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One year and one day ago, on Nov. 30, 2021, Sonny Dykes landed in a helicopter at midfield of Amon G. Carter Stadium, awash in purple lights, for his arrival as the new head coach at TCU. It was a flashy introduction for the decidedly unflashy West Texan making a 40-mile trip to Fort Worth all the way from Dallas.

But 366 days later, Dykes is still adjusting to being the center of attention, because he still hasn’t lost a game in his career as TCU’s coach. His 12-0 Horned Frogs are No. 3 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings and are playing for a Big 12 championship against No. 10 Kansas State in the conference championship game on Saturday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington (noon ET, ABC/ESPN App).

It’s good to be Sonny Dykes right now. His team’s frantic, chaotic season of destiny, augmented with quite a bit of weirdness, has made the Horned Frogs a national curiosity. There’s an animated psychedelic amphibian that has captivated fans and inspired the team (“The Hypnotoad is powerful stuff,” Dykes said in an actual postgame news conference). The creative team’s bizarre postgame videos are puzzling, yet mesmerizing.

And now Dykes gets to travel all of 18 miles to play for a Big 12 title. If he didn’t feel like taking the bus, he could do that in style, too, thanks to a booster and longtime friend. Fin Ewing III, a Dallas car dealer and TCU grad who furnishes the coach’s car, came and picked up Dykes’ GMC Sierra (the Texas Edition, naturally) to swap it with a loaner befitting the coach’s lofty new status.

“I brought him a Mercedes, and he said he didn’t want anything that fancy,” Ewing said. “I said, ‘Dykes, lemme ask you a question. Are you undefeated?’ He said yeah, and I said, “Well get your ass in there.’ Now he looks like Jethro Bodine driving an S-Class.”

That’s a Beverly Hillbillies reference, but Dykes isn’t up and moving back to California anytime soon. Six seasons after Cal fired him, he has TCU on the cusp of being the first Texas team to land a spot in the playoff since it began eight years ago.

It’s been a surreal season for the Horned Frogs, full of memorable moments and storylines. Here are 12 that tell the tale of TCU’s 12-0 season.

Start of a new era

Ask any player on TCU’s team when they had a sense this year was going to be different, and you’ll get the same answer. It was that same day Dykes arrived in the helicopter, when they heard from him and strength coach Kaz Kazadi.

“The very first day — I don’t even think we’d gotten back in school yet — we get a text from Coach Kaz saying, ‘5:30 a.m. workouts, be here early at 5 o’clock,'” offensive lineman Wes Harris said. “We were like oh my gosh, no way. But I’ll tell you what, dude, it brought everybody together and kind of made everybody realize you know, we’ve always had the dudes to do it.”

Steve Avila, the Frogs’ Outland Trophy semifinalist at left guard, said Kazadi didn’t waste any time setting the tone.

“That is the last time you will ever look at me and question what I’m doing,” he told the team in that first meeting.

Kazadi is an intimidating presence, a 6-foot-2 former linebacker who was a Butkus Award semifinalist at Tulsa before playing five years of pro football. He is always watching, asking players, “You holding?” to make sure they have a bottle of water on them to stay hydrated. If they don’t, they hit the ground for push-ups.

For Dykes, Kazadi, who has a Master’s degree from Missouri in counseling psychology, is a trusted voice who spends more time with the players than anyone.

“He is so different than most strength coaches,” Dykes said. “You know how Matthew McConaughey is Texas’ Minister of Culture? I think Kaz is our Minister of Culture. At some point I got to where I completely 100% trusted his instincts. He’s trying to get the guys bigger, faster, stronger, like everybody is. But he’s got an element of sports psychology in every single workout. He sees every bit of time in the weight room as an opportunity to build the team.”

His role was crucial in earning the buy-in that first-year coaches need. Players have welcomed the accountability that he demands. And in a season when TCU has played a physical brand of football, repeatedly wearing teams out in the second half, his work has spoken for itself.

A return to SMU

Before there were any dreams of an undefeated season or a pressure-cooked playoff referendum every week, there was Dykes’ Sept. 24 return to SMU, where the feelings were still raw from his departure for their Iron Skillet rival that they’ve played 101 times. To add to the pressure, TCU was 0-11 against SMU, Kansas State, West Virginia and Iowa State since 2018, which Dykes was partially responsible for, beating the Horned Frogs in 2019 and 2021 (they didn’t play in 2020).

The game was circled by Mustangs fans, drawing 35,569, the largest crowd for a regular-season game in Ford Stadium’s 23-year history and the school’s first sellout since 2015.

The Horned Frogs escaped an SMU comeback attempt and pulled out a 42-34 win. Asked afterward if any of the booing or jeers affected him, Dykes said, “Not really. If I can’t do that, I need to go work for Ricky Chicken at Chicken Express,” a Texas fast-food chain owned by a TCU booster and board of trustees member, Ricky Stuart.

But Dykes also got emotional after the performance of quarterback Max Duggan, who completed 22 of 29 passes for 278 yards and three touchdowns in his second start of the season after beginning the year as a backup to Chandler Morris, who got injured.

“I’m probably as proud of Max as any player I’ve been around,” Dykes said after the game, choking back tears as his eyes watered. “He started 28 or 29 games coming into this season. He has a coaching change, which is hard to go through, especially when you were recruited by the staff before. He loses the job, which is really hard, he’s getting ready to be a senior. And he never blinks. He never thought of himself one time. How many people can you say that about? You can say that about Max Duggan, that’s for sure.”

Duggan breaks through

Duggan’s 278 yards against SMU came during a scorching seven-game stretch in which he topped that mark each game and threw 24 touchdowns, including throwing for 302 yards and three TDs while adding 116 and two scores rushing the next week against Oklahoma. It sparked a 55-24 win over the then-No. 18 Sooners in front of a sellout crowd at home and a nationally televised ABC game, landing Duggan on the national stage.

Duggan established career highs in yards (3,070), leads the Big 12 with 29 touchdown passes to just three interceptions (one came on a Hail Mary attempt at the end of a half), and is completing 67% of his passes, second-best in school history for a season. He is fourth nationally in efficiency rating (171.3) and tied for second in the country with 16 TD passes of more than 20 yards. He has thrived under Garrett Riley, TCU’s 33-year-old offensive coordinator and quarterback coach.

“I’m gonna let it kind of fly,” Duggan said. “I think that’s the thing that Coach Dykes and Coach Riley brought into our room and our offense as a team is just be bold, be aggressive, stop being reckless, but just go out there, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. You kind of see that on Saturdays.”

In many ways, Duggan, a former starter-turned-backup-turned-undefeated quarterback, symbolizes the unselfish nature of this year’s team.

“I’d do anything for that guy,” offensive lineman Wes Harris said. “He’s got the heart of a warrior and he’s just a leader. He’s a winner. He doesn’t care who’s playing or who makes the winning play.”

Now, Duggan, who was named the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year on Wednesday, appears to be a lock for a Heisman invite to New York.

“It just means I’m playing with a lot of great people and under a great coaching staff,” Duggan said. “If it happened, it’d show more to those guys than it would to me.”

