We haven’t done a takeaways post the last couple weeks, and the lay of the land has changed. We’ve covered some of it in our bracketology notes (CFP, FCS), but there are developments worth talking about far away from the playoff bubble. The Penn State job is open. Florida’s hiring too. Iowa has quietly become good again. We’ll talk about those programs, and we’ll talk about 45 more. Conference by conference, or something close to that.
Movelor rankings and playoff probabilities come from Tuesday morning, before this week’s Conference USA action. That action shouldn’t have changed anything meaningfully, but we always want to be transparent.
Ohio State (Movelor Rank: 1st, Playoff Probability: 100%)
1. Any halfway serious attempts right now to discredit Ohio State’s body of work are only the product of boredom. The Buckeyes are the best team in the country. There are no guarantees, and the Michigan mental weight is real, but nobody is playing better than Ohio State, and there’s no reason to expect anyone to catch them. There are teams who can catch them, but it’s not reasonable to expect it.
Indiana (Movelor Rank: 6th, Playoff Probability: 95%)
2. For a program like Penn State, a contract like Curt Cignetti’s Indiana extension would be a bad idea. For Indiana, though, there is no better move than putting all the chips into the Cignetti pot. He’s the one thing that school has found that makes its football program work. Hold on for dear life.
3. Nobody but Ohio State has played better than Indiana so far this year. If this were a pure “body of work” world, Indiana would be #2. Credit to the vast majority of AP Poll voters for not overthinking that.
4. Indiana is good enough to win the Big Ten Championship, but they aren’t going to win the national championship. They can beat Ohio State the week after the Michigan game in a playoff seeding contest. Expecting them to hold up through three more games after that is too much. Their ceiling is limited by their physical talent. Their depth is limited too. Depending how the bracket shakes out, they could make the national championship, but it should be mind-blowing if this year’s Hoosiers win it all, even looking at it from where we stand, when they’re 7–0 and ranked second in the country.
5. A hallmark of the NFL is that schematically, the league adjusts quickly. Defenses figured out how to slow down the Colin Kaepernick 49ers after they briefly became invincible. Mike McDaniel’s Dolphins went from scoring 70 points against the Broncos to scoring 6 against the Browns in only two years. The college equivalent of this is a risk for Indiana. Cignetti and his staff are new guys. Most of the established coaches have coached against each other for at least a decade. There might be a newness advantage in Bloomington. The sport will adapt. Cignetti will need to adapt back.
6. Fernando Mendoza should be the clear Heisman frontrunner. He’s doing just as much as Julian Sayin and doing it with less. Unlike Ty Simpson, Mendoza didn’t play badly in a loss to Florida State. Add in that his path is a lot clearer than Simpson’s, and he should be the favorite by a healthy margin. So easy to like, too.
Oregon (Movelor Rank: 2nd, Playoff Probability: 88%)
7. It’s not disrespectful to Indiana to say that if Oregon and Indiana somehow rematch, Oregon should be favored. The Ducks didn’t play their best game against Indiana, and the Hoosiers played their best game against Oregon. Obviously, Indiana showed a lot that day, but Oregon is still good. However:
8. It’s not ridiculous to tamp down the Indiana hype because of Penn State’s struggles and those struggles’ transitive meaning by way of Oregon. Oregon should have been favored in State College, which we knew and said at the time. Penn State should not have been ranked second in any preseason poll, which we knew and said at the time. (Said it back in January, too.) Oregon had some trouble with a good–not–great Penn State team. Oregon is way better than Penn State—especially Penn State now—but they are also good–not–great. What Indiana did was not equivalent to beating Ohio State in Columbus. It was a great, great, great win. You can’t ask them to do more. Ohio State in Columbus wasn’t on the schedule. Indiana won the game they played. But if we look up on New Year’s Day and Oregon’s getting smacked out of the playoff by the SEC runner-up, we won’t be surprised. And that’s who Indiana beat.
9. Dan Lanning might be a point differential merchant, which is really only relevant if you run a college football model called Movelor that relies almost exclusively on point differential. We’ll be hesitant to bet on Oregon in the playoff.
