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A weekend that looked like it’d be light on intrigue ended up having a ton going on, because as noted, that’s how it always works. We’re about to hustle through a whole bunch of it, but the result that might end up being the most important actually came from an unwatchable slog between two losing teams.
Superlatives
Hot Seat Coach of the Week: Auburn’s Hugh Freeze lost to previously-winless-in-the-SEC Kentucky, 10-3 at home. That’s 53 fewer points than Tennessee scored on the Wildcats last week. Remember Freeze is by trade a coach of offenses.
He is now 6-15 in SEC games during this tenure, moving into the realm where his firing could feasibly come at any time. Getting chased out of his job by the also-hot-seated Mark Stoops would be quite a closing act.
The coaching carousel is already far busier than usual at this time of year; now imagine a hopping-mad Auburn barreling into this overcrowded market. Oh, and the 4-5 Tigers still have to play Freeze nemesis Diego Pavia in Nashville, plus No. 4 Alabama. His third straight seven-loss season is likely. As for three chilled seats, in addition to Stoops’:
Mississippi State’s Jeff Lebby got his first SEC win in 13 tries, 38-35 at Arkansas. (Bobby Petrino is now 0-4 as an interim, and the swashbuckler’s comeback storyline feels like forever ago.)
NC State’s eternally 8-4-ish Dave Doeren might have lost the fanbase in his 13th year there, but a 48-36 win against No. 8 (and previously unbeaten) Georgia Tech reclaimed some hearts and minds. Pack QB CJ Bailey is so much fun.
“FSU’s 42-7 blowout win means the two most powerful people at FSU won’t have to answer the $55 million question — whether to fire Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell — for at least another week.”
Manning of the Week: After splitting the first nine weeks of this award with Missouri WR Josh and Mississippi State DB Jahron, Texas QB Arch all but clinched Manning of the Year honors with by far his best day as a starter. His 328 yards and three TDs nearly matched Heisman contender Pavia’s aerial numbers as the No. 20 Longhorns held on to beat No. 9 Vanderbilt 34-31. Seeing as Arch’s famous uncles went 7-0 against Vandy, perhaps the Dores had been his missing ingredient. Start believing in Texas, says Stewart Mandel in his Final Thoughts.
Best Win Over a Manning-Affiliated School: No. 18 Oklahoma 33, No. 14 Tennessee 27. The Sooners survived a trip to Knoxville, a de facto Playoff elimination game. Peyton watched from a suite as his Vols coughed up three turnovers, leading to 12 Sooner points. OU’s embattled running game came through, and now they have a bye before visiting Alabama.
Second-best Saturday Night by a Los Angeles Team: No. 23 USC 21, Nebraska 17. The 6-2 Trojans got one of their biggest wins of the Lincoln Riley era, as Nebraska’s already-iffy offense couldn’t do anything after Dylan Raiola exited with an ankle injury. USC QB Jayden Maiava made plays when he had to, and so did his defense, for a change. (The Trojans watched the Dodgers win in extra innings via phones in the equipment room, I am told.)
Most Concerning Bullpen: Three of No. 12 Notre Dame’s kickers missed one kick each, including two extra points, in a 25-10 win over 1-8 Boston College. So many kickers! Get a couple more, then line up for penalty kicks. (Reminder the Irish lost to Texas A&M in Week 2 because of a botched extra point.)
Mario Cristobal Game Management of the Week: The No. 10 Miami Hurricanes had 25 seconds left in regulation at SMU, with the ball at their own 25 and a time out. Kicker Carter Davis was 4-for-5 on the year from beyond 40 yards, with a long make of 53. But Cristobal had Carson Beck kneel to set up overtime, which seemed like the coach’s latest late-game error. Then again, his decision not to trust Beck was vindicated when the expensive portal QB threw an interception in overtime, setting up SMU’s walk-off 26-20 victory to eliminate the Canes from serious contention.
