Passan: ‘Jactani’ takes over Omaha
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
JAC CAGLIANONE WAS a freshman in high school in 2018 when Shohei Ohtani arrived in Major League Baseball. Like so many, the 15-year-old Caglianone marveled at Ohtani’s ability to hit tape-measure home runs on the same day he threw 100 mph fastballs. His fascination went beyond just gawking, though. Caglianone aspired to be Ohtani.
“I just thought it was the coolest thing ever,” he said. “I’d always done both, and it was something that I planned to do in college, and seeing the way his game grew and keeping a pretty close eye on him and studying all that he did — that was exactly who I wanted to be.”
Caglianone is 20 now and primed to make his Men’s College World Series debut (Friday, 7 p.m. ET on ESPN) as a sophomore for a strong Florida Gators team. In a bracket loaded with future MLB stars, Caglianone might be the most fascinating. Of all the players in the past five years to attempt playing both ways, to embrace the mental and physical burden — to have the gall to think he can imitate Ohtani — none has done it as well as Caglianone in 2023.
In his first college season as a two-way player — Caglianone didn’t pitch his freshman year as he recovered from Tommy John surgery — the 6-foot-5, 245-pound left-hander led the country with 31 home runs as a first baseman and regularly hit 99 mph with a fastball that carried him to a 3.78 ERA over 16 starts. While college baseball is populated with far more two-way players than pro ball, almost all of them leave behind such aspirations eventually, focusing on whichever position will best set them up to play professional baseball. Paul Skenes, the best two-way player in the country last year, ditched hitting after he transferred to LSU, where he flourished into the best pitcher in college baseball and a certain top-5 pick.
Caglianone has no such plans. Being the next great two-way player, he said, is his future.
“I don’t really see me really stopping unless a team flat-out tells me down the road that I’ve got to pick one or makes the decision for me,” Caglianone said. “I have no interest in stopping whatsoever.”
Which means the player who gladly wears the nickname “Jactani” — given to him by Nick De La Torre, a writer who covers Florida — will introduce himself to the country on college baseball’s grandest stage this weekend. And if he lives up to expectations, it will undoubtedly force teams to continue asking themselves the same question they’ve been asking all year.
Can he do it in the big leagues?
FOR THE PAST three years, Ohtani has been so much better than everyone else in MLB that it’s easy to take him for granted. In almost every way, Ohtani is an accident, a glitch in the matrix, a confluence of physical qualities and skills that simply don’t overlap in human beings who choose to play baseball.
The size, the power, the athleticism — it is abundant in Caglianone, too. Caglianone (pronounced CAG-lee-own) grew up in Tampa and blossomed at Plant High, the baseball factory that also produced Pete Alonso and Kyle Tucker. His father, Jeff — Jac is actually an acronym for Jeffrey Alan Caglianone, his given name — played baseball at Stetson and encouraged the young Caglianone to take advantage of all his skills.
Florida recruited him and planned to use him as a pitcher only, but that plan changed after Caglianone blew out his elbow a week before arriving on campus in August 2021. To stay busy during the yearlong rehab, he lifted weights and swung the bat. The loud cracks did not take long to notice. Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan soon thereafter asked if Caglianone might consider burning his planned redshirt season so he could join the lineup. He agreed, homered in his third college at-bat, whacked seven total over 115 plate appearances and looked the part of a promising hitter. Caglianone, said Jarrett Schweim, the athletic trainer for Florida’s baseball team, was “a 6-5, 235-pound freshman who can lift a house. Cags is a little bit of an anomaly when it comes to college baseball bodies and physical abilities.”
Schweim knows outliers well. When he was the athletic trainer for the UCF basketball program, a 7-foot-6 center named Tacko Fall was playing for the team. Schweim wanted to know how to keep him healthy, and he knew he needed help. He placed a phone call to the training staff of the Houston Rockets, hoping that the Rockets’ experience with Yao Ming, their 7-foot-6 Hall of Fame center, might offer some insight. (Don’t skimp on orthotics, he was told.)
“The biggest thing is managing a body,” Schweim said, and that sounds so much simpler than it is. In order to play both ways, Caglianone needs to do nearly twice the work of his teammates. The games are actually the easy part. It’s the work in between, the maintenance, the discipline — the recognition that health is more important than performance because performance can’t exist without health.