Penn State (Movelor Rank: 19th, Playoff Probability: 0%)
10. Penn State putting all its chips into this year’s pot is even more astounding given what we’ve seen from them over the last two months. They amped up some really stupid hype (sparknotes: Tyler Warren and Abdul Carter were good enough that at best, last year’s roster and this year’s roster were a wash), laid untenable expectations on a quarterback prospect they’d long since broken, and went splashy at defensive coordinator only to create an awkward interplay between that defensive coordinator and his head coach. Then, they concentrated every ounce of their university’s energy on the Oregon game, a game where again they should have been an underdog. (MLB franchises have better projection systems than the public. College athletic departments should invest similarly.) After they lost that, they all just seemed to quit. The players. The coaching staff. The fans, which shouldn’t matter but in this case kind of does because so much of 2025 Penn State was an exercise in promising unkeepable promises to the fanbase. Plenty have talked about how dramatic this sequence of events became. But it was also just weird.
11. Going off of that, why was Penn State so impatient? Rosters turn over every year. Last year really was a step forward, even if they didn’t beat Ohio State (or Oregon, or Notre Dame). Jim Knowles was hired to be the best defensive coordinator in college football, but it’s silly to ask him to do that in Year One. And again, they should have known what Drew Allar was. When it all came down to it, Penn State and James Franklin together set this team up to be nothing but a disappointment.
12. Is Penn State a great job? Maybe. It depends whether they’re really spending like Ohio State. They’re saying that they are, but programs love to talk about how much they’re spending. Even Texas A&M couldn’t sustain its peak NIL spend. Resources make a job great, but a job where the advertised resources are bigger than the real resources is a terrible, bad job.
13. Who should Penn State hire? They’re probably not going to excite the fanbase off the bat. They’ve fed their fanbase nothing but sugar and caffeine for nine months now. No one will live up to what Penn State has implied to its fanbase that it can hire. Pete Thamel indicated this week that Matt Rhule and Matt Campbell are the favorites for the job. Each would be about as good a hire as Penn State can make. They can both meet James Franklin’s baseline, which is important because when Penn State goes 8–4, fans will immediately and justifiably point out that James Franklin usually did better than that. They also could both actually succeed in State College. We don’t know if they will, but they could. We can make fun of Penn State’s alleged resources, but those resources are bigger than what’s being spent in Lincoln or Ames. Penn State isn’t hiring Marcus Freeman unless someone at Notre Dame makes the biggest mistake in college football history. Whoever Penn State hires will have some shortcomings.
Nebraska (Movelor Rank: 42nd, Playoff Probability: 0%)
14. If Matt Rhule does want the job, he needs to get winning, because the rest of this Nebraska season is set up to be a mess. Northwestern’s feisty. USC’s better than Nebraska. UCLA is a wildcard and that game’s in Los Angeles. Matt Rhule coaching at Penn State the Saturday before Thanksgiving is a recipe for a classic college football shitshow. Then there’s the Iowa game, and then a bowl.
15. As a kid, I never hoped for Iowa State to be on Nebraska’s level of prestige. It says a lot about Jamie Pollard’s work that Iowa State’s closed that gap, but it also says a lot about decisionmakers in Nebraska. Hopefully they don’t naively sell their volleyball program short the way they’ve naively let football slide off the rails. Unlike USC, it wasn’t a mistake for Nebraska to join the Big Ten, but it hasn’t gone well.
Michigan (Movelor Rank: 17th, Playoff Probability: 6%)
16. Michigan’s fine. This was always a rebuilding year.
Wisconsin (Movelor Rank: 67th, Playoff Probability: 0%)
17. Barry Alvarez suggested a listening tour as the cure for Wisconsin’s woes. That sounds like bringing a cap gun to the Donbas, but it’s not a bad idea. Other programs do those kinds of things and they help. The real fix, though, is listening and fundraising at the same time. Wisconsin has an athletic department-wide problem, and it’s the same as Nebraska’s: They aren’t generating the spending they need to compete. Each of these fanbases saw their program thrive in a different era of college football. Each of these fanbases probably overindexes on people who don’t want to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to an 18-year-old tackle. What makes it really bad at Wisconsin—this is my guess, from far away—is that Wisconsin seems to be discouraging that spending, or at least not encouraging it enough.