The Horned Frogs’ ground force

Riley and Dykes are both Texas Tech grads, and Dykes worked with Riley’s brother Lincoln in Lubbock. But that’s not what drew Dykes to the younger Riley.

“One of the things about the Air Raid that always concerned me was when we got in late-game situations,” Dykes said. “We would sometimes get in these one-score games and you get down to the nitty-gritty and you can’t get it done.”

So he hired Riley from Appalachian State, where he had been the running backs coach, because, Dykes said, he always admired the Mountaineers’ detailed approach to the running game. He said he wanted Riley specifically because he viewed things differently than he did and wanted to “combine those sensibilities.” While Dykes is a former OC himself, he prefers to let Riley run his own show, rather than offer input during game-planning.

Kendre Miller, who became the starter at running back this year after the transfer of Zach Evans to Ole Miss, has been a dependable playmaker under Riley. He has rushed for 1,260 yards and 16 touchdowns. More importantly, he’s averaged 7.03 yards per carry in the second half when TCU has a lead and forces a missed tackle once every three carries in that situation. Only Texas’ Bijan Robinson and Illinois’ Chase Brown have forced more second-half missed tackles, both on more carries (26 more for Robinson, 70 for Brown).

TCU, which has been a big-play threat all year, has been able to pound the ball in the second half, running 56.5% of the time, more than some old-school teams like Wisconsin. Riley, in his first year as a Power 5 coordinator, was recently named a finalist for the Broyles Award, given to the top assistant coach in the country.

“That part’s been good for me, to have the kind of team that will stay patient enough to run it and to keep chipping away,” Dykes said. “All of a sudden, it seems like we’ll start to take control of games and the third and fourth quarter. There’s a confidence that comes from that.”

The secret weapon

If you look at the TCU staff directory, you’ll see Jeff Jordan’s smiling mug next to his title: assistant athletic director for player personnel. No bio, that’s it. If you see Jordan on the sideline during a game, chances are he’s within a few feet of Dykes.

That’s because he’s Dykes’ confidant on everything from strategy to clock management to analytics. During the Horned Frogs’ comeback win against Baylor, Dykes said he and Jordan plotted out the dramatic final drive before TCU got the ball back, play by play. Then they did exactly what they said they’d do, and won the game on a walk-off field goal.

After spending 29 years as a high school coach, including 15 as the head coach at Garland High, a Dallas suburb, along with 28 years as a scout and film grader for the Dallas Cowboys, Dykes said Jordan has a rare mix of expertise for his duties on the field and off.

“I think he’s the most uniquely qualified person for his position in the country,” Dykes said.

Dykes was one of the early adopters of rebuilding a roster through the transfer portal when he arrived at SMU in 2018. Jordan was a key part of that operation because of his Texas high school connections and scouting background. He estimates that while working part-time for the Cowboys, he scrubbed through 1,000 games a year for more than 25 years. Most of what his job entailed was finding diamonds in the rough at small schools and running them up the ladder.

“We found Kenny Gant, who was at Savannah State and Larry Allen, who was at Sonoma State and Eric Williams, who was from Central State of Ohio and the list just goes on and on,” Jordan said of a few of his discoveries in the Cowboys’ glory days. “I was a really young guy and you’re figuring out there’s some good football players — Hall of Fame level — everywhere.”

Now, he trains those same eyes on the transfer portal. Which brings us to…

The unheralded transfers

Dykes was impressed with the speed on the top end of the roster when he took over. But there were a few major spots that needed shoring up. Dykes said the Frogs have been more reliant on transfers than people may realize.

They addressed one area of need by signing a nuclear engineering major who originally was recruited to the Naval Academy to play lacrosse before begging the football coaches to give him a shot. Johnny Hodges, now a 6-2, 240-pound linebacker, eventually decided he wanted a change of scenery and entered his name in the portal with two games to go last season, but found no takers.

“I probably reached out to 60 college coaches, every Power 5,” Hodges said. “Not a single one responded.”

Until Jordan, who had seen him play against them at SMU, and took his tape to new defensive coordinator Joe Gillespie.

“He was a guy that I think a lot of people just kind of got scared off of, because they thought he was the stereotypical Navy kid,” Jordan said. “He’s not gonna be able to run, he’s not gonna be athletic enough. If you sat and watched his film, you’re like, this guy’s a lot more athletic than people give him credit for being.”

Hodges is now TCU’s leading tackler with 76, including 7.5 for a loss, with one of those being a key solo tackle on Texas’ Bijan Robinson on fourth-and-1 in a 17-10 win. He was named the Big 12’s Defensive Newcomer of the Year.

Josh Newton, who was named to the Big 12’s first team on defense and is Pro Football Focus’ No. 1-graded corner in the conference, was a Louisiana-Monroe transfer who has emerged as a true lockdown option opposite Thorpe Award finalist Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson. Newton has also become a leader in the locker room this year, reminding the Horned Frogs how fortunate they are to be in this position.

Players from Stephen F. Austin (DL Caleb Fox), UConn (DL Lwal Uguak) and Louisiana (RB Emani Bailey) have all been key contributors.

“There’s hasn’t been a ton of schools that dip down into the Group of Five,” Jordan said. “I think spending four years [at SMU], we know there’s a lot of good players in there. You don’t ever write off a guy just because of his pedigree.”

The Believer

In offseason workouts, coaches often bring in other coaches for an outsiders’ perspective. In August, Dykes invited former Pitt, Arizona State and Hawaii coach Todd Graham, who he’s known for years, to evaluate the program for a week. He was stunned by what Graham told him, which was at odds with what everyone expected from this team, including maybe Dykes himself.

“I love talking to people that see things differently than I do,” Dykes said, noting that Graham had visited him in his first season at SMU and told him he was in trouble, before a 5-7 season.

“Todd is very direct,” he said.

This time around, however, he had a completely different view. Graham told him they were going to win the Big 12.

Dykes laughed about it this week. “I said, ‘Well, I’m not quite as optimistic as you are. But I think we have a chance to have a good team.'”

So what did Graham see that led him to that prediction?

“I go visit a lot of programs. Coach [Mike] Norvell who worked for me is at Florida State, Billy Napier at Florida, Dan Lanning at Oregon, I visited all those places,” Graham said. “You find kids are kind of guarded, like, ‘Hey, where do I fit? Do I trust these guys?’ There was none of that [at TCU]. I didn’t just watch. I went to different position meetings. I went on the field and watched each coach teach. And there’s a high level of teaching and accountability with elite discipline.”

So yes, he said he truly believed the Horned Frogs would win the conference. And he’s not surprised that they are on the cusp of doing it on Saturday after the job he’s seen Dykes do this year.

It doesn’t just happen,” Graham said. “People say, ‘Oh, he’s winning with somebody else’s players.’ That’s all a bunch of bull. That same bunch, what was their record last year?”

‘TCU is just not supposed to do that against Texas’

All season long, Dykes has compared this team to a boxer. On Nov. 12, in a hotel ballroom the night before TCU played Texas, he reminded his team that being patient and physical has been their recipe for success.

“Let’s keep swinging,” he said. “That’s why we’ve been so damn good in the second half. Punch, punch, punch, keep punching. Every one of those punches adds up. That’ll happen tomorrow if we handle our business correctly.”