The Roughly 750th Different Heisman Favorite of the Year: BetMGM’s latest odds leader, Julian Sayin, had quite a day for No. 1 Ohio State in the 38-14 win over 3-5 Penn State, throwing more touchdowns (four) than incompletions (three). This came after Nick Saban jokingly scolded himself for not fielding Sayin during their weeks-long overlap in 2023’s postseason at Alabama. Overall, Sayin has a shot to be the first qualifying QB at any NCAA level to ever complete 80 percent of his throws for a season.
Game with the Most Disputable Catch: No. 5 Georgia 24, Florida 20. The Gators trailed by that score with three minutes to play, when DJ Lagway chucked a deep ball to a wide-open J. Michael Sturdivant. As he lunged, the ball landed on his forearms. The official called it a trap. Despite copious replays suggesting Sturdivant had it, football requires the same standard to overturn a call that the judiciary requires to convict someone of a felony, and the Dawgs closed out yet another comeback.
Backup QB Legacy Game: Arizona State’s Jeff Sims. The sixth-year, third-school senior was Georgia Tech’s starter in 2020. He figured to end his career as a backup. But a season-ending injury to Sam Leavitt put Sims behind center against Iowa State, and he pulled off both an 88-yard touchdown run and 140 other rushing yards in a 24-19 upset win by the 6-3 Sun Devils. The game of his life. Kudos.
Meekest Fading: Colorado, which lost its homecoming game to a mediocre Arizona 52-17 a week after losing 53-7 to Utah. The Buffaloes are 3-6 (1-5 in the Big 12), but had played Georgia Tech and BYU tough earlier in the year. Suddenly, they have become the team that Deion Sanders’ haters always wanted them to be.
Box Score Jump Scare of the Week: Fresno State 30, Boise State 7. Broncos QB Maddux Madsen got hurt early, but sheesh. Could Boise not win the Mountain West in its last year before moving to the new Pac-12? Also, will this 6-3 team be involved in a single close game all season? Closest result on the schedule was by 12 points.
Pac-12 Half-championship of the Year: Oregon State 10, Washington State 7. The Beavers, entering at 1-7 and with an interim coach, won as underdogs at home. The teams meet again in Pullman in Week 14, when Wazzu will try to split the conference title.
This Week in Indiana Being the Opposite of What It Used to Be: For a long time, the Hoosiers were a team whose early 3-0 leads made everyone say, “Haha, take a photo of the scoreboard before this turns into a 63-3 loss.” (Indiana coach Lee Corso once did this himself during a game against Ohio State, according to legends.) Now the No. 2 Hoosiers have become the bear being poked. Yesterday, when four-win Maryland took a 3-0 lead at home, it felt ripe for LOL-this-won’t-last screenshots. Indeed, the final: 55-10, Indiana.
Saddest Combination of Officiating and Performance: Duke 46, Clemson 45. The Blue Devils won at Memorial Stadium for the first time since 1980. Clemson’s defense was shambolic, except when it got a fourth-down stop that should have ended the game. A bad pass interference call extended it, and Duke took advantage. Preseason No. 4 Clemson is 3-5, Dabo Swinney is irate and the conference’s officials are, as ever, undefeated.
Most Holiday Spirit: For the third time in Jim Mora’s four years at UConn, the Huskies became bowl eligible before most of America even realized they were in the running. Such is life as a 2020s independent. Among the others hitting six wins: New Mexico for the first time since 2016 and Kennesaw State in its first year of full FBS membership. 🦉☝️
Most Suspiciously Normal Outcome: North Carolina 27, Syracuse 10 is the kind of result most of us would usually scan past on the scoreboard. But after the Bill Belichick saga had included three blowout losses and two gut-wrenchers, the 3-5 Heels doing something both decent and normal felt landmark.
FCS Attention-grabber of the Week: A Thursday meeting between first-year head coaches who have combined for seven Pro Bowls. DeSean Jackson’s Delaware State beat Michael Vick’s Norfolk State 27-20, drawing national eyeballs. While Vick’s 1-8 Spartans have a long way to go, Jackson’s 6-3 Hornets are in range of a MEAC title after two straight one-win seasons before his arrival.
