\tWhatever is happening atop college football\u2019s polls \u2014 Georgia is No. 1, after Texas lost to Oklahoma \u2014 all you must know is that one monster game remains. This is what we adore about the sport, a likelihood that Notre Dame or Miami will control the final weeks until championship night with a victory on Nov. 7. They play in South Bend, which is nowhere near Bloomington, as Curt Cignetti no longer tells a joke.<\/p>\n
\tAlmost 40 seasons have passed since the Catholics played the Convicts. Isn\u2019t it fascinating that NIL and transfer portals haven\u2019t changed circumstances? The Irish won the game and ultimately claimed their last national title, and at this point, only two glances at Darian Mensah and Malachi Toney stifle the grand plan for Marcus Freeman. We cannot wait \u2014 a new nickname will arrive, which shouldn\u2019t come from Dan Le Batard\u2019s show \u2014 though we do wonder why Arch Manning threw two fourth-quarter interceptions and burned Texas as John Mateer was the better quarterback.<\/p>\n
\tAllowing a pick-six is not evidence for a Heisman Trophy. Manning continue to wane while Mateer, who committed six turnovers the previous three games, used his tree-trunk forearm to lead the final field-goal drive. Hammer curls were enough in a 27-24 victory, with Mateer saying, \u201cI thought about this game for 365 days. I think that was the longest fourth quarter I\u2019ve ever been a part of. It was awesome, and I\u2019ll never forget it. But I knew with 19 seconds left that this was the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tSaid Manning, who will not be the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft: \u201cWe\u2019ve got to do a better job, especially me not being loose to the ball. I think we beat ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tCould Texas slip into the final four in December? Doubt it. All Brent Venables knows is that his critics can expire. \u201cWe needed to get a win for obvious reasons,\u201d said the Oklahoma coach, who is 3-2. \u201cPeople questioning the commitment and \u2018the coaches can\u2019t coach\u2019 and \u2018the players stink\u2019 and all all of this stuff \u2014 just spewing all kinds of incredibly repulsive things about people, coaches, players, all that. It comes in the arena, but at the same time, sometimes that fuels you. I don\u2019t think you look for that to fuel you, but I do think it brought us closer inside our building.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe upset allowed us to ask if Georgia, which won back-to-back titles earlier this decade, was handed a victory by Southeastern Conference officials. Why did they not see an obvious penalty in the end zone on Bulldogs safety KJ Bolden? Alabama would have kept the ball and perhaps won the game, but the mishap forced Bolden\u2019s sack of Keelon Russell and a punt. Then the officials whistled Dijon Lee Jr., the Crimson Tide cornerback, for a personal-foul call. Georgia won 20-17 in Tuscaloosa, which wasn\u2019t swept away by Hurricane Isaias.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe can\u2019t put the game in a situation where the officials come into play,\u201d Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said. \u201cWe just got to control the things we can control. We preach emotional maturity and never would have expected that to happen. You\u2019ve got to give yourself a chance. You\u2019re out there giving everything you got. And so, emotional maturity is what it comes down to. We didn\u2019t respond the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cHe\u2019s my brother till we die,\u201d safety Keon Sabb said of Lee. \u201cSo obviously, I try to uplift him. But there\u2019s a standard that we need to play with. And on that play, he wasn\u2019t up to the standard, and it will be addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tCignetti, who has played a weak schedule, must address why Indiana fell behind by 11 points. The Hoosiers returned behind two long touchdown passes by Josh Hoover \u2014 to Nick Marsh, who kept chanting on the sideline, \u201cWe got to believe!\u201d \u2014 and won their 22nd consecutive game at Nebraska. But this is not a repeat national champion.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI\u2019m not sure it\u2019s completely sunk in — or is starting to \u2014 that we won, because it took everything the players and coaches had to find a way to overcome,\u201d Cignetti said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to have an indomitable will, man, a will that can\u2019t be defeated or subdued. And you\u2019ve got to be resilient. You have the ability to overcome the unexpected. No matter how bad it gets, you never let anxiety, frustration enter your mindset. You\u2019re going to find a way. It\u2019s just a matter of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tAnd Lane Kiffin lost \u2014 at Kentucky \u2014 meaning he can\u2019t slip into an LSU frat party and sing, as he did last week. He will not win a championship this season and deals with two losses. Why did Kiffin\u2019s defense allow quarterback Kenneth Minchey to run with ease for the winning two-point conversion in overtime?<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIt came down to a one-play game, but there were a lot of plays before that to close the game out,\u201d Kiffin said. \u201cDisappointing in all three phases. If you don\u2019t execute, you don\u2019t execute.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThat\u2019s also what Ole Miss says.<\/p>\n
\tSaid Kentucky coach Will Stein, who is 5-1: \u201cI\u2019m in shock. We\u2019ve got a really good football team. People count us out. I took a picture of (ESPN\u2019s) College GameDay this morning. Everyone picked LSU. Keep doing that. It gives us a lot of fuel. It wasn\u2019t pretty. It wasn\u2019t perfect. We just kept chopping. We kept fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLincoln RIley kept his job for another week. But if he remains at USC, what about Bob Chesney, who is for real at UCLA? The Bruins ventured to Eugene and beat Oregon 17-15 without quarterback Nico Iamaleava. The final Saturday of November features Riley vs. Chesney at the Rose Bowl. If UCLA wins? USC will dismiss RIley and pay him a $60 million buyout \u2014 and kidding, sort of \u2014 before making a run at Chesney, who is 5-0. Or maybe Oregon fires Dan Lanning and enters the sweepstakes. <\/p>\n
\t\u201cI don\u2019t got a message for the team right now. Not tonight, at least. But tomorrow it\u2019s going to be the same,\u201d Chesney said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be. it doesn\u2019t matter now. We got to get better and how do we get better? We look at these things we got to fix.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe rest of us count down the days and night. The Catholics remain the Catholics.<\/p>\n
\tThe Hurricanes are not the same Convicts. But they did steal a quarterback from Duke on legal terms, I think.<\/p>\n
\t###<\/p>\n
\tJay Mariotti, called \u201cwithout question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,\u2019\u2019 writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk\/podcast host.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whatever is happening atop college football\u2019s polls \u2014 Georgia is No. 1, after Texas lost to Oklahoma \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-424813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}