18. A big question for Wisconsin is how involved Alvarez still is. He’s still prominent in every conversation there. Chris McIntosh, the current athletic director, both played under Alvarez and served as his deputy AD. How far from Alvarez’s way of doing things is McIntosh willing to go?
Illinois (Movelor Rank: 22nd, Playoff Probability: 16%)
19. Depending what happens in Seattle on Saturday, Illinois might be the biggest team to watch in the first CFP rankings reveal. How will the committee handle the blowout loss to Indiana where seventeen different Illinois DB’s got hurt? What matters most is the playoff bubble, and if Illinois beats Washington and Rutgers, they’re going to be a character on the playoff bubble. (I forget the exact number of DB’s that got hurt in that game.)
Iowa (Movelor Rank: 25th, Playoff Probability: 3%)
20. This could be Iowa’s best season since 2015. Kirk Ferentz isn’t perfect, but within that university, he gets the job done.
USC (Movelor Rank: 13th, Playoff Probability: 16%)
21. Lincoln Riley’s in a tough kind of no-man’s land. USC’s been better these last two years than they’ve gotten credit for being. USC hasn’t been good enough to land the kinds of punches that change a narrative. What would change the narrative on this program? To at least improve it, they don’t have to fully win out (and they probably won’t, unless Oregon is really a disappointment), but if they lose to any of Nebraska, Northwestern, Iowa, and UCLA, it’s going to look bad.
22. If Rhule does leave for Penn State and USC stops wanting Riley (or vice versa), Lincoln Riley would be a great hire at Nebraska. Coincidentally, Nebraska plays in Norman in 2029.
Notre Dame (Movelor Rank: 4th, Playoff Probability: 74%)
23. Notre Dame’s biggest November threat is complacency, looking ahead to the playoff before they’ve locked the playoff up. Notre Dame’s biggest November threat is not winding up winless against the top 25. That doesn’t matter that much to the committee. It’s just a helpful talking point. Everyone is always on the committee’s back. Nothing calms the haters like talking about top 25 wins. (This is all so silly.)
24. Chaos at the top is bad for Notre Dame. They don’t want a lot of teams with them at 10–2. If Miami takes a second loss, Miami will get punished for bad losses. If Texas A&M takes two losses, Texas A&M will have lost momentum. The committee will naturally rank Notre Dame behind both those teams if their records end up the same. Depending whether the committee anchors Notre Dame first or one of the other two, that could artificially deflate Notre Dame’s ranking. Again, the bigger threat is a loss—that’s what’s happening in most of the 26% of simulations where ND doesn’t make it—but chaos is also a threat. Notre Dame, fittingly, prefers order.
Alabama (Movelor Rank: 3rd, Playoff Probability: 73%)
25. The SEC is too deep to assume chalk the way you can assume chalk in the Big Ten. The Big Ten’s better at the top (because of Ohio State), but the SEC is deep. That said, while there’s a long way to go, Alabama should be through the worst of it after these last four weeks. Even the SEC bye week might work in their favor. They play LSU and Oklahoma in Tuscaloosa after that bye. It shouldn’t be too hard to take those teams seriously and stay focused during a potential letdown period. The Florida State loss might help too, the way the NIU loss helped Notre Dame last year. A big part of a college coach’s job is instilling urgency.
26. If Kalen DeBoer does get Alabama to 11–1 and then win the SEC? That guy deserves a huge amount of credit. Yes, he fired the bullet into their foot in August. But if this team survives that wound, it says a lot about his capability of handling this job over the long term. It also says a lot about the institution’s ability to avoid sending itself into a power vacuum death spiral, a power vacuum death spiral we openly expected post-Saban. Alabama, we might not have given you enough credit.
