This sport truly always delivers. All the talk about the logjam atop the playoff rankings and how it felt like deserving teams would miss it. Now after some upsets it feels like we have too many playoff teams. What a sport!
American
It was a rough night for Army at Yankee Stadium. Notre Dame was out to prove a point and did it. Army is now likely out of the playoff race but an 11-1 season and conference title would still be very special. Tulane likely holds the AACs playoff hopes.
Blake Harrell is putting on quite the audition for the full time job at East Carolina. The Pirates trailed 21-7 at the half but absolutely dominated the 2nd half on their way to a 40-28 win over North Texas. The Pirates are now 4-0 under Harrell’s watch and one win away from equaling their best season since joining the American. The fact that they made a comeback in this one shows he and the staff know how to adjust. What’s interesting is Harrell was the defensive coordinator but it’s the offense seeing the benefit, the Pirates 4 best offensive outputs against FBS teams have all occurred with Harrell coaching.
South Florida took down Tulsa in a wild score of 63-30 to reach bowl eligibility. The Bulls haven’t had the season that was expected, losing Byrum Brown to injury definitely hurt but it feels good to at least reach a bowl. Their offense also played a lot better against Charlotte and Tulsa the last 2 weeks. Meanwhile this led to a coaching change at Tulsa, nearly half the league at this point is making a change. Tulsa is the 3rd program to make a change after only 2 years so it’s interesting how some of these teams are giving a smaller rope.
ACC
The ACC may have had the best day of any conference this weekend. Thanks to upsets elsewhere along with SMU, Miami FL and Clemson all taking care of business the conference is very much alive for multiple bids now. It’s also going to be really interesting to see what happens in the scenario of SMU winning a close game against Miami FL in the ACC championship and Clemson beating South Carolina, preferably if they did so by multiple scores.
Stanford and Cal facing off in The Big Game just after Noon local time on the ACC Network is everything that’s wrong with the sport these days, but put all that aside and the rest was glorious. Stanford made an unexpected challenge, but Cal rallied for the win. Mendoza’s post game speech was amazing and it goes to show how much this meant to them. Very cool moment and Cal will go bowling this year.
Boston College also joined the bowl eligibility party with a blowout win over North Carolina. It’s been pretty quiet but the Eagles have been playing good ball down the stretch including being the team to give SMU one of their toughest challenges. NC State will get their shot at bowl eligibility against North Carolina next week, but at least one more will be bowl eligible out of the ACC, it will be the winner of the Commonwealth Cup both Virginia and Virginia Tech are 5-6 which are opposite trajectories for both. This feels like good progress for Virginia considering their schedule while this is nothing short of an utter disappointment for Virginia Tech.
Big Ten
Indiana’s weakness came to light against Ohio State, their pass protection can get absolutely abused and it showed against the Buckeyes. Rourke struggled to find any time to throw outside of the opening drive. When he had time to throw he was able to carve up Ohio State, but that didn’t happen often. Indiana is still the story of the sport and thanks to upsets elsewhere they are still positioned to reach the playoff which will be great, but it will be tough for them to advance with the offensive line struggles. It would also be recommended that they avoid special teams miscues, they didn’t need to spot Ohio State the points they handed them.
Nebraska continued fading and seemed like they could miss bowl eligibility all together. Especially since they were playing Wisconsin and Iowa teams that have constantly tormented them for years. That wasn’t the case however, Nebraska left no doubt. The Huskers thoroughly dominated Wisconsin from start to finish and bashed down the door to bowl eligibility. Think regular bowls mean nothing in this playoff era? Tell that to the Huskers fans who are going to travel in droves to whatever location their bowl is at.
Wisconsin meanwhile needs to beat Minnesota to reach bowl eligibility themselves. It’s been a disappointing season in Madison. They made such a huge move to bring in Luke Fickell, he’s shown he can build a program to a playoff caliber and the physicality of his past teams seemed like it would mesh well with the players Wisconsin frequently recruits. Yet this isn’t what is happening at all, this team doesn’t look like a Luke Fickell team or a Wisconsin team.
Big 12
Big 12 chaos strikes again!! I mean seriously, just look at these standings.
It’s truly incredible. A gigantic logjam could be forced if the top 4 lose this weekend and if that were to happen we could have Texas Tech playing Baylor for a playoff spot? Potentially. These conferences are too big.
Arizona State now has taken control of the Big 12, we talked extensively last week about how this program could become the top dog in this conference and already Kenny Dillingham has them here. The Sun Devils are now the only Big 12 team that controls their destiny to a playoff spot which is something nobody saw coming this year. Truly incredible.
The other wild thing about this conference is the hottest teams are definitely in that 3-4 conference loss group. Kansas is perhaps the hottest with 3 straight wins against the top 4 in the conference standings. Had the Jayhawks kept this form all season they probably would have run through this conference but this group of seniors will play the other hottest team in the conference which is Baylor. The Bears haven’t lost since early October and have a lot of those wins by double digits. This is going to be a great game between two teams that are playing like top 25 teams but aren’t up there because of their early season results.