It did. In one of the Frogs’ biggest tests of the season, in front of 104,203 fans — the second-biggest crowd in Texas history — they won 17-10 by stifling one of the best offenses in the country.

Under new defensive coordinator Joe Gillespie, TCU held Texas to 199 total yards, its fewest in a home game since the Big 12 began play in 1996. Robinson had just 29 rushing yards on 12 carries, his fewest in the past two seasons, and Texas was held to three offensive points (the Longhorns’ lone touchdown came on a fumble return late in the fourth quarter).

It was the type of win reminiscent of Texas coach Darrell Royal’s 1961 quote comparing the Frogs to cockroaches after a 3-0 loss spoiled the Longhorns’ perfect season,. “It’s not what they eat and tote off,” he said, “it’s what they fall into and mess up that hurts.”

“TCU is just not supposed to do that against Texas, you know?” Dykes said this week.

But they did, and Gillespie is a big reason. Dykes hired the former Texas high school coach away from Tulsa to his first Power 5 job, seeing his 3-3-5 defense as a kind of counterpart to the Air Raid offense, based mostly on repetition and flexibility.

“I think the scheme is important, but the fit on the staff, just the kind of person he is really overshadowed the scheme,” Dykes said. “Those players want to make him proud because they like him and respect him so much. He’s a huge part of this season. I think we’re just getting started. We’re going to be one of the best defenses in college football.”

The Bazooka goes boom

The Horned Frogs’ dream of a CFP berth might’ve sunk into the Brazos behind Baylor’s McLane Stadium on Nov. 19 without a play that’s oft-practiced but rarely used.

Trailing 28-26, Dykes puzzled viewers across the country by running the ball on third-and-7 at the Baylor 26 with no timeouts and 22 seconds left in the game. Then, special teams coach Mark Tommerdahl called “Bazooka,” where the field-goal unit sprints out, gets set and launches a kick all while the clock is counting down. Kicker Griffin Kell jogged out onto the field casually, and holder Jordy Sandy calmly made sure everyone was set and waited for the clock to wind down. Kell drilled the 40-yarder, and TCU survived, heading out of Waco with a 29-28 win.

Tommerdahl, who has been coaching special teams for more than 30 years, said he thinks this is the first time he’s ever called Bazooka in a game-winning situation. But he and Dykes were confident after working together for eight years at three different schools, and have always made Bazooka the first rep, run full speed, of field-goal practices on Thursday. Of the Frogs’ comeback wins this season, this one was the most frantic, even if Dykes swears it wasn’t. But it wasn’t even the most unlikely, according to ESPN Analytics’ win probabilities:

• Week 6: Kansas’ win probability was as high as 68.4% with 7:36 remaining in the third quarter when the Jayhawks took a 17-10 lead.

• Week 7: Oklahoma State’s was at 96.1% when Duggan threw an incomplete pass on third down with 13:36 remaining in the 4th and the Cowboys leading 30-16.

• Week 8: Kansas State’s was at 91.2% with the Wildcats leading 28-10 with 3:32 remaining in the 2nd.

• Week 12: Baylor had a 92.1% chance to win with 6:48 remaining in the 4th quarter and the Bears leading 28-20.

“I ain’t gonna sit here and tell you we don’t look at the scoreboard,” Harris said. “But I don’t think there’s really that much of a difference … I don’t think it would matter if we’re up by 60 or down by 60. We’re still gonna be out there swinging and givin’ it hell.”

All glory to the Hypnotoad

TCU’s brand has gone national this year. Winning helps a bunch. But the Hypnotoad helps even more.

The frog with the hypnotic eyes was born from an animated sci-fi show called “Futurama” that originally ran from 1999-2003. TCU’s athletics marketing team adopted it for videos to use as a free-throw distraction at basketball games, and several different versions to use during pregame and key moments at football games.

But this year, these new transplants into the football program fully embraced it. And why not? It’s truly been a game-changer. In the Horned Frogs’ first matchup against Kansas State on Oct. 22, the Hypnotoad made an appearance on the video boards with TCU trailing 28-24 with five minutes left in the third quarter and the Wildcats facing a third-and-6 at the TCU 30.

The psychedelic frog appeared, and the crowd immediately went nuts. K-State quarterback Will Howard attempted to run for a first down and was stopped short. On the next play, kicker Chris Tennant missed a 44-yard field goal. Four plays later, Duggan hit Quentin Johnston for a quick-strike 55-yard touchdown, to give TCU its first lead of the day. They ended up winning 38-28.

After a 34-24 victory over Texas Tech on Nov. 5, Dykes said he could feel the energy change in the stadium after the Hypnotoad appeared.

“Strangely enough, for the first time this season, I noticed it,” Dykes said in his postgame news conference. “I also noticed we made a bunch of big plays right after. I’m not a big believer in coincidence, you know what I’m saying? I think there may be something to it. Hey man, the Hypnotoad is powerful stuff.”

Those videos: ‘I don’t understand what’s going on’

Jon Petrie won’t try to make any sense of his postgame videos celebrating a victory. He can’t. TCU’s coordinator of creative video, who just moved to Fort Worth this year from Maine, just started making weird stuff, and now he’s trapped in a prison of his own creation.

“If someone wasn’t on the internet and you tried to explain it to them, you’d sound like a crazy person,” Petrie said, comparing the videos to college football’s version of Jackson Pollock paintings. “Someone will ask me, ‘Is it good this week?’ I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s supposed to be good? Isn’t that what makes it good? It’s supposed to be bad.”

We won’t argue. See for yourself. Here’s Petrie’s handiwork for the victory over Baylor.

“I think it’s funny when Baylor fans will share it and say, ‘This hurts,'” Petrie said. “What should hurt is a highlight reel. Or the final kick. Not Winnie the Pooh floating into the heavens.”

Petrie has tried to rationalize why he started making them. But he gave up.

“I didn’t expect us to be this good,” he said. “It’s unexplainable to me. So it’s as if I’m expressing it. I don’t understand what’s going on. I just kind of got this job.”

Sonny finishes strong, passes Spike

With the Frogs’ bye week coming way back on Sept. 17, TCU has run the gauntlet, in Dykes’ words. They played 10 straight weeks, ending with a 4-7 Iowa State team that had lost six of its games by one score or less. It was a dangerous matchup for a team that had already clinched a spot in the conference championship, and Dykes was clearly nervous about a trap game, particularly against a team with a suffocating defense that had only allowed a high of 31 points this year and only allowed three other teams over 20 points.

For years, Dykes had been dogged by dropping games late in the season. He even raised the issue himself on Oct. 15 after a 43-40 double-overtime win over Oklahoma State.

“Historically, our team has gotten off to good starts and not finished very well,” Dykes said after the game. “So it’s going to be a challenge for us to finish down the stretch. We know that. This is a different team. It doesn’t matter what happened in the past here or where I’ve been. We’re going to write a different story.”

On Saturday, his Horned Frogs crushed the Cyclones, 62-14.

The “Sonny Swoon” was a thing of the past. TCU completed a 12-0 regular season, a first for a Big 12 team since Texas in 2009. In the process, Dykes passed his father, the late Texas Tech coach Spike Dykes, in career wins with his 83rd.