South Carolina (Movelor Rank: 29th, Playoff Probability: 0%)
27. South Carolina almost beat Alabama last year, and for as depressing as their season has become, they’re catching the Tide this weekend in an advantageous spot. If Kalen DeBoer doesn’t have the focus problem fixed, this is a prime opportunity for that to show up.
Tennessee (Movelor Rank: 21st, Playoff Probability: 6%)
28. Tennessee’s only lost to Georgia and Alabama, which is a more than acceptable season. The problem is that there are five games left. None of the individual games aren’t winnable, but four are against SEC competition and two are on the road. This is when Josh Heupel needs to do his best work as an organizational leader. The Volunteers are good enough to beat Kentucky (A), Oklahoma (H), NMSU (H), Zombie Florida (A), and Vanderbilt (H). But every one of those is tricky.
Arkansas (Movelor Rank: 32nd, Playoff Probability: 0%)
29. The Hogs played Tennessee and Texas A&M tight the last two weeks. That’s dangerous for Arkansas. Bobby Petrino is 64 years old. Sam Pittman was doing a mostly understandable job given the resource gap. (He should have cut bait on Travis Williams before this year.) Get someone fresh, try to drum up excitement, and hope you get lucky. Don’t hire Bobby Petrino. In three years you’re going to have to fire him or hope he retires.
30. It’s still a red flag for Tennessee and Texas A&M that Arkansas played them tight.
Georgia (Movelor Rank: 5th, Playoff Probability: 69%)
31. Georgia might still be on the downswing. It can also be everything Alabama can be if it hits its stride at the right time.
32. Saturday’s UGA/Mississippi game felt like a great regular season NFL game in a bad way. The stakes weren’t there the way they’d be if every game was still as close to life-or-death as they used to be. There’s a sweet spot between a large playoff creating widespread stakes and a small playoff creating colossal, concentrated stakes. This thing should not expand more for the time being.
Mississippi (Movelor Rank: 8th, Playoff Probability: 40%)
33. There are two factors that will determine whether Lane Kiffin stays in Oxford or goes to Gainesville: The first is how much he likes his life at Ole Miss, a place where he’s appreciated for doing what he’s doing with the resources he has. The second is how high he thinks Mississippi’s longterm ceiling is. Florida has a higher ceiling. There are more resources there and it’s closer to the talent (which does matter, especially when it comes to filling out a roster). But how much higher is it? The decision comes down to whether that ceiling gap outweighs the comfort gap.
34. The early kickoff in Norman this weekend is tough.
35. We talked about chaos at the top vis-à-vis Notre Dame. There’s going to be a lot more chaos in the middle. Mississippi State, for example, still plays Texas, Georgia, Missouri, and Mississippi, plus Arkansas. Mississippi State will probably upset at least one of those first four teams. That probable upset stands a good chance of eventually eliminating said team from the playoff. If the favorite won every remaining SEC game, you’d theoretically have Alabama at 12–1, Georgia at 11–2, Texas A&M at 10–2, Mississippi at 10–2, Tennessee at 10–2, Missouri at 9–3, Texas at 9–3, Oklahoma at 9–3, and Vanderbilt at 9–3. More likely, there’s going to be some combustion, and more likely than not that involves more total losses among that group (as opposed to, say, Oklahoma losing home games to Mississippi and Missouri and Texas losing a home game to Vanderbilt, a hyper-specific scenario that would create a nightmare for the committee and Notre Dame). Out of the SEC, only Alabama and Georgia are more likely to make the playoff than to miss it.
Missouri (Movelor Rank: 11th, Playoff Probability: 26%)
36. Eliah Drinkwitz seems to be the backup candidate for Florida behind Lane Kiffin, which probably means he’s a contender for the Penn State job if he wants it. His decision’s a little different than Kiffin’s. He’s eight years younger and a little less likely to land on his feet if he flames out in Gainesville, whether it’s his fault or not, which means the downside is more prominent for him than the upside. His decision’s more like Matt Campbell’s annual decision at Iowa State. It’s not stay or go. It’s take the leap now or wait and see if a better opportunity eventually comes along.
