College football takeaways: CFP positioning, Ole Miss’ portal power and more from Week 11
With Week 11 coming to an end, we look back at key takeaways from exciting victories, surprising losses and teams making a late surge toward the College Football Playoff.
No. 16 Ole Miss pulled off an exhilarating win at home over No. 3 Georgia. With Georgia now suffering two conference losses on the season, how could this week’s loss affect its potential CFP ranking?
With a little more than a month left of the regular season, Army and Colorado are making late pushes toward title games and a possible spot in the 12-team CFP field. What does each team need to do to gain one of those spots?
Our college football experts break down key storylines and takeaways from Week 11.
Head-to-head results matter to the CFP selection committee … sometimes
Ole Miss just beat Georgia in a critical game that boosted the two-loss Rebels’ playoff hopes, but it’s not a guarantee that Ole Miss will be ranked ahead of Georgia in their second ranking on Tuesday. The committee will compare Georgia’s best wins — against Texas and Clemson — with Ole Miss’ wins against South Carolina and Georgia. They will also look at the Rebels’ home loss to Kentucky, and the overtime loss to LSU — which just got smacked by Bama.
The FCS win against Furman will also stand out in the room. In what is still a very subjective system, the head-to-head win against Georgia could mean more to one committee member than it does another. Will they drop their No. 3 team behind two two-loss teams? It depends on whom you ask. — Heather Dinich
Is it better to be the deep SEC or the top-heavy Big Ten with CFP selections?
After Week 11, the SEC marketing brain trust is undoubtedly working on a modified message: It just means more to go 10-2. The league amazingly has seven teams with one or two losses, including Missouri, which pulled off another bewildering win that left coach Eliah Drinkwitz stumping for CFP consideration. Two blowout losses for the Tigers are likely disqualifying, but the SEC undoubtedly will push them and its other two-loss contenders. Ole Miss and Alabama are in that group after very impressive wins over now-eliminated LSU and still-very-much-alive Georgia, which can bring Tennessee into the two-loss cohort this coming week.
If Georgia beats Tennessee in Athens, Texas A&M beats Texas in College Station and every other team wins its other games, the SEC still could have seven two-loss teams at the end of the regular season. Good luck sorting all of them out for CFP selection.
Things are much cleaner in the Big Ten, which is arguably more top-heavy than ever. Two undefeated teams remain, including Indiana, which won its 10th game for the first time in team history but faced true adversity for the first time this fall. Indiana faces Ohio State on Nov. 23, but the other Big Ten CFP contenders, Oregon and Penn State, do not have a ranked opponent left. After the top four, the Big Ten drops off substantially, as every other team has at least three conference losses. If Indiana falls at Ohio State and everyone else wins out, the Big Ten will be left with three 11-1 teams and Oregon at 12-0.
How will the committee evaluate Ole Miss, Alabama and Georgia against Indiana and Penn State? If Ohio State loses to, say, Indiana, how will the Buckeyes stack up against the SEC’s 10-2 group? I’m sure everyone will be satisfied with what the selection committee decides. — Adam Rittenberg
Bruins continue surprise surge
At Big Ten media days, first-year UCLA head coach DeShaun Foster caused a stir when he stumbled and froze through his opening remarks to begin his news conference. Then, after failing to evoke much confidence in Indianapolis, Foster and the Bruins started 1-5, their only victory coming in a narrow win over Hawai’i.
But since, UCLA under Foster has quietly surged.
Friday night, the Bruins knocked off Iowa 20-17 for their third win in a row. Quarterback Ethan Garbers is up to sixth in the Big Ten in QBR (71.5), with eight touchdowns and only two picks over the past three games.
Suddenly, the Bruins (4-5) are knocking on the door of bowl eligibility in Foster’s debut season. With a win over rival USC in two weeks, they could even finish ahead of the once-ballyhooed Trojans in the Big Ten standings. — Jake Trotter
Ole Miss’ portal overhaul pays off
One year ago, in the moments after a 52-17 beatdown loss to Georgia that knocked Ole Miss out of playoff contention, Lane Kiffin knew what needed to change.
“We’ve gotta recruit at a higher level,” Kiffin told reporters.
He needed to build a team with size and length on par to the SEC’s best, particularly on defense. Closing the gap on Georgia and Alabama required bigger and better. The Rebels were already ahead of the game on transfer recruiting. But going into 2024, they couldn’t afford to miss.
They didn’t. Ole Miss proved an awful lot in its 28-10 rout of Georgia on Saturday, dominating a top-3 opponent with a lineup that included eight starters on offense and nine on defense who came to Oxford via the portal. The toughness of Jaxson Dart and the Ole Miss offense deserves plenty of praise, but coordinator Pete Golding’s turnaround on defense really fueled this win.