Societal Overhaul of the Week: Elsewhere in FCS, No. 2 Tarleton State, No. 4 South Dakota State, No. 6 UC Davis, No. 8 North Dakota, No. 14 Lamar and No. 19 Northern Arizona all lost to unranked teams. (No. 1 North Dakota State won a ranked game, of course.)
Positioning: Five most important conference title races
With Playoff rankings debuting on Tuesday, and now that we’re in the regular season’s final month (time flies!), let’s quickly reassess the most prominent FBS championship hunts by sprinting through the standings.
The ACC could be pretty tidy despite being upside down. No. 15 Virginia’s conference record is 5-0 (since that loss to NC State was a non-con game), while Pitt-Georgia Tech and Louisville-SMU are set to thin the number of ACC teams with one conference loss each. Duke is also there, the only one in this bunch still to face Virginia.
The Big 12 has a clear leader, undefeated No. 10 BYU, after No. 17 Cincinnati got rocked 45-14 late last night by the surging (but two-loss) No. 24 Utah. Also yesterday, No. 22 Houston squandered a good chance by losing 45-35 to 3-6 West Virginia. Next week, BYU at No. 13 Texas Tech could be a conference championship preview.
In the Big Ten, the drama is the battle for a potential fourth Playoff bid alongside Ohio State, Indiana and No. 6 Oregon. If No. 21 Michigan finally loses to the Buckeyes (in Ann Arbor), the upcoming Iowa-USC winner could have the best case — though that team would surely also need to beat the Ducks, a chance both will get. Washington is also 6-2 and also gets Oregon.
No. 3 Texas A&M looks the nicest in the SEC, but Bama is also undefeated in conference, with a tiebreaker edge over Georgia. In two weeks, UGA-Texas will give somebody a second SEC loss. Also, the Dawgs have a tiebreaker of their own over No. 7 Ole Miss. As far as the Playoff goes, Oklahoma, Missouri and Vanderbilt remain two-loss hopefuls. (Maybe even three-loss, in OU’s case.)
Meanwhile, the best title race of all is the American’s, which almost certainly doubles as the Group of 5’s Playoff chase (with all due respect to 7-1 JMU and 7-1 San Diego State). Yesterday, 8-1 North Texas handed Navy its first loss 31-17, meaning six of these 14 teams have one league loss each. Tulane joined that pile by suffering an upset to UTSA on Thursday. USF still lingers in there, 5-3 (3-1) East Carolina is in the mix and No. 25 Memphis is 8-1 overall.
There are all sorts of messy tiebreakers afoot among these American contenders. (If you call it the AAC, you will receive a Stone Cold stunner from Scrappy, North Texas’ eagle mascot.) As of this moment, UNT is in our Playoff projection, two years after Eric Morris started 5-7 in Denton.
Quick Snaps
🐯 The big what-went-wrong-at-LSU story by Bruce Feldman, Ralph Russo and Christopher Kamrani. Multiple claims that Brian Kelly was so distant, he didn’t care to learn players’ names.
Interim Tigers AD Verge Ausberry has “full authority” to hire Kelly’s replacement, the kind of thing you have to specify, when it comes to LSU.
🤫 Loads of coaching-carousel nuggets. Next target for Penn State: Duke’s Manny Diaz, Louisville’s Jeff Brohm or Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea?
🩳 Kirk Herbstreit is griping about football players wearing their pants at shorts length. I thought this was America.
🌹 “UCLA has ‘long been negotiating’ behind closed doors to move its home football games from the Rose Bowl to SoFi Stadium, despite a lease that runs until 2044, a lawsuit dated Wednesday alleges. The suit was filed by the city of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl Operating Company.”
Mementos
For the second week in a row, my favorite visual was a crowd shot. This Nebraska fan comprehended the true meaning of horror as USC scored a critical touchdown in Lincoln, ultimately the difference in the Huskers’ blackout game:
— Robby Kalland (@rkalland.bsky.social) November 1, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Been there, man. Say hello at untilsaturday@theathletic.com if you like, and happy November to you all.
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