37. We don’t know how good Missouri is. We do know they’re capable of winning each of their remaining games individually, though. That’s a theme in the SEC pack.
Florida (Movelor Rank: 36th, Playoff Probability: 0%)
38. Florida’s president is an interim and Florida’s state government is deeper in on the culture war than Mississippi’s or Missouri’s. I don’t know that this will affect Kiffin or Drinkwitz’s thinking at all, but it’s a liability. Institutional stability is key, and Florida doesn’t have as much of that as the schools it’s competing with for these hires.
39. Billy Napier’s tenure at Florida will probably age terribly. It should be a top-five job, maybe not as good as Georgia but better than Alabama. Napier had a losing record there, something which wasn’t true for Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain, or Dan Mullen. He also had to coach against a tougher SEC, though, and in a world where memories of the Urban Meyer days had gotten dusty. It was a tough moment to be Florida’s head coach. Hopefully he lands on his feet.
Texas (Movelor Rank: 7th, Playoff Probability: 22%)
40. Texas’s Florida loss was bad at the time and it might age even worse. That could ultimately be what keeps Texas out of the College Football Playoff.
41. We’ve said this elsewhere but Arch Manning is nowhere near Texas’s biggest problem on offense. The offensive line issues dwarf everything else.
Oklahoma (Movelor Rank: 18th, Playoff Probability: 13%)
42. Credit to Oklahoma for handling South Carolina. We thought that was where the exposure would really happen. The schedule’s still murderous, but the further they make it the higher the chance they figure out some answers offensively. The early kickoff seems like an advantage against a team who just played Georgia.
LSU (Movelor Rank: 9th, Playoff Probability: 10%)
43. That “what if every favorite wins every game” exercise above ended badly for LSU, but it’s not bad to play Texas A&M and Oklahoma, both of whom are probably over-ranked while the Tigers are probably under-ranked. Having said that…
44. Brian Kelly’s LSU teams look a lot like his Notre Dame teams did. Not quite talented enough and uncomfortable on one side of the ball, with which side stinks different each year. It looks worse at LSU than at Notre Dame because his LSU predecessors won national championships. It is worse at LSU than at Notre Dame, for that reason.
Vanderbilt (Movelor Rank: 16th, Playoff Probability: 10%)
45. Diego Pavia elevates this Vanderbilt football team in a way it’s rare to see from individual college players. He is this team’s identity, and it’s a good one. A smart great team would take ten different quarterbacks before they took Pavia. A smart medium team would take Pavia before it took anybody else.
46. There’s no reason Vanderbilt can’t find a long-term ceiling towards the top of the SEC. They won’t be Texas or Georgia on the recruiting trail, but there’s plenty of money around a great school in a booming Southern city with crappy professional sports. Clark Lea’s going to get a lot of mentions as a head coaching candidate, so it’ll be interesting to see how much he agrees with this.
47. Unless Vanderbilt loses to Auburn or Kentucky at home, the Commodores are going to finish at least 8–4. That’s their baseline right now. Their baseline is tying James Franklin’s two good seasons, seasons which came when there were still some awful teams in the SEC.
Texas A&M (Movelor Rank: 12th, Playoff Probability: 46%)
48. Where does Mike Elko fit into the coaching rumors? The short version is that Texas A&M can drum up enough money to compete with almost anyone. Thankfully for them, “almost anyone” includes Florida and Penn State. The risk is Texas coming calling. Texas will always find a way to big brother the Aggies if it wants to. So long as Sark’s in Austin, Elko’s almost definitely in College Station. Which means Elko is almost definitely in College Station next year.
49. Texas A&M still isn’t the team they need to be to make a playoff run, but they’ve become the team they need to be to make the playoff. At this point, the chalk scenario is that they finish 10–2, losing to Texas and one of LSU/Missouri. Even in the wacko universe where that doesn’t get them a playoff spot, that’s a great season in College Station.