Pass rushers Princely Umanmielen, Jared Ivey and Walter Nolen overwhelmed Georgia and were worth every penny. Linebackers TJ Dottery and Chris Paul Jr. combined for 19 tackles and effectively contained the Bulldogs’ rushing attack. John Saunders Jr. grabbed a clutch fourth-quarter interception. All of them transferred to Ole Miss to help this program finally break through and win these season-defining games.
Two early SEC losses cranked up the pressure on this team and has brought out its best. Against Georgia, Kiffin proved he accomplished his mission: Ole Miss finally has the talent, experience and depth it takes to chase a national championship. — Max Olson
Virginia fights on two years after tragedy
There are some days where it hits Virginia coach Tony Elliott more than others, nearly two years after Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry were shot and killed.
Time has passed, but the pain has not. On Wednesday, the two-year anniversary of their deaths, the university will hold a moment of silence. Anyone with the football program is invited to place flowers at the memorial trees planted in their honor last year. The roster has turned over since the tragedy happened, but there remains a core group of players who lived through the devastation. Elliott has tried to find a way to lead them forward. Because the work in building a football team continues on.
That is why what Virginia has done this season should not go unnoticed. Following a 24-19 upset win over No. 19 Pittsburgh on Saturday night, Virginia (5-4, 3-3) is one win away from bowl eligibility. After winning three games in each of his first two seasons, the Cavaliers have more overall wins and more ACC wins in Year 3.
The schedule has been daunting, with games already against ranked Louisville, Clemson and Pitt and two more to come — at Notre Dame on Saturday, then home to SMU before finishing at rival Virginia Tech.
During an open date before playing Pitt, Elliott refused to talk about the degree of difficulty with the schedule, telling ESPN, “Truth be told, I want to find a way to go win at least two of these games and get these seniors to a bowl game. I’m not going to sell this group short.”
Given what the program has overcome, Elliott said, “Everybody who is a part of the program has embraced what our new normal is. So it’s been a little bit easier just to stay in our rhythm because we don’t constantly have something going on associated with it. We have certain moments in time where we take a pause, and I’ve been intentional by acknowledging it but not being overbearing with it.
“I am day-to-day. There are moments in time where just unprovoked I’ll have my moments where I think about it and it hurts me to my core that something like that happens.”
Virginia has daily reminders when it walks into the facility, as three mannequins dressed in the jersey numbers of Chandler, Davis and Perry greet them, as a lasting tribute in their honor. Elliott and his team have repeatedly said they want to play every game to make them proud. Getting to a bowl this season would be a testament to the work they have collectively done to get the program back in the face of unthinkable circumstances. — Andrea Adelson
Daily returns, powers Army to crucial November win
Army’s Week 11 trip to North Texas marked the most significant remaining hurdle left on the Black Knights’ AAC schedule with a seismic meeting against Notre Dame waiting in Week 13. So it was a good day for Army to get quarterback Bryson Daily back under center.
Sidelined by an undisclosed injury against Air Force in Week 10, Daily returned Saturday and turned a career-high 36 carries into 153 yards and a pair of touchdowns in a 14-3 road victory, extending the nation’s longest active win streak to 13 games. Daily’s 10-yard, first-quarter touchdown run erased the Black Knights’ first deficit of the season. And the senior quarterback was the catalyst for Army’s 21-play, 94-yard scoring drive after halftime, accounting for 12 carries and 51 yards on a game-sealing series that ate up 13:54 of game clock and sucked the life out of a lingering North Texas comeback bid.
For Daily, who trails only Boise State‘s Ashton Jeanty for the nation’s touchdown lead after Week 11, it was another dazzling performance in what has been a dominant season powering an explosive Black Knights offense. With two more touchdowns on Saturday, Daily became the first FBS quarterback to reach 20 rushing scores in a season since Louisville’s Malik Cunningham in 2021. Per ESPN Research, Daily is also the first passer to log 20-plus rushing touchdowns in his team’s first nine games since at least 2000, while his run of six consecutive games with 100-plus rushing yards and multiple rushing scores is tied for the longest streak by an FBS quarterback over the past 20 seasons.
Daily’s return on Saturday and the win that followed not only pencils Army into the AAC title game ahead of the program’s Nov. 30 conference finale with UTSA, but sets up what is likely to amount to a playoff elimination game when the Black Knights meet Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium on Nov. 23. Beat the Irish and close out the AAC Championship, and Army could very well vault past Boise State and into the CFP. And with Daily back in the fold, there’s plenty of reason to believe at West Point. — Eli Lederman
Colorado is ready for its close-up now
The novelty of Deion Sanders, head coach of a Power 5 program hit college football like a tsunami wave last season. The Buffs’ highs and lows were chronicled in detailed fashion resulting in one of the most polarized teams in recent history.