“It’s a pretty sweet deal to do it. … To go 12-0 and pass him in career wins,” Dykes said. “I kind of felt him all year with me, it seems like, a little bit with this team. I know he would certainly get a kick out of our guys and the way that they work and the kind of people that they are. Because it’s a heck of a group.”

On Wednesday, Dykes was named the Big 12 coach of the year, which his dad won in 1996. He’s the first coach in league history to win the award in his first season.

Now there’s one game left for TCU to try to claim its own Big 12 title and cement a spot in the College Football Playoff.

“When you take over a program, it’s always wait till we get my guys,” Dykes said. “Man, I think from Day 1, these guys have tried to be my guys. And they have been my guys.”

Harris said the feeling is mutual from the players’ perspective.

“I feel like we can go line up against the Dallas Cowboys and play against ’em,” he said. “I don’t know if the score would show that, but shoot, at least we think that way, right? We’ve got the same guys. It’s just they’ve instilled this mindset into us and look at where it’s taken us.”

The Horned Frogs have been charmed all year, but as they head toward the finish line, they’re securing their place as one of the biggest outliers in college football history. TCU was coming off a 5-7 season, hadn’t been to a bowl game in three years and hadn’t won more than seven games in a season since 2017.

TCU became the first current Power 5 school to have a perfect regular-season record under a new coach after finishing below .500 in the previous season since Ohio State in 1944.

And with a win on Saturday, Dykes would be just the sixth coach in major college football history to go 13-0 in a single season, behind Ryan Day (2019 Ohio State), Chris Petersen (2006 Boise State), Samuel Thorne (1896 Yale), George Washington Woodruff (1892 Penn) and Walter Camp (1888 Yale).

Those other five coaches took over teams that had lost a combined seven games the season before, and four of those were at Boise, which had won 36 games in the three seasons before finishing 9-4 in 2005, the year before Petersen took over.

It’s been a magical year for Dykes, the low-key coach who formerly was more popular among athletic directors and administrators — Texas and Oklahoma both kicked the tires on him for their openings in recent years — than fans on Twitter.

His desk is covered in letters from well-wishers, known and unknown. There was even one of those hand-written notes from legendary Kansas State coach Bill Snyder, mentioning how proud Spike was — and still is — of him.

This summer, he could go anywhere in Fort Worth, and he didn’t draw much attention. But on Sunday, after polishing off an undefeated regular season, he walked into a taco shop by campus and a kindly older woman excitedly greeted the toast of college football. As he walked away, she shouted across the restaurant:

“God bless and go Frogs!”

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Best of Week 12: Georgia returns to form, Oregon escapes and Travis Hunter takes control of the Heisman race

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November 17, 2024

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Best of Week 12: Georgia returns to form, Oregon escapes and Travis Hunter takes control of the Heisman race

  • David Hale, ESPN Staff WriterNov 17, 2024, 01:49 AM ET

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    • College football reporter.
    • Joined ESPN in 2012.
    • Graduate of the University of Delaware.

Georgia entered Week 12 in an unusual place. Coming off an emphatic loss to Ole Miss, the Bulldogs were scuffling, looking for answers, and if the season had ended on Tuesday with the College Football Playoff committee’s most recent rankings, they’d have been on the outside looking in.

We had become accustomed to Georgia’s dominance at all turns. The close games were more a product of boredom than any actual defect, and the losses, rare as they were, were offered as little more than tribute to Nick Saban, the man who had sent Kirby Smart to lead Georgia to the promised land.

But in 2024, even amid the wins, things have just felt … off.

There has been the familiar parade of players landing in legal hot water away from the field. There has been the rising frustration with offensive coordinator Mike Bobo. There’s the gut-wrenching losses to bitter rivals that seem destined to doom the Bulldogs to second-class status. If this were pro wrestling, the first notes of “Jesus, Take the Wheel” would begin playing and Mark Richt would emerge from the tunnel, revealing he had been in charge all along.

On Saturday, however, we got our reminder that this isn’t the Georgia of old, even if it’s not quite the Georgia of 2021 and 2022 either. In a game that felt almost algorithmically engineered to prove the Dawgs had addressed each of their most blatant faults, Carson Beck and crew devoured Tennessee 31-17 and reasserted dominion over college football — if not officially in the standings, then certainly in the hearts and minds of every team that might have the misfortune of drawing the Dawgs in the playoff.

Beck, who had thrown 12 interceptions in his past six games, was nearly flawless Saturday. He threw for 346 yards and totaled three touchdowns, but more importantly, he looked supremely confident with each fastball he delivered downfield.

The offensive line, which handed out party favors to Ole Miss pass rushers en route to he backfield last week, held its own against one of the most ferocious defensive fronts in the country. Beck wasn’t sacked, and Tennessee managed just two tackles for loss in the game.

The ground game, scrambling for answers and without injured starter Trevor Etienne, turned to Nate Frazier and, in so many critical moments, Beck to provide the spark. They delivered a pair of rushing touchdowns as proof of life for a backfield that had so often looked dormant.

So it is, too, that Georgia has life in the crowded SEC.

Certainly SEC fans are too modest to say it, but the fact its, the league is pretty good this year. We entered Week 12 with a logjam of teams with a loss or two or three, but a résumé warranting real playoff consideration. The depth of talent threatened to overwhelm the conference, however, with the committee inserting four Big Ten teams in the top five and leaving Saban to lament to Pat McAfee that the committee can’t “just look at the record,” echoing Greg Sankey’s long-held belief that wins are an overrated metric compared to things such as revenue, attendance or prevalence of cowbells.

But Saturday proved to be something of a palette cleanser for the SEC — like the white bread that comes with Dreamland ribs. While a handful of teams took a mental health day — Alabama, Auburn, Texas A&M and Kentucky all played lower-tier competition and won by a combined 154 points — the rest of the slate helped clarify something akin to a pecking order.

In Gainesville, the Billy Napier redemption tour continued, with DJ Lagway and Elijhah Badger leading the Florida charge on a 27-16 win over LSU. After the game, Napier celebrated the Gators’ fifth win of the season by calling human resources at Zaxby’s and letting them know he won’t be able to start on Dec. 1 as previously promised, now needing just a win over either Ole Miss or (more likely) Florida State to secure a bowl.

LSU, meanwhile, is effectively cooked in the chase for the playoff after the loss, and it’s possible Brian Kelly’s anger management classes are no longer covered by his insurance.

After the game, Kelly lambasted the team asking of his players, “Do you want to fight or not?” It was not immediately clear if he meant in LSU’s remaining games or in the parking lot out back as soon as his press conference was over. Either way, things are bleak in Baton Rouge. It’s sad to see a situation where everyone felt like faaaamily devolve into something completely inauthentic.

If LSU is tumbling in the SEC standings, however, Saturday was South Carolina‘s time to shine against Missouri.

LaNorris Sellers threw for 353 yards and five touchdowns and continued to treat pass rushers like softballs bouncing off a fungo.

play

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Highlight: South Carolina wins fourth-quarter thriller behind Sellers’ heroics

No. 23 Missouri comes roaring back in the final frame only to be stomped out by LaNorris Sellers as the No. 21 Gamecocks escape with a 34-30 victory.