50. Texas A&M’s problem is defense, and looking forward to next year, that’s a good problem for Mike Elko to have. We know the guy can put together a great defense. Do that, and A&M could finally be a serious national championship threat in 2026–27.
Miami (Movelor Rank: 10th, Playoff Probability: 59%)
51. In college football, it’s really dangerous to not show up every single week.
Louisville (Movelor Rank: 23rd, Playoff Probability: 35%)
52. Seeing Jeff Brohm’s program at its best always makes it puzzling why they aren’t better all the time. What’s the answer there? The talent isn’t amazing (12th in the ACC on the 247 consensus talent composite, behind even Stanford), and Brohm’s game management causes problems at times. Those two things are the answer. High ceiling in one-game samples, though.
Georgia Tech (Movelor Rank: 26th, Playoff Probability: 46%)
53. It’s possible Brent Key is just a winner and that Georgia Tech will keep winning even if it’s never dominant. It’s also possible Georgia Tech will hit its stride like Arizona State did last year once it got wind in its sails. Through eleven games last season, ASU had only won two games by more than ten points, and one of those was against Wyoming. Then they blew the doors off of Arizona and Iowa State and almost took down Texas.
54. It’s likelier that Georgia Tech isn’t that good, and that they do make the ACC Championship but that they draw a better team than themselves, either Miami or Louisville or an SMU that in that universe has maybe kept figuring things out. Unfortunately, this potential ACC Championship loss is going to get billed as a collapse by Georgia Tech because of poll silliness. The top-ten ranking brings with it unfair expectations. Georgia Tech should not be competing with Miami or SMU. (Or Louisville, honestly. It’s weird that Louisville can’t get more four-stars on their roster.)
Virginia (Movelor Rank: 41st, Playoff Probability: 23%)
55. Virginia is parallel to Georgia Tech but more clearly lacking. This is a special season, though, so however it ends, hopefully Tony Elliott can build on it.
SMU (Movelor Rank: 30th, Playoff Probability: 14%)
56. It’s not clear that SMU actually righted the ship. They might have just played a mediocre Clemson at a convenient time.
57. It’s possible SMU did right the ship. If they did, you’re going to start hearing Rhett Lashlee’s name a bunch in those coaching conversations. SMU’s resources are overstated. There’s a ton of money there, but it’s not Ohio State. It’s a lite version of Oregon, where the money is concentrated in a small number of donors. It’s analogous to Texas Tech. (Also, SMU’s spending a lot of money in the short term in places where other schools don’t have to spend it. It forewent TV revenue for the start of its ACC tenure in order to get the ACC to let it join the league. SMU is getting $50M less from its TV deal than SEC schools are.)
Florida State (Movelor Rank: 63rd, Playoff Probability: 0%)
58. Florida State isn’t this bad of a job. Mike Norvell is failing. Why? It might be that he put too many eggs in the transfer portal basket and failed to build a program with continuity. FSU keeps turning in top-ten transfer classes. Congratulations. That’s a losing move. The portal should be about plugging holes or making precise upgrades. It should not be how you build out a roster. Of course, a good leader can still get guys bought in. But we saw how Florida State reacted when they were left out of the playoff two years ago. In hindsight, that might have told us where the Norvell era was going to go.
59. It seems like there’s an explanation for why FSU’s trying to wait until after the season to fire Norvell, but I can’t figure out what it is. Buyout cost?
Texas Tech (Movelor Rank: 14th, Playoff Probability: 64%)
60. Does this Florida State talk mean transfer-heavy Texas Tech is doomed? No. Joey McGuire has shown he can build a culture. Texas Tech should, however, try to build more through recruiting and less through the portal. The portal worked well this year, but it’s not the efficient long-term investment.
61. Depth is a concern for Texas Tech, as we’ve said a lot (similar to the Indiana note above), but they’re still the Big 12 favorites. They lost a one-possession game on the road against the defending conference champions. That’ll happen when you’re not a national championship contender.