A second year into the Deion era, the eyes of the sport had started to drift away, the wave of attention had subsided and yet Colorado and Sanders have now turned novelty into substance.
The Buffs have won four games in a row — including an impressive 41-27 win over Texas Tech Saturday — turning what felt like a middling season into a potential playoff run. Their defense has improved (they are allowing around 100 fewer yards per game than last season) while the offense has been more productive and efficient in Shedeur Sanders‘ second season under center. Travis Hunter remains otherworldly and the likely best player in the sport.
With three games remaining, Colorado now controls its own destiny. The Buffs play three teams that currently have losing records and they will be favored in every one of those matchups. Make it through those unscathed and a likely meeting with currently undefeated BYU awaits in the Big 12 title game. Win them all and they’re in.
The addition of Sanders to the sport’s tapestry created much hoopla last season. But as the results worsened, it became easy to question the experiment altogether. Now, the attention is fully back and it should be: There’s more here than meets the eye. — Paolo Uggetti
-
Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — Roki Sasaki donned a No. 11 Los Angeles Dodgers jersey atop a makeshift stage Wednesday afternoon and called it the culmination of “an incredibly difficult decision.”
When Sasaki was posted by the Chiba Lotte Marines in the middle of December — a development evaluators have spent years anticipating — 20 major league teams formally expressed interest. Eight of those clubs were granted initial meetings at the L.A. offices of Sasaki’s agency, Wasserman. Three were then named finalists in the middle of January, prompting official visits to their ballparks. And in the end, to practically nobody’s surprise, it was the Dodgers who won out.
The Dodgers had long been deemed favorites for Sasaki, so much so that many viewed the pairing as an inevitability. In the wake of that actually materializing, scouts and executives throughout the industry have privately complained about being dragged through what they perceived as a process that already had a predetermined outcome. Some have also expressed concern that the homework assignment Sasaki gave to each of the eight teams he initially met with, asking them to present their ideas for how to recapture the life of his fastball, saw them provide proprietary information without ultimately having a reasonable chance to get him.
Sasaki’s agent, Joel Wolfe, admitted he has heard some of those complaints over the past handful of days.
“I’ve tried to be an open book and as transparent as possible with all the teams in the league,” said Wolfe, who has vehemently denied claims of a predetermined deal from the onset. “I answer every phone call, I answer every question. This goes back to before the process even started. Every team I think would tell you that I told each one of them where they stood throughout the entire process, why they got a meeting, why they didn’t get a meeting, why other teams got a meeting. I tried to do my best to do that. He was only going to be able to pick one.”
Sasaki, 23, is considered one of the world’s most promising pitching prospects, with a triple-digit fastball and an otherworldly splitter. Through four seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball, Sasaki posted a 2.10 ERA, a 0.89 WHIP and 505 strikeouts against just 88 walks in 394⅔ innings. But he has openly acknowledged to teams that he is not yet fully formed, and many of those who followed him in Japan believed his priority would be to go to the team that had the best chance of making him better.
Few would argue that the Dodgers don’t fit that description. Their vast resources, recent run of success and sizeable footprint in Japan made them an obvious fit for Sasaki, but it was their track record of pitching development that landed them one of the sport’s most intriguing prospects.
“His goal is to be the first Japanese pitcher to win a Cy Young, and he definitely possesses the ability to do that,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “We’re excited to partner with him.”
Sasaki will join a star-studded rotation headlined by Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, decorated Japanese countrymen who signed free agent deals totaling more than $1 billion in December 2023. The Dodgers went on to win the ensuing World Series, then doubled down on one of the sport’s richest, most talented rosters.
Over the past three months, they’ve signed starting pitcher Blake Snell for $182 million, extended utility man Tommy Edman for $74 million, given reliever Tanner Scott $72 million, brought back corner outfielder Teoscar Hernandez for $66 million, added another corner outfielder in Michael Conforto ($17 million) and struck a surprising deal with Korean middle infielder Hyeseong Kim ($12.5 million). At some point, they’ll finalize a contract with another back-end reliever in Kirby Yates and will bring back longtime ace Clayton Kershaw.
But Sasaki, who has drawn the attention of Dodgers scouts since he was throwing 100-mph fastballs in high school, was the ultimate prize.
“As I transition to the major leagues, I am deeply honored so many teams reached out to me, especially considering I haven’t achieved much in Japan,” Sasaki, speaking through an interpreter, said in front of hundreds of media members. “It makes me feel more focused than ever. I am truly grateful to all the team officials who took the time to meet with me during this process.
