A Weekend of Chaos

What a weekend of college football.

It was a wonderful reminder of why we all love the sport so damn much – upsets, parity, and, of course, memes. 

We saw #1 Alabama, #4 Tennessee, #9 Missouri, #10 Michigan, and #11 USC all go down, and only one of those teams played a ranked opponent. #8 Miami had to rally from 25 down at Cal to avoid having its name on the list, too. 

Saturday even gave us an all-time great interview from Vandy QB Diego Pavia after beating Alabama. 

Seeing these bluebloods brought down to their knees by double-digit underdogs should give you hope as a Big 12 fan that the league can make some noise in the playoff. 

Yes, you’ll likely get a better effort out of Alabama in a 4/5 matchup in the playoff, but the Big 12 champion will also be a better team than Vanderbilt. Miami is still unbeaten and assumed to be near-lock for the playoff, but they’ve essentially been beaten twice in the last two weeks by two teams that are a combined 6-5 (thank you, ACC officials). 

Everybody looks flawed this year except maybe Texas and Ohio State. We’ll have to wait to see the Buckeyes legitimately tested this week at Oregon to get the real answer. 

What makes college football great is that David can beat Goliath. But don’t forget that the suits at ESPN, Fox, the SEC, and the Big Ten are trying to take that way from you. 

Every move they make is toward a college football future with only the power brands left. If they had it their way, David wouldn’t just lose the slingshot; he’d never even step into the arena with Goliath. 

Vandy is a school likely left behind in any Super League scenario and is always the first to be mentioned when the topic of kicking conference members out arises. Minnesota may be in the same boat. Cal was relegated to cross-country travel in the ACC when the Pac-12 was stripped for parts. 

They all had time to shine on Saturday, but how much longer will those opportunities be available?

The more we move in the suits’ direction, the more college football loses its heart and soul. Savor days like Saturday as much as you can.

Week Six: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good

Zombie West Virginia

Here comes Neal Brown and the West Virginia Mountaineers back from the dead. 

West Virginia dominated Oklahoma State in all three phases, overwhelming the Cowboys early and building a 24-0 first-half lead.

I don’t care how much disarray Oklahoma State is in. It’s impressive to go on the road in this conference and outgain your opponent 558-227. That’s a staggering statistic. 

389 of those yards came on the ground, including a season-high 158 yards from running back Jahiem White and 86 yards from quarterback Garrett Greene. 

Think of how far WVU has come since the five-minute mark of the 4th quarter against Kansas. Brown was staring down the barrel of a 1-3 start to the season; instead, he has his team back in the contender conversation after a 2-0 Big 12 start. 

Their two losses came to #4 Penn State and #22 Pitt, which are a combined 10-0. Frankly, the Mountaineers should have won the Pitt game, so it’s not a stretch to suggest that West Virginia is still a team capable of making it to Arlington. 

Texas Tech is a Contender

Have you checked the Big 12 standings lately?

Everybody is looking up at none other than Texas Tech right now. Head coach Joey McGuire righted the ship after a rocky start that featured a blowout loss at Washington State and 51 points allowed to Abilene Christian. 

I can understand some skepticism about Tech's home wins over Cincinnati and Arizona State, but now that Tech has added a road win at Arizona to its resume, it’s time to respect the Red Raiders. 

The same defense that Abilene Christian carved up forced three turnovers and held a talented Arizona offense to just 22 points. The defense even came up with the most important play of the game when linebacker Jacob Rodriguez punched the ball free from Wildcats’ star receiver Tetairoa McMillan, with Arizona driving for a potential game-winning field goal. 

The Red Raiders are now 3-0 in the Big 12 for the first time since 2013. That team faceplanted and finished 4-5. Will this team do the same? 

They certainly have a schedule that is manageable enough to avoid it.

Iowa State Taking Care of Business

While everybody else in the Big 12 goes through wild ups and downs, Iowa State and BYU have stayed consistent. 

The Cyclones weathered an early storm on Saturday against Baylor to eventually cruise to a 43-21 win. It didn’t phase them that the Bears jumped out to a 14-3 lead or that Baylor regained the lead early in the second half, thanks in part to a bad Rocco Becht interception. 

Deficits haven’t phased Iowa State much this year at all. Trailing 13-0 at Iowa, they found a way to pull themselves back into the game and win in thrilling fashion. 

They never trailed at Houston, but it was only 3-0 until the waning moments of the third quarter. Instead of tightening up and fearing the upset, they kept hammering away until they broke through for 17 unanswered points to put it away. 

“I think it's the mental toughness that everybody has and the ability to stay consistent,” Becht said. “The ability to keep our head down and keep driving no matter what the score and record is.”

When Saturday’s game was all said and done, the Cyclones had rolled up 542 yards of offense, their most in the last two seasons. 

A road trip to Morgantown this week should be a real test, but the four games after that are very winnable. The race to the first ten-win season in Iowa State history is still very much on. 

Houston’s Offense

The Cougars are finally on the board! After two straight shutouts to start conference play, Houston dropped a 30-spot on TCU in its own building. 

Racking up over 200 yards rushing was a breath of fresh air for the Cougars’ offense. They finally got a desperately needed spark from quarterback Zeon Chriss, who led the offense to three touchdowns and a field goal on their first five drives of the game. Chriss showed some real explosiveness on the ground with a 71-yard TD run. 

Perhaps most importantly, Chriss and company took care of the football and eliminated drive-killing penalties. The Cougars didn’t turn it over once, while a predictably sloppy TCU offense coughed it up four times. 

After a nine-quarter scoring drought, head coach Willie Fritz finally has a viable path forward offensively. They’ll get a week to add some new wrinkles before a suddenly winnable road trip to Arrowhead Stadium to play Kansas in two weeks.