Arizona State (Movelor Rank: 24th, Playoff Probability: 14%)
62. Arizona State controls its fate. A lot of Big 12 teams do. What makes ASU different is that they lived such a similar reality last year and made huge things happen.
63. Kenny Dillingham has more upside and more downside as a coaching candidate than a lot of guys in the mix for Penn State and Florida. Ostensibly, Penn State wants upside (hence firing a high-floor coach) and is willing to pay for it. We’ll see if they mean it.
Utah (Movelor Rank: 15th, Playoff Probability: 22%)
64. For a long time, Utah was the better football program than BYU. That’s over, and given the divide in resources and institutional competence (and how fast that divide is growing), it’s hard to see when it’ll come back.
65. Utah’s pretty good! 10–2 is on the table.
BYU (Movelor Rank: 20th, Playoff Probability: 50%)
66. BYU is going to lose at least once this regular season, and possibly more than that. Even if they finish 9–3, though, this program is rising. Kalani Sitake seems like the right guy for the job, too—someone who went on a mission, someone who loves BYU instead of tolerating it, someone who can coach good football. The resources are only going upwards. BYU could believably become the 21st century’s Notre Dame, a national brand of holy warriors.
Cincinnati (Movelor Rank: 28th, Playoff Probability: 21%)
67. We still don’t really know how good Cincinnati is, since they keep exceeding expectations, but the best way to think of them is as an equivalent to last year’s SMU, a team who wants to get into their conference championship and let “no punishment for a conference championship loss!” politicking do the rest of the work.
Iowa State (Movelor Rank: 34th, Playoff Probability: 3%)
Acknowledgment: I’m an Iowa State fan.
68. Sigh.
69. It feels like the injuries got into Matt Campbell’s head a little. There were a lot of injuries, so that’s fair, but every now and then something happens and Campbell doesn’t seem like he’s considered the possibility of that specific thing happening. That feels like it happened with injuries this year. I love the guy and hope he stays at Iowa State until he’s Kirk Ferentz’s age. But the Colorado loss was brutal, and from home (as I admittedly descended into a stomach virus and didn’t fully process the second half), it felt like Campbell was panicking as the kicking situation unraveled. Some of that might be on Taylor Mouser, too, who’s had situational lapses this year.
70. One of Campbell’s great strengths is that his guys rally, and coming off a Big 12 bye week it’s exciting to draw BYU and Arizona State back-to-back at home. We’ll see what happens, but Jack Trice Stadium is going to be rocking, and Iowa State has a lot left in front of it even if the conference title’s a huge longshot.
71. I hope Campbell stays in Ames. I wouldn’t blame him for seeing if he can win a national championship. I think he’s a better fit at Penn State, which isn’t Midwestern but plays in a Midwestern conference. At the same time, though, he looks more like he’s from Florida than he looks like he’s from the Northeast. Is it possible Florida could have more reasonable expectations than Penn State, too?
Memphis (Movelor Rank: 38th, Playoff Probability: 18%)
72. Is Memphis a program with a focus problem in its DNA? We talk about this with Miami and pre-Sark Texas. We’ve speculated about it with USC. It would make less sense at Memphis, but it just seems like these guys never actually take care of business. They’re always in position, and they never do the thing.
USF (Movelor Rank: 44th, Playoff Probability: 36%)
73. It would feel most just for USF to take care of business from here on out and get that fifth automatic bid. It’s easy to believe in them to do that, but it’s also easy to think they’ll probably get beat by Memphis on Saturday. Seems aggressive to have them favored.
North Texas (Movelor Rank: 62nd, Playoff Probability: 10%)
74. Impressive stuff from UNT to battle back and crush UTSA after USF ruined their party two weeks ago. Smoking an in-state rival always plays.
Tulane (Movelor Rank: 61st, Playoff Probability: 12%)
75. Good for Tulane for finding Jon Sumrall after Willie Fritz went to Houston (where he’s doing well, by the way, which is notable for what follows). This team isn’t great, but it handles its business well.
76. I hate to make this the conversation for Tulane fans, but Oklahoma State might be the best home for Sumrall. The Auburn smoke this week seemed more speculative than anything else, and my gut says Lane Kiffin ultimately stays in Oxford, taking away a more natural fit for the former Mississippi linebackers coach. (My assumption is that after Napier, Florida wouldn’t hire a mid-major coach from Louisiana again even if it was Nick Saban wearing a fake mustache.)
James Madison (Movelor Rank: 51st, Playoff Probability: 21%)
77. I know we mention that South Dakota State vs. Holy Cross playoff game too often. But man, if we could see Bob Chesney coaching a first round game against Oregon or Georgia… The things he would pull out of his bag.
Boise State (Movelor Rank: 40th, Playoff Probability: 12%)
78. This year’s Boise State team is almost as good as last year’s. Hopefully the New Pac-12 works for them and elevates their program. Hopefully we don’t see them in this year’s playoff. We saw a better version of Boise just last year. Give us a new underdog, universe.
North Dakota State (Movelor Rank: 35th, FCS Playoff Probability: 100%)
79. This isn’t juggernaut NDSU again yet, but they’re going to win the national championship and they’re on their way back to the D1 top 25. USC’s probably the best passing team in the FBS. They average 10.0 yards per attempt. Arkansas’s been the most productive rushing team. They average 6.8 yards per attempt. NDSU plays against an FCS schedule, but NDSU’s beating USC by 25% on aerial efficiency, and they’re within 15% of Arkansas for efficiency on the ground. And they’re stronger defensively than they are on offense.
South Dakota State (Movelor Rank: 70th, FCS Playoff Probability: 100%)
80. Even if Chase Mason plays against North Dakota State, the Jacks should be huge underdogs. To win that game, they’re going to either need to play as underdogs (i.e., take chances) or hope NDSU gets in its own head over the rivalry. NDSU has been a lot better than SDSU on the field so far this year. They also have all the continuity advantage. And their quarterback’s not nursing an ankle injury.
North Dakota (Movelor Rank: 86th, FCS Playoff Probability: 94%)
81. North Dakota probably isn’t a bigger threat to NDSU than SDSU is, but it’s tempting to call them that. NDSU does have to go to Grand Forks later this year, and the Fighting Hawks are similar to Cincinnati in that they keep exceeding expectations. Had they survived Montana in Missoula, we’d be real bullish on them. That loss is the only red flag. Are they getting better as the year goes on? Maybe. But that loss came two weeks after nearly taking down Kansas State. You’d kind of think a team on a steady upward trajectory would have beaten Montana if they could almost beat K-State.
Montana State (Movelor Rank: 55th, FCS Playoff Probability: 100%)
82. One team we can be pretty convinced continues to get better is Montana State, who turned in three strong Big Sky performances in a row before their week off. At the moment, they’re our best bet to play spoiler to NDSU. Even though they did lose to South Dakota State in September.
Montana (Movelor Rank: 111th, FCS Playoff Probability: 99%)
83. Montana needs to play some defense, but they sure are fun. Hopefully Friday night’s ESPN2 game doesn’t turn into a Sacramento State sales pitch. Thankfully, there’s a good chance Montana will put a stop to it if it does.
Tarleton State (Movelor Rank: 76th, FCS Playoff Probability: 100%)
84. I know Tarleton wants to move to the FBS. I know their football team is ready. I think Sam Houston was ready too, though, and I don’t exactly know what’s gone wrong there to the point where they can’t win games and fans won’t come to their games. Is part of the problem that Conference USA’s too spread out and bad? Theoretically, Tarleton would have a softer landing that way since Sam Houston’s already there, creating a readymade intra-Texas game even after UTEP leaves. Maybe success alone could also help the Texans. (That’s what Tarleton calls its sports teams. They’re the Tarleton State Texans.) Long story short, I know they’re going to move up if they get the opportunity, but I hope they don’t accidentally kneecap themselves by joining Conference USA. Those weeknight games are sad. And not in a fun, silly, MACtion way. They’re sad in a way that makes the power of TV feel too strong.
**