“I spent the past month both embracing and reflecting on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to choose a place purely based on where I can grow as a player the most,” Sasaki continued. “Every organization helped me in its own way, and it was an incredibly difficult decision to choose just one. I am fully aware that there are many different opinions out there. But now that I have decided to come here, I want to move forward with the belief that the decision I made is the best one, trust in those who believed in my potential and (have) conviction in the goals that I set for myself.”
Major League Baseball heard complaints from rival teams about a prearranged deal between Sasaki’s side and the Dodgers before he was posted, prompting an investigation “to ensure the protocol agreement had been followed,” a league official said in a statement. MLB found no evidence, prompting Sasaki to be included as part of the 2025 international signing class.
Because he is under 25 years old and spent less than six seasons in NPB, Sasaki was made available as an international amateur, his earnings restricted to teams’ signing-bonus pools. The Dodgers gave him $6.5 million, which constitutes the vast majority of their allotment, and will control Sasaki’s rights until he attains the six years of service time required for free agency. Sasaki said his immediate goal is to “beat the competition and make sure I do get a major league contract.”
Sasaki combined to throw barely more than 200 innings over the past two years and is expected to be handled carefully in the United States. The Dodgers won’t set a strict innings limit for him in 2025 but will deploy a traditional six-man rotation, which also makes sense with Ohtani returning as a two-way player. The Dodgers’ initial meeting with Sasaki saw them tout the way their training staff, pitching coaches and performance-science group work in harmony. In their second, they brought out Ohtani, Edman, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts and Sasaki’s catcher, Will Smith, in hopes of wooing him. And in the end, it was Ohtani who broke the news to the Dodgers’ front-office members, letting them know they landed Sasaki in a text before his agent could get around to calling.
Friedman described it as “pure excitement.” Many others, however, rolled their eyes at what they felt was inevitable. Wolfe denied that, saying, “I don’t believe [the Dodgers] was always the destination.” But then he went on to describe how prevalent the Dodgers are in Japan. Their games are on every morning and rebroadcast later at night. Dodgers-specific shops outfit stadiums throughout the country.
“They’re everywhere,” Wolfe said. “And I think that all the players and fans see the Dodgers every day, so it’s always in their mind because of Ohtani and Yamamoto. But when (Sasaki) came over here, he came with a very open mind.”
-
Greg Wyshynski
NHL teams don’t necessarily need a goaltender that can drag them to the Stanley Cup, mostly because those types of netminders are unicorns. What they need is a goalie that can make a save at a critical time; and, perhaps most of all, not lose a game for the team in front of them.
As the NHL playoff picture comes into focus, so does the quality of every team’s most important position. Will their goaltending be the foundation for a playoff berth and postseason run? Or is it the fatal flaw in their designs on the Stanley Cup?
The NHL Bubble Watch is our monthly check-in on the Stanley Cup playoff races using playoff probabilities and points projections from Stathletes for all 32 teams. This month, we’re also giving each contending team a playoff quality goaltending rating based on the classic Consumer Reports review standards: Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor.
We also reveal which teams shouldn’t worry about any of this because they’re lottery-bound already.
But first, a look at the projected playoff bracket:
Ohio State‘s 34-23 victory over Notre Dame in Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship game was the most-watched game of the season. However, it was a double-digit drop in viewers from last year.
ESPN announced Wednesday that the Buckeyes’ second national championship in the CFP era averaged 22.1 million viewers. It was the most-watched, non-NFL sporting event over the past year, but a 12% drop from the 25 million who tuned in for Michigan’s 34-13 victory over Washington in 2024.
It was the third-lowest audience of the 11 CFP title games, with all three occurring in the past five years. The audience peaked at 26.1 million viewers during the second quarter (8:30 to 8:45 p.m. ET) when the score was tied at 7.
Since Alabama’s 26-23 overtime victory over Georgia in 2018, the past seven title games have had an average margin of victory of 25.4 points. Ohio State had a 31-7 lead midway through the third quarter before Notre Dame rallied to get within one possession with five minutes remaining in the fourth.
Georgia’s 65-7 rout of TCU in 2023 was the least-viewed title game (17.2 million) followed by Alabama’s 52-24 win over Ohio State in 2021 (18.7 million). The first title game in 2015 — the Buckeyes’ 42-20 victory over Oregon — remains the most-watched college football game by viewers in the CFP era, according to Nielsen at 33.9 million.
This was the first year of the 12-team field. The first round averaged 10.6 million viewers with the quarterfinals at 16.9 million. The semifinals averaged 19.2 million, a 17% decline from last year. Both semifinal games in 2024 though were played on Jan. 1. Michigan’s OT victory over Alabama in the Rose Bowl drew a bigger audience (27.7 million) than the Wolverines’ win in the title game.
CFP games ended up being nine of the 10 most-viewed this season. Georgia’s OT win over Texas in the SEC championship on ABC/ESPN was sixth at 16.6 million.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports10 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway