showdown in Seattle. I’m curious if anyone else continues to struggle to separate present-day Bo Nix from the Bo Nix of our youth. Others have been around longer, but few have been a main character for as long as Oregon’s bafflingly deserving Heisman contender. It feels like seeing the kid who hit puberty after high school when you’re back at the hometown bars.
Oklahoma: 30.7%
Iowa State was on the receiving end of Oklahoma’s latest blowout, hanging in there for twenty minutes and then seeing all hell break loose. Oklahoma put up 40 in the first half.
Texas’s school song includes the line, “‘Til Gabriel blows his horn.” I would imagine Oklahoma fans are ready to make that about Dillon. I’m curious if the Sooners will make that an option.
Georgia: 30.2%
This is shockingly low for an undefeated defending national champion who didn’t especially rely on any one talented player last year. It speaks to just how underwhelming the Dawgs have been, but our model is also probably a little low on the Dawgs. Movelor sees the line similarly to betting markets for this UK/UGA game on Saturday, but it also grades Alabama and Tennessee as the 2nd and 6th-best teams in the country. Alabama’s position there is believable, but on the high end of believability. Tennessee’s is a little more questionable.
Michigan: 29.0%
Movelor only has Michigan ranked 5th, and it has the Wolverines behind both Penn State and Ohio State. It only has those gaps at 2.1 points and 4.0 points, though, small enough margins that this could flip in a single Saturday. In other words, Michigan is in the mix but not clearly leading it. That sounds fairly reasonable.
Texas: 28.8%
Why is Texas lower than Oklahoma here? Well, they’re very, very close. The separation is a meaningless distinction. They also play one another on a neutral field, and Movelor has the line there at 0.7 points, which is comparably meaningless. In the end, our model doesn’t like that Texas has to play Kansas State and TCU, even if the Alabama win is a big feather in the cap. That’s the kind of win that will mean a lot for Texas if there are a bunch of teams at 12–1 but probably won’t mean anything for playoff admission if Texas is 13–0 or 11–2. The four-team playoff has not incentivized scheduling that caliber of competition. The fact these schools have persisted is telling regarding what they care about in the world of college football.
Washington: 24.5%
Washington’s performance in Arizona was a little lacking, but as we said above, they were never in serious trouble. They, like Oregon, get a week off before those two go head to head. That’s going to be special.
Alabama: 21.5%
Round out the top ten is the inevitable Crimson Tide. We almost got this far without an Alabama mention, which illustrates how plain Alabama’s trouncing of Mississippi State was in Starkville. The Tide go to College Station on Saturday, attempting some 2021 revenge. The early line on that game only has Alabama favored by 2.5. I’m a little puzzled by that, to be honest, but I guess you could get around to it by saying that Miami is good and Auburn just hung with Georgia, so the A&M win over Auburn is impressive and the A&M loss to Miami is excusable. Or, you could say that Kyle Field is going to be the loudest place on earth this weekend and Jalen Milroe struggled in big moments against Texas. The arguments aren’t invalid, and A&M’s defense looks very good, but it’s a little puzzling. Movelor has the line at 11.2. I believe SP+ has it at 0.1 and FPI has it at 5.2. There is disagreement about both these teams. That’s a fun sign.
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That concludes those ten core contenders. Look how close the pack around 30% is. Now, the others of note:
Notre Dame: 9.7%
The Irish survived, and survival is the name of the game for them in these two weeks between Ohio State and USC. These guys will likely need style points eventually if they’re going to make a playoff case, but there’s time for that down the line. Right now, they just need to keep their head above water.
USC: 6.3%
Movelor’s been low on USC at times in its history, and it’s possible that’s happening again here, especially coming off USC only beating Colorado by seven while Movelor continues to view Colorado as one of the worst Power Five teams. Still, at this point I would guess USC will be an underdog at least two more times this season. That’s two more than a lot of these teams.
North Carolina: 6.2%
UNC was idle this weekend, but they’re sitting right alongside Louisville in Movelor’s rankings, and they get to play all three of Miami, Duke, and Clemson while dodging Florida State and Notre Dame in the regular season. That’s a pretty good draw.
Oregon State: 6.1%
As was said, the Beavers have a good little path from here. It’d sure be fun if they got back in it. That was a great atmosphere on Friday night, at least from what we could see on TV.
Louisville: 5.4%
The Cards survived a trip to Raleigh and earned an extra day off for their trouble, spending Saturday night watching Notre Dame—their opponent this week—play a grueling sixty minutes against Duke. If Louisville pulls this off on Saturday (a decently likely proposition), get ready for an even more exasperating playoff contender out of the ACC. No, Louisville shouldn’t be good enough to make this playoff, but when a committee treats the ACC equivalently to other power leagues, that’s what you get. To their credit: A nonconference schedule including Notre Dame and Kentucky is pretty good. Louisville might have the best 12–1 shot of any ACC team thanks to those two.
Tennessee: 4.7%
Again, Movelor has Tennessee ranked 6th in the country. Still, our model—which runs on Movelor—has the Vols all the way down here in playoff probability. That isn’t quite the whole story—what Tennessee did to South Carolina on Saturday was impressive, and it wouldn’t be surprising if they went to Tuscaloosa in three weeks talking about a comeback—but the Vols aren’t a serious contender right now. It’ll be a great year for them if they finish 10–3.
Kansas State: 3.4%
K-State had the weekend off, but they’re still in the mix in some sense. Movelor’s high on them, but that still might be fair, and these guys don’t play Oklahoma, which means a trip to Austin is their only AP-ranked matchup remaining. Their loss was not a conference loss, and they play TCU at home. They’re a good foil right now to the Big 12’s top two.
Mississippi: 3.2%
Lane Kiffin got a wild win over Brian Kelly, and if Alabama is really good, that’s a great sign for Mississippi. The path has to involve beating Georgia in Athens, and if the teams played today, we wouldn’t believe that to be particularly possible, but by November we may have learned the situation is different than we’ve thought.
Washington State: 2.6%
Washington State had the weekend off ahead of a trip to Los Angeles to play UCLA. There is a lot of leverage on that game for the Cougs. Win it, and their remaining schedule becomes an exercise in taking care of business and splitting with the Huskies and the Ducks. It’s an uphill climb, but we would be dreaming hard if we were Wazzu fans.
Utah: 2.3%
Utah gets a week off now, and then they host Cal before they go play USC. We don’t know what to make of the Utes with Cam Rising. Without him, they’re dangerous but they have a low ceiling.
Maryland: 1.8%
The Terrapins bludgeoned Indiana, meaning they’re now 5–0 and haven’t played a game with a closer margin than 18 points. Why aren’t they ranked by the press? You can probably guess the answer, and it is not malevolent in its nature. It’s just disappointing.
Maryland shouldn’t have much of a chance in Columbus on Saturday, but this is a good team, and with the Penn State and Michigan games both at home, there’s a good chance they command loud attention at some point before the year is up.
Undefeateds: Miami (0.9%), Kentucky (0.8%), Air Force (0.4%), Fresno State (0.2%), Missouri (0.2%), James Madison (0.0%), Liberty (0.0%), Marshall (0.0%)
Miami was off this weekend, and Movelor isn’t a believer but Movelor puts more stock in last year than SP+ or FPI, so I’d personally guess Movelor’s a little low on the Hurricanes.
Kentucky and Mizzou were not off, with Kentucky’s win particularly impressive, coming decisively over a Florida team who decisively beat Tennessee, who should be pretty good! Kentucky runs into Georgia this week in Athens, but Mizzou gets a disappointed LSU, a post-Georgia game Kentucky, and South Carolina at home before they have to go to Athens themselves. I am realizing that Georgia drew all of Kentucky, Missouri, and Mississippi at home this year, while they got Tennessee on the road. That shouldn’t feel like a good draw, but it does?
Air Force and Fresno State each won without drama in Mountain West play. Fresno State has the narrowly higher average final ranking in our model, but Air Force is a little likelier to win the league, which means their schedule’s just a little bit easier from here.
James Madison and Marshall stayed undefeated in the Sun Belt, and JMU’s not postseason-eligible but Marshall is. Liberty was idle as Conference USA pivots to weeknight play, but they’re on track to reach WKU at 7–0 three weeks from tomorrow night.
Goodbye for Now: Duke (1.2%), Syracuse (0.6%), LSU (0.4%), Georgia State (0.0%)
Georgia State took its first loss of the year, as did Syracuse and Duke, and while Syracuse and Duke still do have a playoff path of some sort, it isn’t a good one (and our model doesn’t know about Riley Leonard’s sprained ankle). We will not be paying close attention for the time being. We’ve got 29 teams listed above these, and we’re paying attention to multiple FCS conferences. We’re sorry, Duke and Syracuse. We gave you love while we could.
LSU was on track to do some season salvaging, and instead ended up with two September losses. Brian Kelly’s team still has to play Mizzou and Alabama on the road, plus Auburn, Florida, and Texas A&M at home. It’d be silly to say Brian Kelly’s on the hot seat, but LSU can be a little silly about their coaches, and that approach has worked out well for them, and Brian Kelly does not tend to generate a lot of goodwill. Maybe the Massachusetts-raised man will find his way to Chestnut Hill? Throwing it out there now so we can pretend to be geniuses if it somehow happens.