CUSA
CUSA had 2 major showdowns and both led to helping the conference championship take shape. Jax State handled Sam Houston allowing the Gamecocks to clinch not only a conference championship birth but home field advantage in it. It’s really an incredible moment for a program that’s only in year 2 in FBS. Meanwhile Liberty showed they were written off too soon. The Flames beat Western Kentucky 38-21. It’s been shocking to see Western Kentucky slip off so bad in recent weeks, the Hilltoppers offense has stalled out a bit. It makes me wonder how the noise around Tyson Helton being connected to one of the AAC jobs is impacting this team. Sam Houston, Liberty & WKU will battle to play Jax State in the conference championship. Sam Houston and Liberty play each other. Liberty is in with a win, WKU is in if they win along with Sam Houston winning, and Sam Houston makes it if they win plus Jax State beating WKU.
There were some feel good wins in the conference as well. It’s been a long season for a few programs at the bottom of CUSA. New Mexico State saw their offense wake up in a win over Mid Tenn State, that was the Aggies first road win of the year. Meanwhile Kennesaw State got their 2nd win as a FBS member winning a thriller over FIU.
MAC
There’s only a few contenders left to take home the MACtion crown. Miami, Bowling Green and Ohio all took care of business this weekend to make themselves the 3 front runners. Bowling Green and Miami will play each other on Black Friday and that will wrap up one spot. Ohio is coming off an impressive 24-7 win over Toledo and in order to meet the winner of that game the Bobcats will need to handle Ball State at home. The path is very much alive for Tim Albin’s crew to win the MAC for the first time since 1968. What an impressive reloading effort after losing multiple starters to the portal in the spring. Miami and Bowling Green both are in this position after 2-4 starts.
Pete Lembo has done an impressive job in year 1 at Buffalo. The Bulls are now 7-4 after a dominant win over Eastern Michigan. Lembo got this job very late as a result of the Nick Saban retirement domino but he wasted no time building this program. 7 wins doesn’t sound like much but it’s only the 7th winning season since the program’s return in 1999, Lance Leipold was responsible for 3 of those so success has not been consistent, but this year is an indication that it is about to be as long as Lembo is around.
Both Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan looked great entering the weeknight MACtion portion of the schedule but neither came out with any wins, it didn’t help that both faced some tougher games during this stretch but now they will face each other next week. The winner will go bowling, the loser’s season will be over.
Mountain West
The Mountain West race took an interesting twist with Colorado State losing to Fresno State in an After Dark battle. Fresno State came out of the bye firing and they took down the Rams 28-22. With that upset the Boise State vs UNLV rematch is back on. We aren’t talking enough about the Rebels Playoff hopes. They battled hard with Boise State the first go around and now the Broncos look like a gassed team struggling to the finish line. Jeanty is still playing well despite being banged up but Maddux Madsen has really regressed in recent weeks and the passing game has mostly tanked. If UNLV pulled off the stunner I think they could jump the AAC champ.
UNLV and San Jose State played in a pouring rainstorm which made for some Friday night entertainment. Both teams struggled to handle the conditions but UNLV was able to commit to the run game in the 2nd half and pull away for a 27-16 win. San Jose State runs the Air-raid and it’s not an offense built for these conditions.
Air Force is really back rolling. They’re now on a 3 game win streak. This time the Falcons managed to beat Nevada despite completing more passes (1) than to their own team (0.) For Nevada it was yet another one score loss. Jeff Choate significantly improved this team but they’re just a step away from bringing home wins..
Pac-12/Independents
The long awaited Pac-12 championship occurred and it was an absolute primetime banger of a game. Washington State and Oregon State battled all game. It had been a long season for the Beavers but they were able to put that all aside and grab the conference championship. It was truly an awesome moment where the fans stormed the field afterward. Washington State’s defense has capsized in recent weeks, they are struggling to get stops and too much has been on John Mateer who is playing really well honestly, but he can’t carry this team the whole way.
SEC
It was another chaotic weekend of upsets in the SEC, we’ve seen many more this year than we have in the past and it seems the buzzwords thrown around are about how tough the road environments are within the league. Sure, that is true the fanbases are very passionate but it’s not like that changed. So what is going on? The real reason is there just isn’t an elite team in this conference. Georgia and Alabama don’t have teams that are going to shut up a crowd by relentlessly pounding them into oblivion even if they’re having an off night. No one is good enough to survive an off night this year.
Sun Belt
Marshall faced and survived a tough test at Old Dominion to remain atop the Sun Belt East. It was a thrilling 42-35 win in one of the best games of the night. Marshall can win the division with a win next week, but it’s a very tough test at James Madison. Georgia Southern will be waiting to pounce if the Thundering Herd lose that one but Georgia Southern will have a test of their own against Appalachian State in Deeper Than Hate.
Road woes have been the Achilles heel for this year’s James Madison team this time it was a loss at Appalachian State who has been a problem for JMU in general. Appalachian State has now positioned themselves to rebound to a bowl bid as a result, they’ll need to win next week.
The most surprising result in the conference was Texas State losing 52-44 to Georgia State at home. The Bobcats entered this season with a lot of expectations but haven’t lived up to them. I don’t know if it was McCloud coming in late or what but their offense just can’t get itself in a rhythm frequently enough, and it’s disappointing because they improved a lot defensively (well until this game at least.) Georgia State had a long year in Dell McGee’s first year but they sure made it count when they did, beating Vanderbilt and now this one. They’ll play Coastal Carolina to close out the win and the Chanticleers are seeking bowl eligibility.
Welcome to Updog Sports Talk 
Leave a comment