As Caglianone began his return to pitching this offseason, it became clear that this would be no ordinary rehab. Planning a return from Tommy John surgery is tough enough. Doing so for a pitcher who also plays first base full time is madness. So Schweim and Florida’s strength and conditioning coaches vowed to be even more hands-on — literally and figuratively.
They monitor Caglianone’s sleep patterns through a Whoop band and ensure he gets at least 5,000 calories a day to stave off the weight loss that normally comes during a season. They did almost daily maintenance on his body: massages Monday, acupuncture or dry needling Tuesdays, soft tissue work on his fascia throughout the week. They stayed on him about keeping his left arm hearty with lower-weight exercises that strengthened the flexor mass (forearm), rotator cuff (shoulder) and everywhere in between.
By the time the first game of a series rolled around Friday, Caglianone was ready to play first base. He would arrive at the stadium well over three hours before first pitch and climb into Normatec boots, which almost go from foot to hip and use compression to get blood circulating. As long as he felt good, the plan was the same Saturday, though if ever the staff felt Caglianone needed a breather, he could take it easy on drills and throws.
When Sunday rolled around, Caglianone would show up to the stadium around 7:30 a.m. for the noon game, hop into the hot tub for 10 or 15 minutes, do his arm exercises afterward, warm up and try to match his prodigious offensive output on the mound. Perhaps no other team in the country would use a player with Caglianone’s stuff as their No. 3 starter, but having right-handers Hurston Waldrep and Brandon Sproat — the former an expected top-15 pick, the latter projected to go in the first round — is a luxury that affords it.
Next season, Caglianone figures the script will be flipped. Instead of playing nine innings at first Friday and Saturday before starting Sunday afternoon, he’ll be in line to be Florida’s Friday night starter and will have to manage any lethargy in the field Saturday and Sunday. It doesn’t concern him.
“The biggest thing that goes overlooked is the recovery,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and say that I don’t feel fatigued at all. But I feel I could do this all year, honestly.”
OTHERS HAVE TRIED this audacious act and run into the harsh reality that dominance in college does not necessarily translate. Most of the great ones — from John Olerud, after whom the college award for the best two-way player is named, to Nick Markakis, who was a two-way juco legend — don’t bother trying. Like Caglianone, Kent State’s John Van Benschoten hit 31 home runs to lead the country in 2001. The Pittsburgh Pirates preferred his right arm to his bat. Van Benschoten’s career ended with the single worst ERA of the 5,544 pitchers with at least 90 major league innings (9.20) — and one home run hit.
The closest to Ohtani that the college system has produced is Brendan McKay, the fourth overall pick in the 2017 draft out of Louisville. He debuted for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2019 with 49 forgettable innings, homered once in 11 plate appearances, and has been hurt pretty much ever since. There are pitchers who become hitters (Rick Ankiel and Adam Loewen) and hitters who become pitchers (Kenley Jansen and Sean Doolittle, a two-way star at Virginia) and they are rightly celebrated for their skills, because it takes most players a lifetime of focus, of uber-specialization, to even sniff the big leagues. To be that good at both — even if not simultaneously — is an incredible feat.
For all the sanguine appraisals that Ohtani’s success would pave the way for an influx of two-way players into MLB, multiple executives now say it might actually have the opposite effect. Said one longtime general manager: “If you have to be the most talented player in the world to do it, then it’s probably too hard for anyone else to do.” Only players with off-the-charts tools on both sides are likely to even get the chance. San Francisco took left-hander Reggie Crawford — he of the 100 mph fastball and batted ball — with the 30th pick in last year’s draft.
Caglianone’s aspirations are greater. If he can refine his control — “I need to cut down on walks,” he said, acknowledging that 49 in 69 innings won’t play — perhaps more teams will regard him long term as someone who could start on the mound. In addition to the big fastball, he throws a slider that flashes as an above-average pitch and a work-in-progress changeup. Even though his batting numbers this season (.336/.402/.766 with 31 home runs and 84 RBIs) were enough to place him with Skenes and his LSU teammate Dylan Crews as the finalists for the Golden Spikes Award — the college baseball Heisman — scouts said Caglianone needs to tighten his swing decisions next year if he wants to join UNC’s Vance Honeycutt in the discussion for the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.
For all the chasing Caglianone might do, he hits the ball with the force of few in the world. His home runs regularly went more than 450 feet. His opposite-field shots rose with the majesty only truly elite power hitters produce. His peak batted-ball numbers — in the 118 mph range — put him in a cohort with the best sluggers in the world: Aaron Judge, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Giancarlo Stanton … and Ohtani. And even Ohtani doesn’t test his limits by playing in the field daily, something on which Caglianone prides himself.