What started as a defensive tussle ended with four touchdowns — two by each offense — in the game’s final 9:12. The Gamecocks took a 27-22 lead with 5:04 to play on Sellers’ fourth TD pass of the game, only to see Brady Cook and Luther Burden III hook up on a gorgeous 37-yard bomb to regain the lead with just over a minute to go.

But South Carolina had an answer, marching 70 yards on six plays in just 47 seconds, culminating with a 15-yard touchdown run by Raheim “Rocket” Sanders to secure the win. That Shane Beamer didn’t celebrate by head-butting a player still wearing his helmet really shows how far he has come as a coach this season.

So here’s where things stand amid the rubble of another Saturday in the SEC: Texas and Texas A&M are atop the standings at 5-1, but they’ll play each other in Week 14. Georgia, Tennessee, Ole Miss and Alabama all have two losses, but each have secured a win versus at least one of the other tied teams, leaving their fate to the SEC’s arcane tie-breaker policies which involve opponent records, scoring differentials and a pie-eating contest between Lane Kiffin and Josh Heupel. And, of course, there’s still South Carolina, looming on the fringes of the playoff debate at 7-3.

The case for the SEC’s supremacy is clear. With seven teams playing such high-level football, all losses come with an asterisk and all wins feel epic. In that case, Georgia’s two losses and occasionally confounding struggles will pale in comparison to the immense talent on the roster, and this win over Tennessee will be Exhibit A for why the road to the national championship still runs through Athens.

But the path toward the SEC’s demise is also clear: Either the committee fails to reward depth or, more likely, in a fit of rage, Kelly uses a flamethrower he bought on the dark web to burn the entire conference to the ground.

Jump to:
Ducks hold off Badgers | Hunter’s Heisman case
Big 12 drama | Klubnik delivers late
USC finds a spark | Irish roll
Tulane capsizes Navy | Lobos rally | Week 12 trends
Heisman five | Under the radar

Ducks D plays big

The College Football Playoff committee is going to have to take a hard look at Wisconsin this week. With a three-point loss to No. 1 Oregon, the Badgers now have a top-five résumé.

More importantly, the committee won’t have to select a new No. 1, as Oregon’s defense came up big in a grueling 16-13 win.

Dillon Gabriel finished with 218 passing yards and an interception, just the second time in 60 career starts that he threw a pick without also throwing a touchdown. Instead, the Ducks relied on tailback Jordan James to lead a second-half comeback after falling behind 13-6. James finished with 25 carries for 121 yards and a game-tying TD with 13:14 to go in the fourth quarter.

It was Matayo Uiagalelei who sealed the win, however. Wisconsin got the ball at its own 17 with 1:26 to play, but Jamaree Caldwell tipped a Braedyn Locke pass, and Uiagalelei caught the carom for the game-sealing INT. (Note to Florida State fans: It is possible for the words “Uiagalelei” and “interception” to appear in a sentence not involving a brutal loss.)

The win keeps Oregon undefeated and headed toward a Big Ten title game berth, but it’s not without some red flags. Wisconsin held the Ducks to just 354 total yards — a week after Oregon mustered just 363 against Maryland. That’s the first time Oregon has had back-to-back games with fewer than 400 yards of offense since 2020.

On the other hand, winning games while accumulating a frustratingly limited number of yards and relying on a power run game and a stout defense suggests Oregon has acclimated nicely into the Big Ten’s way of life.

Hunter states Heisman case

Colorado is still coming, according to Deion Sanders, but according to the Big 12 standings, the Buffaloes are already there.

Coach Prime lamented a less-than-exceptional performance by his Buffs in a 49-24 win over Utah, and yet there’s little other than platitudes in the aftermath. Colorado is tied for No. 1 in the Big 12, and if it wins out against Kansas and Oklahoma State, a date in the conference title game is assured.

Shedeur Sanders struggled early against the Utes’ defense, but he ultimately finished with 340 yards passing and three touchdowns in Colorado’s usual demoralizing fashion.

Meanwhile, after a season-ending injury to Brandon Rose, Utah turned to Isaac Wilson, who is actually just an AI-generated representation of what a Utah QB might be after feeding Rose, Nate Johnson, Bryson Barnes, Charlie Brewer and Jake Bentley into the algorithm. The important takeaway here, however, is he’s not Cam Rising, so of course, Utah struggled. Wilson lost a fumble and threw three interceptions in the game, including one to Travis Hunter, who struck a Heisman pose afterward.

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Travis Hunter stakes Heisman claim after great plays on both sides of ball

Colorado’s Travis Hunter makes a nice interception off a deflection in the first quarter, followed by an incredible first-down catch in the second quarter vs. Utah.

Hunter caught five passes for 55 yards, and after Coach Prime checked the rule book and learned his team was also allowed to run the ball, Hunter got a carry that also went for a 5-yard touchdown. On the downside, Hunter did allow his first TD of the season in coverage, a 40-yard dart to Dorian Singer in the third quarter.

With the win, Colorado moves to 8-2 — just the second eight-win season for the program in the past 20 years, making it likely other teams will attempt to copy Sanders’ program-building blueprint of bringing in a whole bunch of transfers, at least one of whom is the best player in the country.

BYU falls, Sun Devils rise

BYU’s perfect season came to an end with a tackle at the 6-yard line on fourth down against Kansas, and thanks to Utah AD Mark Harlan, no one at Big 12 headquarters buzzed down to the officials to have them throw a random flag for excessive playing of “Carry On My Wayward Son.”

Kansas walked off with a 17-13 win after recovering a muffed punt deep in BYU territory that the Jayhawks turned into the game-winning touchdown. BYU still had a chance to win, driving into the red zone but coming up empty on four tries inside the Kansas 15.

Devin Neal became the first player in Kansas history with 4,000 career rushing yards, racking up 52 yards and two TDs in the win Saturday.

Meanwhile, Arizona State remains alive to be the Big 12’s Cinderella team, shocking Kansas State 24-14 behind a three-touchdown performance from QB Sam Leavitt.

Sun Devils’ head coach Kenny Dillingham’s reputation as a QB whisperer is going strong with Leavitt. After Dillingham helped shape Jordan Travis and resurrect Bo Nix, Leavitt has blossomed after transferring from Michigan State and has Arizona State riding high at 7-2.

The Sun Devils take on BYU next week, with the winner gaining the inside track on a trip to the Big 12 title game. BYU would clinch with a win and a loss by either Colorado or Iowa State, who toppled Cincinnati 34-17 behind a pair of Rocco Becht touchdowns.

The Cyclones (5-2) remain alive, too, along with Colorado (6-1) as the Big 12 works to adopt a full ACC coastal approach to this season.

Klubnik delivers late win

Pitt hosted Clemson on Saturday in a game that figured to settle any debate over who was the third-best team in the ACC, which is like RC Cola and Shasta getting into a slap fight over cola rankings.

The results often looked like two teams who didn’t exactly warrant their space on the playoff periphery, too.

Indeed, Pitt followed up that defensive series with one of the most mind-numbing offensive stretches possible. The officials missed a clear false start on second-and-goal, but Pitt was stuffed. Pitt called a timeout to avoid a delay of game, then was flagged for an illegal formation, then was flagged for a delay of game, then topped the whole thing off with a penalty for a false start before ultimately kicking a field goal.

Could those four points Pitt left on the field have helped?

The Panthers actually erased a 17-7 deficit in the fourth quarter to take a 20-17 lead, but on a second-and-3, Clemson QB Cade Klubnik took a QB sneak up the middle and scrambled virtually untouched for 50 yards and a score. Pitt’s last-gasp drive stalled at the Tigers’ 26, and Clemson held on for a 24-20 win that was marked by abysmal O-line play, missed opportunities and some astonishingly questionable officiating.

Afterward, Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi summed up the game by utilizing all seven of George Carlin’s words you can’t say on TV and also making up several new ones.

USC finds a spark

After climbing to No. 11 in the AP poll in September, USC entered Week 12 losers of five of its past seven, with all five losses coming by a touchdown or less.

After opening the season 5-1, Nebraska entered Week 12 losers of three straight, two by a touchdown or less.

USC made a QB change, giving UNLV transfer Jayden Maiava the start. Nebraska made a change at offensive playcaller, with Dana Holgorsen emerging from his basement to see daylight for the first time in 11 months and recoiling in horror.

Both teams were in desperate straits, and they met at the Coliseum on Saturday to chase something approaching credibility like two pigeons fighting for half a discarded baloney sandwich.

The game didn’t disappoint.

USC led 14-7, Nebraska charged back to take a 17-14 lead, USC scored to jump ahead by a point, then found the end zone again on a 2-yard Maiava TD run with 2:45 to play.

The game was in Holgorsen’s hands from there.

After being fired despite what he had called “an impossible buyout” at Houston last year, Holgorsen had largely disappeared from the public eye, focusing instead on the finer things in life. But Saturday was like the montage scene in any ’80s movie where the down-and-out character resolves to get his life together, showers, shaves and puts on a new suit, emerging like a conquering hero. Only Holgorsen didn’t shower or shave and may have been wearing a Nebraska hoodie that Mike Riley left in a desk drawer 10 years ago after splilling some spaghetti on it.

But there was still a little Holgo magic left, and Dylan Raiola and the Huskers marched to the USC 14 with 5 seconds to play and a chance to tie the game.

But we know how this story ends. It always ends this way for the Huskers.

USC prevailed 28-20. Nebraska has now lost 38 one-possession games since the start of the 2017 season — 10 more than any other Power 4 school. After getting to win No. 5 in each of the past two seasons, it has subsequently lost a combined eight straight, seven of them by one-possession.

Dante’s ninth circle of hell is called “treachery.” Then there are like 14 more he didn’t write about, one of which involves being really into downloading bootleg Nickelback live shows, and then you finally reach something approaching where Nebraska fans are at right now.

Leonard, Irish roll

In 2014, Notre Dame and the ACC entered into a scheduling agreement in which the Irish promised five matchups per year against the conference in exchange for a home for their non-football programs. Since then, Notre Dame has effectively been Biff from “Back to the Future” to the ACC’s McFly family. They roll into the house unannounced, raid the fridge and eat Wake Forest’s leftover chicken and then take Georgia Tech’s car without asking.

And so it was that the Irish throttled Virginia 35-14 on Saturday behind Riley Leonard‘s three touchdown throws. Jeremiyah Love ran for 137 and the defense picked off Anthony Colandrea three times. Notre Dame finishes 5-0 against the ACC, the sixth time in 11 years the Irish have gone undefeated against the conference in the regular season. Overall, Notre Dame is 50-9 in the regular season against the ACC since 2014, including a 9-0 record as a full member in 2020, and somewhere Jack Swarbrick is inviting his buddies to crash at John Swofford’s beach house for the entire summer again.

The rigging was set, the masts were raised, ye old Navy set sail for a win. But before it had reached shore, the Green Wave climbed all aboard, and plundered its gold and its gin.

Yo ho, yo ho, to the league championship game they go.

If Tulane ain’t the best on all seven seas, certainly it’s tops on at least five. And before it was done, it had won 35 to none, keeping their playoff hopes still alive.

Yo ho, yo ho, to the league championship game they go.

He threw for two scores and ran for one more, Darian Mensah did everything right. The corners and pass blockers, put Navy in Davy Jones locker, now the Wave turn attention to the Army Black Knights.

Yo ho, yo ho, to the league championship game they go.

The steely men of fair Tulane, a right fine crew be they. They fight and they tussle, they’re all brawn and muscle, and they’ll earn their way back to the SEC one day.

Yo ho, yo ho, to the league championship game they go.

Lobos rally for win

A month into the season, Bronco Mendenhall’s New Mexico team was 0-4 and appeared destined for a lost season amid a massive rebuild that included turning over more than half the scholarship roster this past offseason.

After Week 12, the Lobos are 5-6, and just secured their first win over a ranked foe in 21 years, toppling No. 18 Washington State 38-35.

New Mexico’s Devon Dampier and Wazzu’s John Mateer put on an absolute clinic at QB throughout the game.

Mateer accounted for 443 yards and five touchdowns, including a 37-yard bullet to Kyle Williams that gave Washington State a four-point lead with 3:12 to play. Dampier answered with 366 yards and three touchdowns of his own, including a 1-yard scamper with 21 seconds to play that secured the biggest win for New Mexico since toppling a ranked Utah team in 2003.

New Mexico now needs only a Week 14 win over Hawai’i to secure bowl eligibility.

Mateer, meanwhile, will remain college football’s most interesting man. This was his fourth game with four passing TDs and one rushing score of the season — the most by any QB since 2018, all while also doing battle with the Joker to keep the citizens of Gotham safe.

Week 12 vibe shifts

Each week, the Top 25 endures major shake-ups that transform the college football landscape. But there are more subtle changes every Saturday, too, and we capture those here.

Trending down: Noon kickoffs

Ohio State fans are frustrated with so many noon kickoffs this year, noting that only farmers and nerds wake up before 11 a.m. As it turned out Saturday, it was Northwestern who was still asleep at kickoff.

Northwestern somehow held the ball for 32 minutes but managed just 251 yards, spending most of its time on offense working out the details of this year’s team Secret Santa program. Thankfully, the game was played at Wrigley Field, and the Cubs’ bullpen coughed up 31 points in the middle quarters, with Carnell Tate starring. He hauled in four catches for 52 yards and two touchdowns.

Northwestern is the sixth opponent this season Ohio State has held to single digits. Only Oregon has topped 20 against the Buckeyes.

Trending up: Narrow Texas wins

Quinn Ewers tossed two touchdown passes — including a 1-yarder with 9:05 to play that effectively sealed a 20-10 win over Arkansas — but he averaged just 5.5 yards per pass, and the Horns had just 315 yards of total offense, their second-lowest production in a game, trailing only the loss to Georgia.

Texas has now played three bowl-eligible teams this season, and the results have been pretty meh. The Horns were stampeded by Georgia, escaped Vanderbilt by 3 and now struggled offensively against Arkansas in a 10-point win.

The answer here is clear: more Arch Manning. Play him at receiver. Have him provide pre-drive inspiration by reenacting famous motivational scenes from movies such as “Braveheart” or “Weekend at Bernie’s,” have him challenge Bevo to a foot race at halftime. Whatever it takes to get more Arch on the field, Texas needs to make it happen.

Trending up: ACC irony

SMU held off Boston College 38-28 to move to 6-0 in ACC play, all but assuring the Mustangs of a trip to the ACC championship game in their first season in the league. Kevin Jennings threw for 298 yards and three touchdowns, and Brashard Smith ran for 120 yards and a score.

It’s worth noting as SMU moves toward a conference title game appearance, that the only reason it’s in the ACC is because NC State changed its vote to approve expansion last year. NC State, in its 72nd season in the ACC, has never played in the ACC championship game, though it has heard it’s not that great anyway. Plus, it had plans, like catching up on the new season of “Only Murders in the Building.” And maybe a Home Depot trip. And it’s just nice to have a staycation after a busy football season. Really, don’t worry about NC State. It’s doing just fine, and it definitely didn’t just DoorDash six pints of Jeni’s ice cream.

Trending up: The smell at the Brown residence

LeQuint Allen ran for 109 yards and two touchdowns, Kyle McCord threw for 323 yards and a score, and both will be getting a nice gift basket from Fran Brown’s wife this week after they lifted Syracuse to a 33-25 win over Cal.

Brown will presumably wait to shower until the team returns to Syracuse, so everyone on the plane can still enjoy the smell of victory.

On the flip side, Cal lost its fifth one-possession game of the season — one that would’ve had the Bears bowl eligible — and Cal coach Justin Wilcox decided he’s boycotting cutting his toe nails, he’ll be blasting Smash Mouth’s “I’m a Believer” cover on repeat at practice and he won’t be throwing away that old tuna sandwich that has been in the office refrigerator until the Bears get win No. 6. Honestly, he had forgotten about the sandwich weeks ago, so this was really just a convenient excuse.

Trending down: Hot seats

Florida already announced Billy Napier would be back next year, and after Saturday’s 49-35 win over West Virginia, Baylor decided Dave Aranda will also be back for 2024.

If Sam Pittman survives at Arkansas, too, it’ll be a remarkable turn for coaches who entered the season on the hottest of seats, and will allow boosters to use all that money typically reserved for buyouts on something more useful, such as building a water slide on the moon.

Aranda now has Baylor set for a bowl game, too, after winning four straight. Baylor’s offense, in particular, has been a revelation, topping 38 in each of the past four.

Meanwhile at Auburn, boosters have scheduled a meeting at their secret hideout behind the Jimmy John’s, and are just going type in Bobby Petrino’s cell number but won’t press send until at least halftime of the Iron Bowl.

Trending up: Big man TDs

Southern demolished Arkansas-Pine Bluff 31-9 on Saturday, and senior defensive tackle Willie Miles delivered a play for the ages in the process.

Miles, who according to Southern’s media guide checks in at 5-foot-9 and a gentlemanly 350 pounds, picked up a loose ball after a DJ Stevenson fumble, and set his sights on the end zone. A Golden Lions lineman appeared to have him corralled at the 5, but Miles had ice water in his veins. He pulled loose from the tackle attempt, spun, gathered his balance, and sprinted for the end zone — running through the back and around to the sideline where his teammate wisely opted against lifting him into the air “Dirty Dancing” style.

This was a fitting highlight in what was Miles’ final home game at Southern.

Trending up: Air mail

At the Utah High School state championships Saturday, a fight for the football happened after a football was dropped from a helicopter hovering over the field.

Though in the long run it did not actually replace the coin toss, it should be implemented as such immediately at all levels of football. However, some schools may not have easy access to a helicopter, so we would also accept wrestling a bear for possession of the football, a wing-eating contest, a breakdancing competition, a series of “Yo Mama” jokes or, if absolutely necessary and only for Ivy League games, a race to see which team can solve the equation from “Good Will Hunting” first.

Trending up: Classy coaches

A week ago, Kennesaw State fired its only coach in program history, Brian Bohannon. First, the school said he resigned. He denied it, and the school relented.

If he’s angry at his former employer though, he’s sure not taking it out on his players.

Kennesaw State played one of its better games in Bohannon’s absence on the sideline, falling to Sam Houston 23-17 in overtime. But what’ll be remembered by most Owls fans is their former coach making a classy gesture in the aftermath of a brutal week. Either that or his moving van has been stuck in traffic on I-75 since Monday.

Heisman five

It’s really a three-man race for the Heisman now, unless you want to count offensive Travis Hunter and defensive Travis Hunter as separate players, in which case he’s going to need to buy another suit for the ceremony.

1. Colorado WR/CB Travis Hunter

Hunter Week 12 touchdown count: 1 scored, 1 allowed.

He should be ashamed of himself, giving up a touchdown like that. It’s the type of performance that would get one of Deion Sanders’ kids docked three spots on his child ranking list.

2. Boise State RB Ashton Jeanty

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Ashton Jeanty seals Boise State’s win with 3rd TD of the night

Ashton Jeanty is the first player to record 26 rushing touchdowns in his first 10 games of a season since Ricky Williams in 1998.

Boise State fell behind San José State 14-0 before somebody remembered to wake Jeanty up and tell him to go smash things. He finished the Broncos’ 42-21 win with 32 carries for 159 yards and three touchdowns, putting Jeanty now just 107 rushing yards shy of 2,000 on the season. Jeanty has also eclipsed 30 carries in five straight games, just the third player of the playoff era to do so.

3. Miami QB Cam Ward

The Hurricanes were off Saturday, giving Ward more time to stew over the loss to Georgia Tech. He has called Brent Key’s house 23 times already this week to ask if his refrigerator is running.

4. Oregon QB Dillon Gabriel

Any chance of Gabriel making a real run at the Heisman probably evaporated Saturday in Madison, as he failed to throw a touchdown pass and the Ducks’ offense struggled. Only a home game against Washington and the Big Ten title game remain before voting commences. The good news is, after 23 seasons of college football, Gabriel will still be a favorite to take home a lifetime achievement award.

5. Penn State TE Tyler Warren

In Saturday’s 49-10 win over Purdue, Warren had eight catches for 127 yards and a touchdown and three carries for 63 yards and a score. All season, he has been Penn State’s do-it-all guy, so long as “all” doesn’t also include beating Ohio State. He’s the first Big Ten non-QB to account for at least 10 touchdowns in a season — at least one each passing, rushing and receiving — since 2017, when another Nittany Lion, Saquon Barkley, did it.

Under-the-radar play of the week

Liberty‘s kicker was pretty, pretty … pretty good in overtime of Saturday’s 35-34 win over UMass.

Normally, UMass is an easy win, but this one seemed destined to go down like a dry scone. UMass jumped out to a 20-7 halftime lead, with the majority of Liberty’s offense coming from pity points. Losing to UMass, of course, is one of the most humiliating things a man can experience along with trying on pants.

But the Flames pulled the old chat-and-cut in the second half, tying the game at 28 with 3:49 to play and forcing overtime. UMass scored first in OT, but kicker Jacob Lurie, who we assume doesn’t respect wood, missed his PAT try. Liberty then matched the touchdown and sent Colin Karhu in to win the game with the extra point — and to stare down the legend, Larry David.

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Liberty hits winning extra point despite Larry David scoreboard distraction

Quinton Cooley rushes in for a 5-yard Liberty touchdown and hit the winning extra point despite a Larry David distraction on the videoboard.

From there, the scoreboard flickered to the actual final score — 35-34 Liberty — which feels offensive. They could’ve at least lied to UMass. A lie is a gesture, it’s a courtesy, it’s a little respect. This was very disrespectful.

Under-the-radar game of the week

Louisville technically joined the ACC in 2014, but it wasn’t until Saturday that the Cardinals truly hit the type of rock bottom misery the ACC foists upon all who approach it.

Louisville, which figured to win easily since it has many Cardinals, whereas Stanford is just one Cardinal, cruised early and led by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter. But Stanford scored on a 25-yard touchdown pass with 45 seconds left to tie the game at 35, forced a Louisville turnover on downs after the Cards ran seven plays in just 35 seconds and Stanford got the ball back with 10 seconds to play at its own 45. That should’ve meant overtime, but Louisville committed an unsportsmanlike penalty, setting up Stanford for a 57-yard field goal try. Quincy Riley then was flagged for being offsides, shaving another 5 yards off the kick, and Emmet Kenney delivered from 52 yards out for the win.

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Emmet Kenney’s 52-yard FG gives Stanford the upset over Louisville

Emmet Kenney’s kick is true as his 52-yard field goal seals an upset victory for Stanford over Louisville.

With one minute to play in the game, ESPN gave Louisville a 90% win probability. With 15 seconds left it was still a coin flip. And with no time left on the clock, it was a full-on #goacc for the ages.

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Jeanty bolsters Heisman case, sets school record

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November 17, 2024

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Jeanty bolsters Heisman case, sets school record

  • Kyle Bonagura, ESPN Staff WriterNov 17, 2024, 12:31 AM ET

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    • Covers college football.
    • Joined ESPN in 2014.
    • Attended Washington State University.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty bolstered his Heisman Trophy résumé Saturday night by breaking the single-season school rushing record in a 42-21 win against San José State.

Jeanty rushed for 159 yards on 32 carries with three touchdowns to up his season total to 1,893 yards through 10 games. He broke the school record set by Jay Ajayi, who ran for 1,823 yards in 14 games in 2014.

“He’s the best football player in the country,” Boise State coach Spencer Danielson said. “He is also a big-time leader and an elite human being.”

The win guaranteed the Broncos, ranked No. 13 in the College Football Playoff rankings, a spot in the Mountain West championship game, which means Jeanty is on pace to rush for over 2,400 yards by the time the Heisman Trophy ballots must be submitted. With a bowl game or an appearance in the playoff, Jeanty could challenge Barry Sanders’ single-season FBS rushing record of 2,628 yards set in 1988.

“It means a lot,” Jeanty said of the school record. “All the past running backs are great and amazing, but to keep the legacy going, the tradition of great running backs at Boise State, I think is a big deal to me.”

Things did not start well for the Broncos and Jeanty against San José State. He was limited to 19 yards on his first nine carries as Boise State fell behind 14-0. But after the Spartans failed to convert on fourth-and-goal to go up 21-0, the Broncos started to find their way.

Jeanty keyed a strong drive to finish the half, which he capped with a 2-yard score to tie the game with 38 seconds before halftime.

“[The challenge] every week is wearing the defense down,” Jeanty said. “We got 8-men boxes, 9-man boxes, so not as many big runs, but over the course of the game, if we’re able to grind them down, get ’em tired, those big runs will come.”

That’s what happened against SJSU. In the second half, Jeanty had runs of 36, 12, 13 and 11 yards, and the Spartans couldn’t keep pace, despite 446 yards passing from quarterback Walker Eget.

Boise State (9-1, 6-0 MW) travels to Wyoming next week before ending the regular season at home against Oregon State on Nov. 29.

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No. 1 Ducks finish strong, outlast pesky Badgers

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November 17, 2024

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No. 1 Ducks finish strong, outlast pesky Badgers

  • Jake Trotter, ESPN Senior WriterNov 17, 2024, 12:44 AM ET

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      Jake Trotter covers college football for ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2011. Before that, he worked at The Oklahoman, Austin American-Statesman and Middletown (Ohio) Journal newspapers. You can follow him @Jake_Trotter.

MADISON, Wis. — Oregon had yet to score a touchdown when “Jump Around” blared throughout Camp Randall Stadium, signaling the start of the fourth quarter in Wisconsin.

The top-ranked Ducks trailed and faced fourth-and-nine. Oregon coach Dan Lanning considered taking a delay of game and punting. Instead, he put his trust in quarterback Dillon Gabriel. And once again, the Heisman Trophy contender delivered.

Unable to find an open receiver, Gabriel scrambled left before threading a pass through a trio of Wisconsin defenders into the chest of tight end Terrance Ferguson for the first down. Three plays later, the Ducks scored their only touchdown of the night.

That was all need they needed. Oregon survived Saturday night with a 16-13 victory over Wisconsin to remain unbeaten.

According to ESPN Research, the Ducks are the only team in the country to win three times this season after trailing by at least six points in the fourth quarter. They’re also just the seventh team in the AP Poll era (since 1936) to start 11-0 with three wins by three or fewer points. Oregon also rallied for wins against Boise State and Ohio State by a combined margin of four points.

“It’s hard to win,” said Gabriel, who passed for 219 yards. “Big plays need to happen in big moments. … winning games are hard, and we have a team that knows how to win. That just speaks volumes about the guys we have.”

The Ducks didn’t make it easy.

Oregon twice settled for field goals in the first half after promising drives. Gabriel also had a pass tipped and intercepted on first-and-goal.

With Oregon’s offense scuffling, the Badgers gradually took control with a methodical rushing attack led by Tawee Walker, who finished with 97 yards.

The Badgers led 13-6 to begin the fourth quarter and seemed headed for their first win over a No. 1 team since toppling Ohio State in 2010.

But momentum swung back in Oregon’s favor after “Jump Around,” Wisconsin’s famed tradition. The Ducks played the song all week during practice to prepare them for the road trip.

To begin the fourth quarter, Lanning told Gabriel to take the delay of game if the Badgers showed zone coverage against Oregon’s triple slant play.

“(They) were in the look that we liked and then they actually checked out of that look,” Lanning said. “But our guys did a good job of executing the scramble drill. … we probably had a little good luck there — and an impressive play by Dillon to keep it alive and find somebody down the field.”

Two possessions later, the Ducks later added the game-winning field goal. Gabriel’s eight-yard scramble on third down helped set up the chip-shot, 24-yard attempt for Atticus Sappington, who nailed the kick with just over 2 minutes to play.

Oregon’s defense did the rest, forcing a turnover on downs, then a tipped interception on Wisconsin’s final drive.

The Ducks will have a bye before facing Washington in the regular-season finale. If they win, they’ll have a chance to secure the No. 1 overall seed in the playoffs with another victory in the Big Ten championship game.

“We can handle critical moments,” Lanning said. “We can handle when it’s tough and at some point, that experience is going to pay off for us. It certainly paid off for us tonight.”

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