The Bad

UCF’s Missed Opportunities

The worst part about UCF’s two-game losing skid isn’t just adding to the loss column. It’s the opportunity cost of losing two massive opportunities to showcase and elevate their program.

Four million people tuned in to see them host Colorado on national TV last week. It was a chance to show off a program on the rise in the wide-open Big 12 and introduce America to a potential fringe Heisman candidate in running back RJ Harvey. 

Instead, it became a three-hour Coach Prime, Travis Hunter, and Sheduer Sanders commercial. 

Maybe America wasn’t tuned into UCF-Florida in the Swamp on Saturday, but it was certainly a chance for the Knights to earn major local and regional credibility. Opportunities against Florida, Florida State, and Miami are rare for the Orlando upstarts, and this was a golden opportunity to capitalize on one of the weakest Gators’ teams in years. 

It was over by halftime. The Gators built a 24-3 lead and were never seriously threatened. 

Florida suffocated the UCF offense, holding the Knights to only 108 yards rushing while producing five sacks of quarterback KJ Jefferson. 

The season is far from over; UCF only has one conference loss. But it feels like head coach Gus Malzahn is still much further away from contender status in the Big 12 than Knights fans wanted to believe this September.  

Anti-Big 12 Playoff Narratives

Bud Elliot from 247 Sports is leading the early charge on the anti-Big 12 College Football Playoff narrative. 

He projects Boise State as the fourth-highest-ranked conference champion, making the Big 12 champion the 11 seed in this scenario. 

To be fair, the Broncos are already up to #17 in the AP poll, and the Big 12 has the feel of a conference that may beat itself up too much. You should definitely be rooting for Boise to slip up at UNLV later this month in what is their toughest game remaining. 

But while the Big 12 doesn’t appear to have a dominant team right now, let’s not forget that Iowa State and BYU are undefeated. The Cyclones don’t exactly have a murder’s row schedule coming up, either. 

Elliot’s narrative feels somewhat disrespectful to the Cyclones and Cougars, which comes as no surprise to hardened Big 12 fans.  

The Ugly

Oklahoma State and TCU’s Seasons

Oklahoma State and TCU should be two of the tentpole programs of the Big 12. 

The Cowboys haven’t had a losing season in almost twenty years and have won 10+ games in nearly half of Mike Gundy’s seasons in Stillwater. The Frogs played for a national title two years ago and currently (and consistently) have the league’s most talented roster, according to the 247 Talent Composite. 

Neither are coming close to carrying their own weight in the first year of the 16-team Big 12. 

The Pokes’ 0-3 start to Big 12 play feels like what we expected last year after a tumultuous offseason and a 26-point non-conference loss to South Alabama. Was the Big 12 championship game run just a fluke? Could it have been one last hurrah before the downward Gundy trend ended his magical run at his alma mater?

I’ve learned my lesson about counting Gundy out, but it’s hard to ignore the numbers right now. In three Big 12 games, they’ve been outscored 102-53 – the worst point differential in the conference. 

All of this is happening with a roster that includes last year’s Doak Walker Award winner, an offensive line as experienced as they come, a stable of talented receivers, a returning starting quarterback, and some legitimate star power on defense. 

It’s baffling, and if Saturday’s performance against West Virginia is any indication, the worst may be yet to come. 

The Sonny Dykes era in Ft. Worth isn’t looking much better. 

TCU is now 8-12 since beating Michigan in the College Football Playoff two years ago, and only one of those eight wins came against a Power Four team with a winning record. 

Nasty defenses were a staple under former head coach Gary Patterson. Now, the Horned Frogs are giving up 30 at home to a Houston team that hadn’t scored a single point in conference play yet. 

There is undoubtedly some flash offensively with quarterback Josh Hoover and wide receivers Jack Bech and Savion Williams, but that unit has turned into a sloppy mess – the Frogs have turned the ball over an astonishing twelve times in the last three games. 

I’d wonder how Dykes could allow that to happen, but sometimes he isn’t even on the sidelines to see it himself.

TCU has more talent on paper than anybody else in the conference. They have a recruiting advantage over everybody in the league (minus Houston) simply by being in Ft. Worth. They have had massive recent success to sell. 

There’s simply no excuse for back-to-back seasons like this.  

Kansas’ Losing Blueprint

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Kansas led a game late and found a way to lose. 

Jayhawks fans are undoubtedly sick of watching the same movie over and over by this point. According to ESPN's Win Probability, their 35-31 loss at Arizona State was the fifth straight game KU has lost in which they had at least a 74% chance to win the game at some point. 

In some ways, it feels like Kansas isn’t that far off, and there are numbers to prove it.

But at the end of the day, bad teams find ways to lose, and Kansas has been as good as anybody in the country at doing that. 

On Saturday, the main culprit was the defense, which let ASU go 75 yards for the game-winning touchdown in less than two minutes with the game on the line. Sun Devils’ running back Cam Skattebo had a 39-yard carry on that drive that was part of a 313-yard day on the ground for ASU. 

Quarterback Jalon Daniels, who has come under fire early and often this season for the Jayhawks, actually delivered in the clutch this time. He engineered a 69-yard touchdown drive to take the lead with just over two minutes left, but the defense let him down. 

Kansas has a bye this week to hit the reset button, but the Jayhawks are running out of season left to salvage.

Prefer Big 12 news in video form? Subscribe to my YouTube Channel and join the hundreds of Big 12 fans who watch live on Wednesday and Sunday nights. The channel has 20,000+ subscribers and counting from all across the college football world. Don’t miss out!