“I always was a hitter who could pitch,” Caglianone said. “Then in high school, when the velo started ticking up, I became a pitcher who could hit. But now it’s shifted to which one’s going better for me at the moment.”
Florida hopes the answer to that question is: both. This week, O’Sullivan could turn to Caglianone in a fireman role, perhaps a preview of what an Ohtani-adjacent big league career could look like: everyday player in the field, high-velocity arm out of the bullpen. Or maybe the Gators stumble in their first game against a dangerous Virginia lineup, win their second game and turn to Caglianone to start their third to avoid elimination.
Whatever his role is, it will include hitting and pitching. The Jac Caglianone experience is coming to the Men’s College World Series, and it will serve as a reminder, to fans and all 30 front offices watching, that as cool as Ohtani is, Jactani is an excellent imitation.
PHILADELPHIA — The Flyers celebrate the star of each victory this season by presenting him with a replica Bernie Parent goalie mask. The white mask with the Flyers logo on each side of the temples looks much like the one Parent wore as a cover boy in the 1970s on Time magazine when the Flyers truly meant something — beyond the Philly sports scene, and even the NHL — and he served as the cloaked face of the Broad Street Bullies.
The Flyers pulled out the mask Saturday night before their game against New Jersey and let it rest on top of one of the goalie nets. One more final tribute for Parent, the Hall of Fame goalie who was honored by the franchise this weekend two months after he died at age 80.
“Forever our No. 1,” said Lou Nolan, the Flyers’ public address announcer since 1972.
With that, the spotlight shone on Parent’s retired No. 1 banner that hangs in the rafters, just a row ahead of the two oversized Stanley Cup championship banners — the only ones in franchise history — that catch the eye in Flyers orange and might not even exist at all if not for the affable goalie from Montreal.
Parent anchored the net for the Flyers when the Bullies reigned under owner Ed Snider as one of the marquee teams in sports. Parent won Stanley Cup, Conn Smythe and Vezina trophies in back-to-back seasons when the Flyers captured the Stanley Cup in ’74 and ’75, the first NHL expansion team to win the championship.
Ahead of the game Saturday against New Jersey, a photo of a smiling Parent flashing his two Stanley Cup rings on the outside arena videoboard loomed large over the 9-foot bronze statue for Snider, the Flyers’ founder who died in 2016.
“‘We’ve got two Stanley Cups because of Bernie,” Hall of Famer Bobby Clarke said at a celebration of life event in front of thousands of Flyers fans.
Flyers fans poured out this weekend to remember Parent over a two-day celebration that started with Friday’s service and extended into Saturday’s tribute game. Flyers fans in droves wore No. 1 Parent jerseys during the game — and what would the goalie think even as, yes, his beloved Flyers scored three goals in 26 seconds against beleaguered Jake Allen — and they roared for every highlight from Parent’s glory years.
The loudest cheers were saved for the Stanley Cup highlights.
The Flyers beat the Boston Bruins in six games to win the Stanley Cup in 1974 and beat Buffalo in 1975. Parent had shutouts in the clinchers each season.
On the flight home from Buffalo, the Flyers plopped the Stanley Cup in the middle of the aisle. For close to 90 minutes, they couldn’t take their eyes off hockey’s ultimate prize.
“We were able to just sit back, look at the Stanley Cup and just savor it,” Parent said in 2010. “It was just a special time.”
With Parent the unstoppable force in net, “Only the Lord saves more than Bernie Parent,” became a popular bumper sticker in Philadelphia that would stick on him as a lifelong slogan — and popular autograph inscription request — through retirement and his many years as a team ambassador.
Parent also served as an ambassador for the Ed Snider Youth Hockey and Education program; a youth hockey program created in 2005 for under-resourced youth in Philadelphia.
The program announced Saturday it would honor Parent’s legacy with the Bernie Parent Goalie Development Program, aimed to prepare young people for success both on and off the ice. Flyers Charities presented a $50,000 donation which was matched by Snider’s children.
Parent, team captain Bobby Clarke and Dave “The Hammer” Schultz all became stars for the Flyers under Snider in an era when the team was known for its rugged style of play that earned the Bullies nickname. They embraced their moniker as the roughest team in the NHL and pounded their way into the hearts of Flyers fans. More than 2 million fans packed Philadelphia streets for each of their championship parades.
Most of the living members from the Cup teams attended the game Saturday and Clarke choked back tears at the memorial as he listed other Flyers from the Stanley Cup teams who have since died. Barry Ashbee. Ed Van Impe. Bill Flett. Ross Lonsberry. Rick MacLeish
“And now, God bless Bernie, because he’s going to join them,” Clarke said. “And the rest of us, until we go join them, we will talk together forever.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Mackenzie Blackwood made 35 saves to lead the Colorado Avalanche to a 3-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Saturday night.
Brent Burns scored early, and Nathan MacKinnon and Jack Drury added empty-net goals for the Avalanche. Colorado has won eight straight, their longest winning streak since taking nine in a row March 4-24, 2024.
The Avalanche hold the best record in the league and are five points up from the second-place Carolina Hurricanes.
Juuse Saros made 23 saves for the Predators, losers of seven of eight. Saturday was the first game back in North America for the Predators after playing a pair of Global Series games last week against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Stockholm, Sweden. The Predators have been shutout in consecutive games.
The shutout was the first of the season and 15th of Blackwood’s career.
Burns scored the game’s first goal just 15 seconds after the opening faceoff.
After a battle in the right corner, the puck came to Burns above the right circle, where he beat Saros with a wrist shot on the first shot of the game.
The game remained 1-0 until MacKinnon scored an empty-net goal was 1:35 remaining in the third with Saros pulled for an extra attacker. Drury added another empty-netter with 51 seconds left.
MacKinnon has three goals in his last two games.
Colorado defenseman Cale Makar failed to record a point in a road game for the first time this season.
The Predators outshot the Avalanche 16-6 in the first, but couldn’t get one past Blackwood.
Saturday was just the fifth time this season that an opponent has outshot the Avalanche. Colorado is 5-0-0 in those games.
Blackwood stopped Nashville’s Michael McCarron with 5:47 remaining in the third on a backhand from the low slot to keep the Predators off the board.
Predators captain Roman Josi returned to the lineup Saturday after missing 12 games with an upper-body injury.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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David Hale
Amid a year in which chaos has been a near constant, preseason expectations have been turned on their heads and James Franklin has gone from No. 2 in the country at Penn State to splitting the dock fees on a pontoon boat with Bud Foster at Virginia Tech inside of six weeks, we had every right to expect Week 13 might deliver some twists and turns we didn’t see coming.
Instead, what we got Saturday was the status quo.
We might’ve hoped Missouri, with Beau Pribula back at quarterback, might’ve upended Oklahoma‘s playoff dreams.
We might’ve believed USC could deliver a dagger to an Oregon team that had largely gone unchallenged all season.
We might’ve dreamed that the Notre Dame–Miami debate could’ve been settled by an upset from Syracuse or the Hokies.
With less than 3 minutes to play in Salt Lake City, we might’ve at least expected to see one upset of Kansas State over Utah, one small fracture in the committee’s playoff rankings, one small shift in the big picture.
Heck, the least we could’ve asked for was a decision on Lane Kiffin’s future, and even that was punted for a week so that the Ole Miss coach can make his announcement at the Egg Bowl by feigning peeing like a dog on the hat of whichever team he plans to coach next year.
None of it happened.
Oklahoma’s defense smothered another SEC opponent, picking off Pribula twice and holding Ahmad Hardy to just 57 yards on the ground in a 17-6 win. The Sooners’ offense may be less than inspiring, but Brent Venables has put together a defense that rivals anything he mustered during his storied career at Clemson, a unit whose impact on the SEC is rivaled only by Jimmy Sexton.
Oregon’s strength entering Saturday appeared to be its dominant defense, too, but instead it was Kenyon Sadiq and Noah Whittington stealing the show on offense and Malik Benson breaking USC on special teams with an 85-yard punt return for a score. On the heels of Oklahoma’s win, seeing Lincoln Riley suffer such a dismal outcome, too, was almost too much beauty for Sooners fans to stand.
In any other year, Saturday’s road trip to Virginia Tech would’ve served as the perfect opportunity for Miami to slip on a banana peel and slide its way into the Sun Bowl, but not this time. Carson Beck threw for 320 yards and four touchdowns. Malachi Toney had 12 catches. The defense racked up five sacks. Miami won 34-17. The win was good enough that, for just a few moments, allowed the Canes to climb into the same tier as Notre Dame for the committee to compare the two teams directly — just in time for Notre Dame to win 70-7 and remind everyone that the Irish are actually way better. The committee immediately put Miami back into the “evaluate after we gorge ourselves on room service chicken fingers and need a nap” section of the playoff discussions.
BYU had no trouble dispatching Cincinnati, the SEC’s powers dominated lower-level opposition and Ohio State sent a sternly worded letter to the conference asking that the Buckeyes not have to get out of bed before 2 p.m. for the likes of Rutgers in the future. It was all easy.
If any of the top playoff contenders offered real drama, it was Utah. Kansas State’s run game was relentless, chalking up 472 yards and five scores. The two teams traded scores early with five lead changes and three ties through three quarters of action. But a Utah fumble midway through the fourth set up a K State score and a 47-37 Wildcats lead with 7 minutes to go. But the Utes refused to roll over, scoring twice in the final 2:47, and pulling away with a 51-47 win.
The come-from-behind victory could be more than just a necessary step in protecting Utah’s playoff hopes. Utah fans wondered if perhaps Saturday would be Kyle Whittingham’s final game at Rice-Eccles Stadium, knowing his exit as the Utes head coach was always destined to be a low-key affair, something akin to the end of “Good Will Hunting,” with Morgan Scalley knocking on Whittingham’s door one morning to find he’s no longer there and only a note explaining the departure: “I have to go see about a … used Ford F-350.”
And yet, for all the chaos avoided in Week 13, one final Saturday remains before any of our playoff calculus should be written in ink.
Oklahoma is well-positioned, but a date with LSU looms. The Tigers have fired a coach, stumbled from the rankings, taken out a second mortgage on Death Valley to try to lure Kiffin to Baton Rouge. Could LSU deliver one more dose of drama in 2025?
Oregon appeared to punch its playoff ticket with Saturday’s win over USC, and yet a trip to Washington still looms. This is not the 2023 Huskies, but a trip to Seattle is still hardly an easy win. It’s only fitting that the remnants of the Pac-12 can still offer some late-season drama, as if Larry Scott is still looking to cost the conference money, even from his new post as, we’re guessing, somewhere in the New York Jets front office.
Miami’s playoff hopes might come down to the whims of the committee or, just as likely, the fourth-quarter clock management of Mario Cristobal. The Canes have a date with Pitt in Week 14, and if you flip to page 306 of this year’s Farmer’s Almanac, you’ll see that a late-season loss to the Panthers after blowing a 14-point lead has been the likeliest outcome for the Hurricanes the whole time.
Utah and BYU, too, have playoff life even if they’re long shots.
No, Saturday didn’t upset the status quo, but the question as we head toward the finish line is whether Week 13’s action was a chance for the biggest winners to load the fireworks before the inevitable celebration or if they were simply getting all the deck chairs precisely situated before hitting the iceberg.
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Under the radar | Vibesman five
Week 13 vibe check
Each week, college football’s top teams battle to shape the course of the season. But beyond the headliners, dozens of smaller matchups prove to be just as consequential. We track those here.
Trending down: ACC certainty
Georgia Tech entered Saturday as the only ACC team with any real clarity: Win and the Yellow Jackets would clinch a spot in the conference title game.
Of course, nothing in the ACC is that simple.
Pitt jumped to a 28-0 lead, thwarted one Georgia Tech comeback with a 100-yard interception return for a score and then ended the Jackets’ hopes with a 56-yard Ja’Kyrian Turner touchdown run with 2:41 to go to seal a 42-28 win.
The ACC now has three teams tied atop the standings at 6-1 — Virginia, Pitt and SMU — followed by Georgia Tech at 6-2 and Miami and Duke at 5-2. It sets up the possibility of a six-way tie at 6-2 with the conference championship then being decided by a series of tie breakers that almost certainly will involve Pat Narduzzi losing a rock, paper, scissors match because he assumed rock was invincible and Cristobal edging out Tony Elliott in a staring contest by wearing a pair of fake glasses with a funny nose and mustache attached.
Trending down: Florida‘s optimism
Tennessee throttled the Gators 31-11 on Saturday, holding Florida to just 261 yards of offense and effectively setting the cruise control for the second half while Josh Heupel rewatched the first four seasons of “Stranger Things” to get prepped for new episodes.
Worse yet, as Florida floundered its way through another loss, AD Scott Stricklin looked up into the stands, where Lane Kiffin stood solemnly, his arm outstretched, offering a long pause to build the drama before offering a thumbs down. Florida will now turn to its next best option to coach the team in 2026: three toddlers wearing a trench coat and pretending to be a grown man.
Trending up: Style points
With just two games left against struggling ACC teams and a crowd of two-loss teams pushing for the final few playoff spots, Notre Dame knew Saturday’s contest against Syracuse would be about more than just winning. This one needed to look good.
So, by halftime, Jeremiyah Love was holding the charred corpse of Otto the Orange above his head and yelling, “Are you not entertained?”
The Irish led 49-0 at the half, picked off Syracuse QB Joseph Filardi three times and Love ran for 171 yards and three touchdowns in a 70-7 win.
Afterward, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said he was disappointed the defensive game plan of recording enough sacks that the Orange circumnavigated the globe in reverse, thus finishing with negative points, didn’t come to fruition, but was encouraged by news that Stanford had increased the life insurance on its tree mascot before next week’s season finale.
Trending up: Suffering for the Seminoles
It was Friedrich Nietzsche who posited that all life was suffering, and though he came up with that idea a full 81 years before Mike Norvell was born, it’s safe to say Florida State‘s past two years are pretty much what he had in mind.
To recap: FSU’s Heisman candidate QB got hurt in a meaningless game against an FCS foe in November 2023. As a result, the Noles were snubbed from the College Football Playoff despite a 13-0 record. Norvell was a top candidate for the vacant Alabama job but instead returned to FSU with a huge new contract. The Noles limped into the next season, astonishingly went 2-10, overhauled the coaching staff, beat Alabama to open this season, lost four in a row, including one to Stanford, rebounded and then, on Friday, offered perhaps the single greatest example of the incredibly thin line between comedy and tragedy as the world has ever seen in the final four minutes of a 21-11 loss to NC State.
Only teams to have out-gained their opponents by 40 yards or more in all or all but one game this year:
No. 2 Indiana
No. 5 Texas Tech
No. 6 Ole Miss
No. 7 Oregon
Florida State (5-6)— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) November 22, 2025
The Noles D stuffed the Wolfpack on fourth down with 3:53 to play. NC State punted. The punt bounced off an FSU player’s helmet, rebounded backward and landed in the arms of the Pack’s punter near the original line of scrimmage.
The Noles D held again, forced another punt and this time FSU’s Squirrel White fumbled the catch, giving the ball to NC State again.
The Noles D held yet again, but NC State opted to go for it on fourth-and-6 and found the end zone from 12 yards out.
FSU still had a chance but shanked a short field goal — its second of the game — and, by the end, all that was missing was the PA system at Carter Finley Stadium playing “Yakety Sax” on repeat and Novell being knocked unconscious after trying to exit the field through a tunnel a roadrunner had painted on a brick wall.
Of course, Neitzche also argued, in his “four great errors” that all free will was an illusion, so it’s fair to say this isn’t Norvell’s fault but rather the inevitable result of a chaotic universe. On the other hand, another of his “four errors” was “Don’t sign DJ Uiagalelei and Tommy Castellanos in back-to-back seasons,” so perhaps there’s ample blame to go around.
Trending up: Heavy trophies
Justin Lamson threw for 175 yards, ran for 80 and accounted for two touchdowns as No. 3 Montana State knocked off archrival and second-ranked Montana 31-28 to capture the Big Sky championship and win the Great Divide Trophy.
Montana scored on a 52-yard run with 6:59 to play, pulling to within three, but the Grizzlies never saw the ball again. Montana State engineered a 14-play, 72-yard drive, converting a fourth-and-1 and a third-and-4 along the way, to bleed the last 7 minutes off the clock and secure the win.
The Bobcats have now won the Brawl of the Wild in seven of the past nine matchups, which means prime bragging rights for Montana State fans over that family of bears who live down the block.
Trending down: SEC strength of schedules
It’s Week 13, which means it’s time for half the SEC to welcome in its regular host of hapless cannon fodder: The Little Sisters of the Poor, the Washington Generals, an adult flag football rec league team and, of course, Florida.
It’s tradition in the SEC to prep for rivalry week with one game after another against vastly overmatched foes, so on Saturday we saw Georgia demolish Charlotte, Texas A&M stomp Samford and Alabama trounce Eastern Illinois. Even Auburn got in on the action, walloping Mercer 62-17 in a game that even Hugh Freeze probably could’ve won.
This is all necessary because, as everyone knows, life in the SEC is a grind, with every other game of the season a brutal, physical affair that slowly chops away at the league’s best squads like a thousand paper cuts.
And sure, Gunner Stockton and Ty Simpson combined to throw three picks and zero touchdowns in their wins. It’s only reasonable given that they played half the game holding a tall glass of iced tea and listening to a podcast about woodworking. The important thing is, when it was all over, they had fully recovered from the season’s long, arduous journey through the SEC and emerged with a spring in their step, a pat on the back and a note from the playoff selection committee that read: “We loved your game control. XOXO.”
Trending up: Sun Devils’ resurgence
Kenny Dillingham turned Jordan Travis into a Heisman contender, salvaged Bo Nix’s career and made Sam Leavitt a star. But that was nothing compared to his latest trick: Jeff Sims is a good QB right now.
Sims threw for 206 yards and two touchdowns as Arizona State demolished Colorado 42-17.
The Sun Devils are 3-1 with Sims as the starter, matching the most wins Georgia Tech managed in any of three seasons with Sims at the helm.
The real star of the show, however, was Arizona State tailback Raleek Brown, who carried 22 times for 255 yards and, after the game, Deion Sanders reluctantly decided Brown’s jersey should be retired at Colorado, too.
Trending up: Andrew Luck’s cavalry
Dearest mother —
I bring good tidings from the battlefield. We have vanquished the hated enemy from Berkeley. Though our front lines sustained many casualties, our defensive battalions proved strong. Our men charged from the rear, thrice apprehending the enemy’s payload and delivering it to safe harbor. In addition, a young soldier called Micah Ford proved his valor, marching 150 yards into enemy territory. His bravery shall be rewarded with an officer’s commission at war’s end. Now, I must bid you farewell. While we celebrate this victory with much revelry and ale, my heart remains heavy with the awareness that an even greater enemy — men from across the sea in that emerald isle of St. Patrick — await. We must be prepared for an even greater battle to come.
Please, give my love to father and the children.
Sincerely,
Andrew Luck, captain, Stanford infantry
Trending up: ‘Seinfeld’ references
Washington didn’t gain statehood until 53 years after James Madison died, but that didn’t stop Washington State from trying to end James Madison‘s quest for the playoff Saturday.
The Cougars led 20-17 midway through the fourth quarter before Dukes’ tailback Wayne Knight took a handoff and ran like he was smuggling stolen dinosaur DNA off an island, scampering 58 yards for a go-ahead score.
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Wayne Knight scores 58-yard rushing touchdown
Wayne Knight scores 58-yard rushing touchdown
Knight finished with 126 yards on 15 carries, all while besting Kramer in an hourslong game of Risk, delivering a critical 24-20 win for the Dukes, who move to 10-1 on the season and remain in prime position to swipe the automatic playoff bid from the Group of 5.
It is, of course, Knight’s greatest contribution to an important sporting event since he assisted Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny in defeating a group of aliens in a game of pickup basketball in 1996.
Trending down: Ivy League dominance
Josh Pitsenberger ran for 143 yards and three scores, Dante Reno tossed three touchdowns and Yale upended Harvard 45-28 on Saturday to claim a share of the Ivy League championship.
When it was over, Yale’s fans stormed the field. Well, they didn’t so much storm it as have their concierge make a reservation and preordered the soufflé, which, of course, takes two hours to make, then had Jeeves bring the Mercedes around to properly escort them onto the field. The point is, they were excited.
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Yale fans storm field after team clinches Ivy League FCS Playoff bid
Yale defeats Harvard 45-28 and fans celebrate the team getting the Ivy League’s first-ever automatic bid to the FCS playoffs.
It was a stunning defeat for Harvard, which had entered the game 9-0 and eager for some redemption after losing its past three to Yale. Afterward, the Crimson downplayed the loss by noting that a Harvard man would never be so crass as to run the ball 49 times. So much manual labor is fine for someone at Dartmouth or Brown.
Under-the-radar play of the week
The Victory Bell belongs with Duke, and Bill Belichick won’t be bowling in his first season in North Carolina after the Blue Devils escaped a trip to Chapel Hill with a 32-25 win.
While Duke controlled the first half, UNC stormed back with two long touchdown drives to take a 25-24 lead late in the fourth quarter. The Heels’ D then stuffed Duke on a third-down try, appearing to set up a field goal attempt for the lead. But Manny Diaz had a trick up his sleeve.
DUKE PULLS OFF THE FAKE FIELD GOAL 🤯 @DukeFOOTBALL pic.twitter.com/syr9FoOdue
— ACC Network (@accnetwork) November 22, 2025
Duke’s fake field goal caught UNC sleeping like a man in the fourth hour of watching his girlfriend’s adult cheerleading competition, and kicker Todd Pelino bolted 26 yards to the 1, setting up an easy touchdown that proved to be the difference.
Under-the-radar game of the week
With 1:07 to play and the score tied at 34, Kennesaw State‘s Amari Odom completed back-to-back passes — the first a 40-yard dagger down the middle of the field and the latter a 14-yard touchdown to go up 41-34.
0:27
Chase Belcher puts Kennesaw State ahead with 27 seconds left
Amari Odom finds Chase Belcher in the back of the end zone to put the Owls ahead late in the 4th.
That gave the ball back to Missouri State with just 27 seconds to play, but the Bears weren’t going down without a fight. Consecutive completions moved the ball to near midfield before Jacob Clark looked deep in search of the tying touchdown. Instead, Alexander Ford picked off the pass and sealed the win for the Owls.
Odom finished with 387 yards passing and five touchdowns, as the Owls moved to 8-3 on the season and 6-1 in Conference USA. With a win next week at Liberty, Kennesaw State will lock up a spot in the conference championship game after going 2-10 a year ago.
Vibesman five
This was not a fun week for the Heisman Trophy discussion. Georgia and Alabama played cupcakes. Indiana was off. Ohio State played Rutgers, which is somewhere between playing a cupcake and having off. So, rather than rehash last week’s list, let’s give flowers to the players who’ve been tons of fun this year without having much of a shot at the hardware.
1. Texas QB Arch Manning
Manning threw for 389 yards and accounted for five touchdowns, and as long as we ignore the first eight weeks of the season, he would have a real shot at the actual Heisman. Alas, the Heisman voters aren’t like the College Football Playoff committee. They can’t just choose to ignore certain outcomes they don’t like. And so, we’re forced to simply appreciate Manning’s greatness in the context of his slow start. In truth, it’s not his fault. He clearly got a sizable portion of his QB DNA from Uncle Eli, whose career was built upon playing mediocre ball until late in the season and then somehow winning two Super Bowls anyway.
2. Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia
Pavia has a real shot at an invite to the Heisman ceremony, and even if he doesn’t win the actual award, he’s well-positioned for a lifetime achievement trophy of some sort after a dazzling 26-year career. And, if nothing else, Saturday’s 45-17 blowout of Kentucky in which Pavia threw for 484 yards and five touchdowns allowed us to witness Pavia’s best argument for winning the Heisman.
Wait for Pavia’s Heisman pose 🔥🏆 pic.twitter.com/F3RMrd81D9
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) November 22, 2025
3. North Texas QB Drew Mestemaker
Mestemaker wasn’t even the starting QB on his high school team, spending the entirety of his career at Vandegrift High (Texas) waiting for the starter to get hurt so he could come in, throw a Hail Mary to win the big game after the coach quits at halftime, then point to his dad and yell, “I don’t want … your life!” Instead, he walked on at UNT, started last year’s bowl game, and in 2025 blossomed into a star. On Saturday, he threw for 469 yards and accounted for four touchdowns in a 56-24 win over Rice, then calmly explained to his dad that, no, he’s not interested in following him into the insurance business, but he respects all his father’s life choices and appreciates all the sacrifices he has made for the family.
4. Louisiana governor Jeff Landry
Believe it or not, Brian Kelly wasn’t officially informed he was fired until this week, as the school deals with a lawsuit with the former coach over his contract buyout. How much of this is Landry’s fault? It’s hard to say, but his involvement has clearly complicated things, and it’s just so nice to finally see a coaching change result in utter chaos without somehow involving Phil Fulmer.
5. Hawai’i kicker Kansei Matsuzawa
Matsuzawa connected on a 45-yard field goal in Hawaii’s 38-10 loss to UNLV on Friday, making him a perfect 23-for-23 this season. It’s pretty impressive given that Matsuzawa taught himself to kick by watching videos on YouTube. All of this begs the question: Why can Matsuzawa learn to kick by using social media, but somehow every time Dabo Swinney types in “What is the transfer portal” on Bing, people laugh and say he’s out of touch?
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