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  • David Hale, ESPN Staff WriterNov 21, 2024, 07:00 AM ET

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

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussions of suicidal ideation.

THERE ARE FORCES at work in the universe that, for most of his life, Davin Vann believed were malevolent. This is what occupied the thoughts of NC State‘s star defensive lineman when he slid into the driver’s seat of his car on Feb. 4, 2024, intent on surrendering to his fate.

Vann has always liked to drive at night. Football had long been an outlet for his anger and isolation, but when he finished practice and film study, a drive calmed him and allowed him to be alone with his thoughts. He’d crank some country music, pull his Mustang onto the highway, watch the road unspool past Raleigh, Apex and Cary — the North Carolina towns where he grew up — and think of all the things that kept him here. He’d think of Kayla.

He was 11 when he watched his 13-year-old sister drown in a neighborhood pool, and for much of the past decade, he had fixated on how it was possible that she was gone while he had been spared.

“For a long time, it felt like God took the wrong kid,” he said. “It felt wrong for me to have the ability to live life and be happy when such a beautiful person was taken.”

Some nights he asked for forgiveness, for some penance he could pay that would ease the guilt that overwhelmed him. Some nights he’d ask for solace, an explanation for how his coaches and teammates at NC State could laud him as a leader while he still felt utterly broken.

On this night, however, he asked for nothing.

“I was just tired of being tired,” he said.

Vann wasn’t planning to die, exactly. That would imply some agency in his life, a feeling he’d long abandoned. Instead, he figured he’d just ease his car onto I-40, inch the accelerator to the floor, then let go.

“Just f— the brakes, see how fast I can go,” Vann said. “I was thinking that if somebody hit me, I wouldn’t care.”

He slumped into his seat, shoved his key into the ignition and twisted.

Nothing.

He twisted again and again, screaming into the ether with righteous indignation, but the engine stayed silent.

For nearly a half-hour, he sat in his car sobbing, begging for mercy as music blared and his windows fogged over. Finally, Vann relented. He went inside his house, still crying, and crawled into bed. When he awoke the next morning, he looked at his phone and found a text from his head coach, Dave Doeren, who’d been on something of a spiritual journey of his own.

“Got something I want to share with you,” the message read. “Can you come see me tomorrow?”

Looking back, Vann said, it’s like something out of a movie — a story he wouldn’t believe if he hadn’t lived it. Vann is the Wolfpack’s senior leader, a fan favorite with 5.5 sacks and 12 tackles for loss, but as he gets set to take the field Thursday night against Georgia Tech (7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN), he’s not doing it alone. That meeting with Doeren would set him on a path toward forgiveness, clarity and family.

There are forces at work in the universe, but they’re not like Vann imagined them.

“I see that night as such a gift,” Vann said. “It was God or the universe or Allah or whatever you want to call it telling me I couldn’t go yet.”

Or maybe, he thinks now, it was Kayla.

DAVIN VANN WAS born Feb. 8, 2002, the fourth of nine children. Kayla, Davin and Rylan, each about two years apart, were the closest. Davin called them “the trio.”

Kayla loved basketball, baking and church. She was bubbly and outgoing. She taught Rylan to cook on her kitchen set. She’d let Davin braid her hair, even though he wasn’t very good at it. They all played sports — an escape from the crowded living room and an avenue for some sense of normalcy after Kayla’s death. They were each members of the swim team, and they spent countless summer afternoons at the Scottish Hills Recreation Club, the neighborhood pool just a quarter-mile walk down a greenway behind their house in Cary, North Carolina.

That’s where they planned to spend the evening of June 8, 2013. Usually, their mother, Joy Hall, or their grandparents, Dave and Joan, would accompany them, but Joy was busy with work, and the grandparents were babysitting the younger kids. Dave offered to drive the trio, dropping them off at the front entrance a little after 5 p.m.

The call to 911 came at 6:36 p.m. A child had been pulled from the water. She was unresponsive. An ambulance arrived four minutes later.

It was an 11-year old Davin who called his mother, who was in Raleigh for work.

“Mom,” he said, “Kayla’s hurt.”

If she had it to do over, Joy wishes she’d understood the weight Davin would carry in the years to come. Kayla was older, but Davin viewed himself as her and Rylan’s protector. Maybe Joy had, too.

Joy met Davin’s father when she was 16. The relationship was fraught from the outset. He was addicted to drugs, Joy said. He’d disappear for weeks. He spent time in prison. He fought with Joy routinely, and the arguments often turned violent.

“It was volatile,” Joy said. “It was scary sometimes. And heartbreaking.”

Joy had her oldest daughter, Brittany, when she was 17. Deanna, Kayla, Davin and Rylan followed over the next 10 years. Rylan was just 6 weeks old, Joy said, when she came home from an errand one afternoon to find the kids’ father smoking crack in the living room, the baby asleep on the couch next to him. She told him to leave. He beat her, and he took her car, and, after a handful of visits, he eventually disappeared from their lives.

Things weren’t easy after that, but they were better. Joy met Donald Haley, and they had four more kids together — Lola, Duckie, Rose and Vinnie. Donald had grown up in the foster care system, so he was eager to adopt the older kids, too. Family, for him, didn’t have to be blood. They weren’t poor, Davin said, but with nine kids to feed, there was never quite enough to go around. What they did have, Joy said, were the scars of those early years of abuse and fear.

“We didn’t grow up saying ‘I love you’ all the time,” Davin said. “Nobody liked talking about their emotions.”

Perhaps, Davin said, they just weren’t equipped to process their feelings back then. He understands now that, when Joy was confronted with the loss of her daughter, she didn’t appreciate the fragility of the 11-year-old boy on the other end of the phone. She couldn’t console. She wanted answers. How did this happen? Where was he when she was under water? Why hadn’t he noticed?

What Davin heard was a question that has hung with him like a weight around his neck ever since. Why hadn’t he saved her?

THE KIDS SCATTERED in different directions when they arrived at the pool that night, each to their own clique of friends. Kayla had asked Rylan to play with her, but he had scurried off with his own crowd instead.

“If I’d said yes, that might’ve changed everything,” said Rylan, now a sophomore offensive lineman at NC State. “That’s something I held deeply for my whole life.”

The Scottish Hills pool is not large. It’s zigzag-shaped with a deeper side, close to 9 feet, and a shallow side around 4 feet deep. At the time, there was a diving board at one end next to the lifeguard tower, and that’s where Davin had been playing. Joy learned later that Kayla had been underwater for somewhere between five and 10 minutes before anyone noticed. A neighborhood girl whom Kayla would sometimes babysit was the one who first realized something was wrong. The girl’s grandfather dove into the pool and pulled Kayla to the side.

The lifeguard blew a whistle, and a crowd scrambled out of the pool. That’s when Rylan first saw his sister splayed on the concrete. He screamed for Davin, who raced to Kayla’s side. Someone was doing chest compressions. She coughed up a mixture of blood and water.

“I tried to convince myself it wasn’t as bad as it looked,” Davin said.

In the moments after the 911 call, Rylan sat astride a ball machine on the nearby tennis courts as medics worked on his sister, convincing himself she would be fine. He’d see her in the hospital. She’d be awake. She’d hug him and laugh like she always had, and they’d bake a treat on her kitchen set when she got home.

After calling his mother and grandmother, Davin stumbled in a daze to a bench in the courtyard adjacent to the pool where he sat alone, crying and praying.

“The ambulance came and took her away,” Davin said. “I said goodbye to my friends. I don’t really remember the rest of that day. Or, really, that whole time in my life.”

Joy sped from Raleigh to Cary and beat the ambulance to the hospital. Kayla was alive, but her responses were “combative,” suggesting severe brain damage.

At 4 a.m. on Sunday, June 9, Joy and Donald were called back to Kayla’s room. She’d taken a turn, and things looked bleak. Joy called her parents and begged them to return to the hospital.

“I’m a Christian,” Joy said, “but they’re Christians far beyond what I am. And I thought, maybe if they pray for her, she’ll be saved.”

An autopsy showed no trauma to Kayla’s head or neck, no damage to her heart that would suggest a medical event had preceded her drowning. Fluid was found in her lungs. Her official cause of death was heart failure brought on by oxygen deprivation.

Joy begged the town of Cary to investigate, but officials insisted it was an accident. ESPN filed a Freedom of Information Act request for any documents pertaining to a police investigation and was told no such reports exist. At the time, Joy didn’t have the resources or the willpower to push back. She eventually filed a lawsuit, but without a police investigation, she had little evidence of wrongdoing. The sides eventually settled.

“They just said, ‘This is what we think your kid’s life was worth,’ and that was it,” she said.

It fell to Joy to explain to the other kids that Kayla died. What has stayed with her is the sound Rylan made when she told him — an anguished howl that still haunts her now.

So much of what happened after that is a blur.

That day, Joy walked the trail behind their house that led down to the pool, and she thought of the future Kayla would never enjoy.

“So many things get taken when a kid is just 13,” Joy said. “It just seems so terribly unfair.”

Brittany graduated from high school two days after Kayla died. The family was there, but it was just a formality. There was no celebration. There are pictures but not memories.

The funeral was held the next day. Seeing his sister in the coffin is the one clear memory Davin has of that week.

“I didn’t know when you die,” Davin said, “the body you see in the coffin, it doesn’t look like the person you knew.”

Davin retreated inward. That has always been his defense mechanism when times are hard. Joy has seen it happen on the football field after a bad play, but back then, she was too mired in her own grief to understand the implications of Davin’s silence.

What she remembers instead is a night soon after the funeral. She was lying in her bed, sobbing, and Davin came in to console her. He didn’t know what to say, so he just reached out and rubbed her foot.

“And I just thought, ‘What a sweet boy,'” Joy said.

For the next 10 years, though, Davin did not see a sweet boy. He saw a mistake.

DAVIN WEARS NO. 1 at NC State, which is intended as an honor. Each year, Doeren awards the jersey number to the player who best embodies the leadership skills he wants the team to emulate. Doeren met with Davin before his freshman season and predicted he’d one day be a team captain. Now it was reality.

“There’s this lion inside him,” Doeren said.

Davin wanted no part of it.

There was a sentimental reason, he said. He wore No. 45 — two digits that, summed, equal nine. Nine for the number of kids in his family. Nine was Kayla’s basketball jersey. Nine had meaning.

But that was an excuse. Davin really wanted to hide from a spotlight he didn’t think he deserved. He saw leadership as a burden, and he’d spent years carrying so many already.

The darkness that followed Kayla’s death festered and metastasized inside him. As a boy, he acted out, then drew further inward. He remembers little from Kayla’s death until high school, years lost in a fog. He got in trouble. Not real trouble, Joy said, just kid stuff, but Davin is not so sure. He can laugh now about the time he and Rylan acted out their favorite wrestling moves, only for Rylan’s tooth to end up stuck in Davin’s hand — one brother needing a root canal and the other needing hand surgery. But there were worse things, too, Davin said. Things he’s ashamed of in retrospect, such as bringing a knife to school; decisions born from hanging out with the wrong crowd and a simmering fury he held inside.

“I felt like the world was against me,” Davin said. “I didn’t want to listen to anybody about anything.”

Sports allowed Davin a chance to vent his anger without drawing attention. He blossomed in wrestling and football, recording 17 sacks and earning a Shrine Bowl invitation as a senior at Cary High School. He had dozens of scholarship offers, but he chose NC State to remain close to home. Davin never looked at his memories of Kayla straight on, but he couldn’t leave her behind, either.

Davin’s college career progressed just as Doeren had envisioned. By his third season, he was a full-time starter at defensive end. The next year, he was one of the most productive pass rushers in the ACC. He considered the NFL draft, and when he announced he would return for one final season with the Wolfpack, the fan base celebrated.

Davin couldn’t understand any of it.

“A lot of guys talk about how they go through hardships and injuries and stuff like that, but for me it was the opposite,” he said. “My hardship came from the success I was having. It felt like no matter what I did or how hard I worked for it, I didn’t deserve any of the accolades or success or publicity. It felt wrong.”

The people around him inevitably called him humble. Joy won’t argue with the characterization, but she knows there is more to it.

“Sometimes he really didn’t know why anyone wanted him to play college football,” Joy said. “He’d say, ‘I’m not very good.’ He’s just really hard on himself.”

Davin minored in psychology at NC State, and in those courses he learned terms such as suicidal ideation and survivor’s guilt and imposter syndrome. He had them all. But he also believed something more profound about himself: that the universe saw past his success to something deeper, something ugly and unfixable. It’s what led him to the front seat of his Mustang that night.

At almost that same moment, Doeren was on a Zoom with a Canadian performance coach he’d found on social media, deep in meditation. And he’d just had a revelation.

DOEREN WAS IN his office in late October 2023, lamenting his team’s blowout loss to rival Duke. NC State had begun the season with high expectations, but the Wolfpack were instead 4-3, and their starting quarterback had just quit the team to pursue a transfer. Criticism had been mounting, and Doeren was at a breaking point. To clear his head, he pulled out his phone and began thumbing through his Instagram feed, where he found Dan de Luis.

The video that caught Doeren’s attention was titled “Five Rules to Provide More Peace of Mind.” In it, de Luis strolls through a leafy field in Mallorytown, Ontario, and he implores his followers to ignore external critics and look inward for a path to betterment.

Doeren is an old-school, blue-collar football coach who’s not inclined to buy into a motivational pitch from a social media influencer, but he watched this “hippy-dippy life coach” with rapt attention.

“It was like he was talking to me,” Doeren said.

Doeren was so inspired by the message, he picked up his phone and called his friend, artist John Bukaty, to share the moment. He urged Bukaty to watch the video, too, and it sparked an idea.

“There’s a reason you saw that,” Bukaty told Doeren. “I’m going to call him.”

Doeren shrugged it off, but within the hour, his phone rang.

De Luis sports a chest-length beard, scraggly and streaked with gray, and he’s almost always wearing a ski cap and a T-shirt, often emblazoned with the logo of a favorite rock band. He has worked with hundreds of “high-performance” clients, from NHL stars to Olympians to Fortune 500 CEOs. On Instagram, he has 410,000 followers. He offers reassuring self-help mantras with practiced empathy.

The centerpiece of his practice is a method of intentional, deep breathing designed to “flex” the circulatory system, which can create physiological and psychological responses that de Luis calls a “flow state,” in which clients often report an ability to confront long-held trauma or discover life-altering realizations — a “cathartic release,” de Luis calls it.

On that first call, de Luis taught Doeren some basic breathing techniques designed to calm his mind and center his focus. They kept at it, and by week’s end, the lessons helped Doeren shed the noise and distractions that had clouded his thinking, allowing him to focus on the steps he needed to remedy a spiraling season. He gave an emphatic speech to his team later that week in which he told players to either buy in or get out. He named a new starting QB, whom the players rallied behind. It was a turning point, and the Wolfpack would win their next five games.

Doeren and de Luis stayed in touch in the months that followed. During one of those “flow states” in a session in February, Doeren had an epiphany: “Davin needs this.”

Doeren believes one of his best assets as a coach is an ability to connect with his players, and for weeks, he’d seen Davin retreat from interactions with teammates, keep quiet during meetings, slouch in his seat and shuffle through the locker room. Doeren saw a player who needed help.

Doeren hedged the introduction as a favor Davin could do for the team. He thought de Luis’ sessions could be useful for the players, and he wanted Davin to give it a try and provide feedback. (De Luis now accompanies the team before games and works with as many as 40 players.)

Davin worked with de Luis via Zoom for a few months — “Beginning to crack the door open,” de Luis said — but in April, de Luis flew to Raleigh for a three-day retreat at Doeren’s lake house. De Luis hoped he could push the door fully open.

“This works if you’re ready,” de Luis told him.

“I’m ready,” Davin said.

They practiced breathing in the morning, did yoga in the afternoon, and finished the day with meditative breathing aimed at relaxing the body before sleep.

Davin was amazed with the results. He could exhale and hold his breath for five, 10 minutes. At one point, he reeled off 100 push-ups while taking just a single breath. He felt relaxed, open, free from the weight he’d carried for so long.

In between sessions, Davin and de Luis talked about what had led them here. De Luis calls this “set and setting” — creating an atmosphere where people reluctant to share emotions feel more comfortable being vulnerable.

“What you’re holding inside,” de Luis told him, “that demon, that animal — the strongest thing a man can do is say he needs help.”

Growing up, Davin and Rylan had shared a bedroom, and in all those years, they’d never once talked about the day Kayla died. It was only after Davin left for NC State, when Rylan would make regular weekend trips to stay with his brother, that the veil finally lifted. It was Davin’s sophomore year, and the brothers were up late, playing video games and watching TV, and somehow they started talking about Kayla. They were surprised how often their perceptions of what happened diverged. They talked about the guilt they felt, and they were surprised at how much of that they shared. It was cathartic, Davin says now, but it wasn’t a wholesale change. He still wasn’t ready to truly face what happened, he said. Acceptance meant Kayla was really gone.

De Luis had endured trauma, too, and he shared his story willingly — about the “intense” father, the bouts of severe anxiety and depression, about the back injury that left him virtually bedridden for nearly two years in his 20s, and about finding salvation in yoga and breathing exercises at precisely the moment he hit rock bottom.

Davin listened, and his defenses began to crumble. Eventually, his whole story came out — the guilt and the anger and the grief. It was a moment he had run from for more than half his life, and now that he had faced it, he felt relief.

That was the lesson, de Luis told him. Davin had used his anger over his sister’s death as his motivation for so long, but it had only led him deeper into despair. It was time to focus on his love for Kayla instead.

“Dan had told me I can’t hold on to my past,” Davin said. “It’s a stepping stone I need to learn to live with, but it’s not me.”

On the last morning of the retreat, de Luis had Davin wade into Lake Gaston. It was 40 degrees and the water was freezing, but as Davin inhaled and exhaled with measured precision, the discomfort disappeared, and his thoughts turned to Kayla.

He could see her now. She was not angry with him. She loved him, and she wanted him to be happy.

“Kayla’s death changed the mindset of an 11-year-old boy. It put me in a victim mentality,” Davin said. “I’ve changed my mindset. I’m doing it for her now. She can’t be here, but I’m trying to let her live vicariously through me by being the best I can be.”

Davin and de Luis drove back to Raleigh blaring Zach Bryan and Luke Combs, and when they arrived on campus, Davin rushed to see Doeren. He grabbed his coach and hugged him — “Like I’ve never been hugged before,” Doeren said — and when he let go, his eyes welled with tears, and he smiled.

“Thank you, Coach,” he said. “You saved my life.”

THERE IS NOT a clean denouement to Davin’s story. He’s in a better place, but he still fights the battles, he said. On Oct. 5, in a game against Wake Forest, NC State quarterback Grayson McCall was hit by a defender, who buried his helmet under McCall’s chin. The QB crumbled to the ground and laid there, motionless. Vann ambled to the sidelines in a daze, sobbing. The scene — the unconscious body, the terrified onlookers, the scrambling trainers and doctors — it was too familiar. After games, Rylan always brings his mom a Gatorade, and Davin delivers hugs and recounts his plays. This time, the brothers were quiet, said their goodbyes and went straight home. Old habits, Davin said. But he could still breathe and refocus and find his way back.

“I’m in a lot better spot,” Davin said. “I won’t say I don’t deal with mental health issues, but I’m better at dealing with them.”

Davin and his mother talk often of Kayla now — and about what her loss meant to their family. Davin now understands that the weight he carried, Joy carried, too. Joy has found enough distance to understand that her pain kept her from seeing all the hurt her boys held for so long.

“We’ve talked about it a lot,” Joy said. “He’s told me he’s been…”

She can’t say it, but she knows. She was there, too.

“Dark moments,” she said. “Scary.”

She has regrets. They all do. But they don’t dwell on them.

“Did Kayla know that I loved her that much? That’s a regret I have,” Joy said. “Because of all the things I had going on, I didn’t say ‘I love you’ all the time to my kids. Now we do say it. The boys always tell me, every time I hang up the phone.”

That’s a gift. A gift from Kayla.

“We’ll never understand why things happen,” Joy said. “Not just with Kayla. We don’t understand the plan. We just have to appreciate that she was here for the 13 years we got to hang out with her and appreciate the things that make us tougher than where we started.”

Maybe this is how the universe works.

A girl went into a pool and stopped breathing. Her brother found football as an outlet for his grief, went to a college where his coach introduced him to a healer who taught comfort through breathing. The breathing saved his life.

There are forces at work in the universe that Davin will never understand, but he sees them more clearly now.

“It’s hard to think about, but how would life have turned out if none of that happened?” Davin said. “Of course I wish it didn’t, but how close would our family be? Would we still be in those bad habits we were back then? It’s crazy to think about.”

In August, Davin stood at the head of NC State’s team meeting room to deliver his senior speech. In front of him were more than 120 coaches and teammates. Aside from Doeren and Rylan, no one knew his whole story, but he was finally ready to share.

“I wanted to show people that I’m human, too,” Davin said. “I wanted to be as honest as I could be.”

He hadn’t written the speech down, but he’d practiced what he wanted to say a dozen times at least. At lunch before the team meeting, Davin and Rylan sat together, going over the introduction again and again to get it just right.

How do you start to talk about something so big?

Breathe, Davin thought. Take the first step. Breathe again, and trust that the universe has put you here for a reason, that there are people here who need to hear your story.

And so he told them about Kayla and Joy and Rylan and the pain and the anger and the guilt and the hopelessness and, at last, the refuge, forgiveness and love he found in his family and his team and, yes, the sister who’d been there all along.

“Growing up, it didn’t feel like she was with me. It felt like she was gone,” Davin said. “I wasn’t ready to let her be with me. I wasn’t ready for the truth. Now, I pray before every game. It sounds crazy, but I talk to her — ‘I hope you’re up there watching.’ I tell her what I want to do, and that I do it for her.

“I ask her to protect me.”

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or is in emotional distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or at 988lifeline.org.

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Ohio State? Bama? Indiana? Anyone in the ACC? Who we can — and can’t — trust

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October 21, 2025

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Ohio State? Bama? Indiana? Anyone in the ACC? Who we can -- and can't -- trust

  • Bill ConnellyOct 19, 2025, 06:30 PM ET

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      Bill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.

With four ranked-versus-ranked games on the Week 8 docket, we were guaranteed to see some good teams fall this weekend. We got more than we bargained for. No. 2 Miami lost as a 10.5-point home favorite to an unranked team. No. 7 Texas Tech (10.5-point favorite), No. 22 Memphis (21.5-point favorite) and No. 25 Nebraska (5.5-point favorite) all fell to unranked squads as well.

And in the SEC, No. 4 Texas A&M barely survived 2-4 Arkansas, while No. 16 Missouri (against 3-3 Auburn) and No. 21 Texas (against 2-3 Kentucky) needed overtime to secure road wins.

Parity has been the watchword in college football this year — the elite teams don’t seem quite as elite, and the sport’s middle class seems closer to the top of the pack than usual. It rules, frankly. Week 8 certainly reinforced that notion. It was a breathless mess from start to finish.

In times like these, it’s hard to know what teams and players you can trust. I’m here to help. After eight topsy-turvy weeks, we have at least a decent idea of teams’ ceilings and floors, so let’s talk about college football’s most — and least — trustworthy entities.

I went on an Ohio State podcast last week and revealed an ugly truth: Ohio State is annoying the hell out of me this season. Amid all the parity talk, I’m pretty sure Ryan Day’s Buckeyes are comfortably the best team in the country at the moment, but they choose to drop hints only in periodic doses. I prefer my elite teams to win games 63-0 and basically wear a giant “WE’RE ELITE” sign, but after last season’s experience — in which the Buckeyes lost late in the year to Michigan but shifted into fifth gear in four comfortable College Football Playoff wins — no one better understands that the goal is to peak in December, not October.

It would help if they had some elite opponents to look toward, but the Big Ten opponent on their schedule that was supposed to be elite (Penn State) is anything but, and the Buckeyes aren’t scheduled to play Indiana. Instead, they’ve been left to alternate between second-gear blowouts of iffy to bad teams and comfortable 18-point road wins over solid-but-unspectacular opponents such as Illinois and Washington.

Day at least let Julian Sayin throw some pitches Saturday. In front of a less-than-robust Wisconsin crowd (perhaps just hours before the inevitable firing of head coach Luke Fickell), Sayin, who averaged just 26.8 dropbacks per game in his first six starts, went 36-for-42 for 393 yards and four touchdowns. He distributed the ball to 10 receivers, though the dynamite duo of Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate combined for 15 catches and 208 yards.

Wisconsin’s offense was never going to threaten the best defense in the country — the Badgers gained just 144 total yards and took just nine snaps in Ohio State territory (yards gained in those snaps: 6) — so there was no downside to stretching Sayin out a bit. He averaged only 10.9 yards per completion, and Smith is still averaging just 9.4 yards per catch and 6.9 yards per target against power-conference opponents. For that matter, the Buckeyes’ run game is producing almost no explosive plays, but one assumes the passing game will provide more than enough explosiveness if it’s ever asked to, especially as Sayin, the redshirt freshman, grows in confidence.

Of course, we might have to wait a while to confirm that. Ohio State gets a bye week, then four straight games against teams with losing records (Penn State, Purdue, UCLA, Rutgers). Three of those games are at home, and three of those opponents rank worse than 65th in SP+. Anyone craving a glimpse at fifth-gear Ohio State is probably going to have to wait at least another month.

In part because of how quickly SP+ was saying Indiana was really good in 2024, I feel like I’ve been in the front car of the Hoosiers bandwagon for a while now. And even I have found myself wondering if or when they might begin to look a bit more mortal, to drop a hint that they might be dealing with extra pressure and expectations. It would be normal and forgivable if it happened, and when Aidan Chiles and Nick Marsh connected to give Michigan State a 10-7 lead early in the second quarter in front of 55,165 in Bloomington, I thought we might be encountering such a moment.

Nope. The Hoosiers ripped off a 75-yard touchdown drive, forced a punt, drove 80 yards for another touchdown and, after a halftime weather delay, drove 75 and 68 yards for two more touchdowns to put away a 38-13 win. Fernando Mendoza was nearly perfect once again, engineering five TD drives in five tries before a turnover on downs ended the streak early in the fourth quarter. He went 24-for-28 for 332 yards and four touchdowns, and stars Omar Cooper Jr. and Elijah Sarratt caught 12 passes for 185 yards and three of the scores. The Indiana defense had a poor game by its standards, allowing six Michigan State drives to finish in IU territory, but the Hoosiers still haven’t allowed more than 20 points in a game this season.

Even if your brain has been slow to completely grasp this — mine evidently has, despite my best efforts — there’s absolutely no reason to think of Indiana as anything but an elite team that will play like an elite team most of the time. And if that remains true, then go ahead and pencil the Hoosiers into the Big Ten championship game: Their five remaining games are against three teams ranked 65th or worse in SP+ and two (Maryland and Penn State) who are a combined 0-7 since Week 4.

We entered Week 8 with five teams looking at odds of 25% or higher to finish 12-0: Ohio State, Texas Tech, Indiana, Memphis and Miami. Three of them lost; the other two — Ohio State (now 49%) and Indiana (45%) — are on a collision course to meet in Indianapolis.

Don’t trust: The ACC

All of it. The entire conference is untrustworthy at this point. There were eight games involving ACC teams in Week 8; four produced upsets, three on the favorite’s home field, and two others nearly did. Stanford beat Florida State as a 17.5-point underdog, Louisville (+10.5) won at Miami, SMU (+5.5) won at Clemson in a game altered by multiple quarterback injuries and Georgia Tech (+3.5) won at Duke 27-18 in a game impacted heavily by a 95-yard Omar Daniels fumble return score.

play

0:48

Omar Daniels takes Duke fumble 95 yards to the house

Georgia Tech strikes first as Omar Daniels recovers a Duke fumble and returns it 95 yards for the touchdown.

Oh yeah, and Cal nearly lost as an 8.5-point home favorite against previously hapless North Carolina, and Virginia (-16.5) needed a late Washington State implosion to beat the Cougars 22-20 at home. In all, only Pitt’s 30-13 win over Syracuse — the Panthers have genuinely gone to a new level since installing freshman Mason Heintschel at quarterback (though he admittedly didn’t do much Saturday) — and collapsing Boston College’s 38-23 loss to UConn produced what you might call expected outcomes, though UConn’s winning margin was larger than anticipated.

As one would expect, such a wacky week shuffled the conference title odds a good amount.

ACC title odds, per SP+:
Georgia Tech (7-0, 4-0 ACC): 26.9% (up 9.2%)
Louisville (5-1, 2-1): 16.8% (up 6.5%)
Miami (5-1, 1-1): 13.4% (down 17.3%)
Virginia (6-1, 3-0): 12.9% (up 1.9%)
SMU (5-2, 3-0): 12.9% (up 5.8%)
Pitt (5-2, 3-1): 8.3% (up 2.5%)
Duke (4-3, 3-1): 7.3% (down 7.7%)
Cal (5-2, 2-1): 1.0% (up 0.4%)

SP+ pinpointed Miami as more of a top-15 team than an elite one weeks ago, and as such, the Hurricanes could struggle in road trips against SMU (which has won three in a row) and the aforementioned Pitt in a series that has produced upsets in five of the past nine meetings. Louisville’s offense isn’t quite trustworthy yet, but the Cardinals have only one more SP+ top-40 opponent on the schedule (No. 37 SMU).

Virginia and SMU still have mulligans to spend — both are unbeaten in conference play — as does Georgia Tech, which remains unbeaten overall and has moved into the ACC driver’s seat. But as fun as the Tech story is, it’s hard to trust the Yellow Jackets, who, despite having not yet faced an SP+ top-40 team, have needed three one-score victories to remain unbeaten and rank only 29th in points per drive on offense and 53rd on defense. They’re 28th in SP+, behind Miami and Louisville and only narrowly ahead of Pitt, SMU and a quickly deteriorating Florida State.

Translation: This race probably has a few more plot twists to go. The spirit of the ACC Coastal division lives. Trust no one.

For what I believe was the first time since it expanded to 16 teams last year, the SEC had eight conference games going on the same Saturday. Two went to overtime, and others were decided by two, three, seven and eight points.

When we talk about parity in college football, we’re directing a lot of that at the SEC. It currently doesn’t have a team within six points of Ohio State in the SP+ ratings, but its top 10 teams are within five points of each other. All are ranked between fifth and 19th nationally, and even with Alabama bolting out ahead of the pack, we’re still looking at eight teams with at least a 5% chance at the conference title.

SEC title odds, per SP+:
Alabama (6-1, 4-0 SEC): 25.8% (up 7.0%)
Texas A&M (7-0, 4-0): 17.6% (up 3.1%)
Georgia (6-1, 4-1): 13.9% (up 3.4%)
Oklahoma (6-1, 2-1): 10.4% (up 2.7%)
Texas (5-2, 2-1): 7.7% (up 1.2%)
Missouri (6-1, 2-1): 7.4% (up 1.5%)
Ole Miss (6-1, 3-1): 7.1% (down 9.1%)
Vanderbilt (6-1, 2-1): 5.5% (up 1.8%)

Alabama indeed eased out in front thanks to Saturday’s 37-20 win over Tennessee. Who knows how the game might have played out if Zabien Brown hadn’t picked off a Joey Aguilar pass at the goal line and taken it 99 yards for a touchdown as the first half expired — instead of a 16-14 or 16-10 halftime lead for Bama, it was 23-7. But the Tide once again got the two things they have come to rely on: red zone stops from the defense and just the right plays from Ty Simpson.

In Bama’s current run of four straight wins over ranked foes, opposing teams have scored touchdowns on just seven of 14 red zone trips, with three turnovers, a turnover on downs and only one field goal among the seven failures. The Tide are just 58th in yards allowed per play and 66th in success rate allowed, but they’re 22nd in scoring defense. That’s a tenuous balance, and we’ll see what happens against Oklahoma or anyone they might face in the SEC championship game or CFP, but it’s working well for now.

It works even better since they know they’ll get what they need from Simpson. That Week 1 defeat at Florida State grows more baffling by the week, but since then Simpson ranks seventh in Total QBR with a 74% completion rate, a 16-to-1 TD-to-INT ratio and a 52% success rate on third and fourth down (national average on those downs: 40%). He’s also the only guy this season who has outdueled Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia. Simpson has earned our trust, although I’m still willing to cast a suspicious glance toward the defense.

Trust: Georgia’s toughness

I’m also struggling to trust quite a few aspects of Kirby Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs. They struggled to run efficiently against either of the two good defenses they’ve faced, they continue to lack in the big-play department, and while they’ve played against three top-15 offenses, per SP+, we still expect a Smart defense to rank higher than 49th in points allowed per drive or 48th in success rate allowed.

Still, you have to admire the Dawgs’ flair for the moment. They spotted Tennessee a 14-point lead in the first quarter, Auburn a 10-point lead in the first, Alabama a 14-point lead in the second and Ole Miss a nine-point lead in the third, and yet, the only team they lost to was Bama. (And it looked like they were going to win that one, too, until Bama’s defensive red zone magic struck.) Against Auburn’s awesome defense in Week 7, they eventually figured out a way to eke out 20 points and a road win; against Ole Miss’ awesome offense in Week 8, they allowed five straight touchdowns to start the game but stayed within pecking distance and then suddenly locked the Rebels all the way down. Ole Miss’ Trinidad Chambliss went 1-for-10 passing during a fourth quarter in which Georgia outgained the Rebels 143-13 and outscored them 17-0. The result: yet another comeback win 43-35.

When the Bulldogs need to score 40-plus, they do it. When they need to hold an opponent to 10, they do it. It would be awfully boring if, in this year of epic SEC parity — when Texas A&M, Missouri, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt all have at least a puncher’s chance at the crown — we got another Georgia-Bama conference title game. But it’s pretty damn hard to think we won’t at this point, isn’t it?

Don’t trust: Arch Manning and Texas’ offense

I called Ohio State’s defense the best in the country above, and I certainly believe it is. SP+, however, still leans toward Texas, which held the Buckeyes to 14 points in the season opener and has allowed only one opponent to score more than that. The Longhorns rank fourth in points allowed per drive and 10th in yards allowed per play — quite possibly the second-best defense in the sport to my eyes.

Despite the defense, however, and despite a potentially key tiebreaker win over Oklahoma last week, Texas is only fifth on the SEC title odds list above, just ahead of Missouri and behind those Sooners. You already know the reason, of course: an offense that ranks 74th in yards per play, 88th in points per drive, 101st in success rate (80th rushing, 110th passing) and 116th in percentage of plays gaining zero or negative yards. On 46.5% of their pass attempts this season, they’d have been as well or better off just spiking the ball into the ground; that “spike factor” ranks 120th.

I don’t bring this up to heap further scorn on Arch Manning, or at least not to specifically do that. The preseason Heisman favorite hasn’t gotten any of the help he needed this season, and he certainly didn’t in Saturday night’s 16-13 win over Kentucky. His running backs averaged 3.3 yards per carry in Lexington, and his first 25 pass attempts produced just eight completions and three sacks. He did complete four straight short passes late, but Texas gained just 179 yards against a Wildcats defense that allowed 461 yards to Eastern Michigan in mid-September.

The Longhorns survived when Kentucky foolishly called two straight halfback dives into the teeth of Texas’ enormous defensive line and turned the ball over on downs in overtime, setting up Mason Shipley’s game-winning field goal. But this offense is still failing to clear an increasingly low bar. It has underachieved against SP+ projections in five of seven games and needed a special teams touchdown to overachieve its projection against Oklahoma last week.

No matter how good the defense may be, it’s going to face four of the nation’s top 15 offenses (per SP+) in its last five games, and the offense is going to face three defenses that grade out better than Kentucky’s. If it can’t help Manning, and Manning can’t help himself and start to improve — a hard thing to do midstream, especially when your issues seem to be pretty fundamental things such as footwork, pocket timing and accuracy — then how exactly does Texas end up with a playoff résumé? Things could be worse; the Horns could have easily lost to UK. But it’s hard to see things getting much better.

I’m not sure my trust is going to be enough. At 5-2 with no serious résumé-building win opportunities left, it sure seems like Notre Dame will be at or near the bottom of a pile of hypothetical two-loss teams even if it gets to 10-2 at the end of the regular season. There’s no shame in losing to Miami and Texas A&M — teams that are a combined 12-1 — by four combined points, as the Irish did, and their list of quality wins just isn’t going to end up being all that impressive even if USC, Saturday night’s victim, keeps playing well.

For this conversation, however, that doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that this is one of the five best teams in the country right now, and I’m growing to trust the Irish considerably. (Well, everything but their place-kicking anyway.) They’ve overachieved against SP+ projections over the last five games by an average of 14.9 points. And even though quarterback CJ Carr had a poor game Saturday — 16-for-26 for 136 yards, a TD, an interception, a sack and a 32.8 Total QBR — they still overachieved against their offensive projections thanks to a 228-yard rushing performance from Jeremiyah Love, his first genuine breakout game of the year, and an 87-yard performance with a kick return score from backup Jadarian Price.

Combine a high-end offense with a defense that seems to have completely solved itself over the last month, and you’ve got a hell of a team. After allowing 32.7 points per game in Chris Ash’s first three games as coordinator, the Irish have since allowed just 12.8 per game despite playing USC (first in offensive SP+), Arkansas (fifth) and Boise State (25th), and despite dealing with injuries to stars such as corner Leonard Moore and tackle Gabriel Rubio. USC had scored at least 31 points in every game before Saturday and came to South Bend averaging 8.3 yards per play; the Trojans managed just 24 points and 5.6 yards per play against the Irish.

Thanks primarily to the early defensive struggles, the Irish were 21st in SP+ after three games. They’re now sixth after seven games. Only one remaining game is projected within 17 points, per SP+, and if they make the CFP they could do some serious damage. We’ll have to see what fate has in store in that regard.

This week in SP+

The SP+ rankings have been updated for the week. Let’s take a look at the teams that saw the biggest change in their overall ratings. (Note: We’re looking at ratings, not rankings.)

Moving up

Here are the five teams that saw their ratings rise the most this week:

Temple: up 4.5 adjusted points per game (ranking rose from 88th to 72nd)

Florida International: up 4.3 points (from 130th to 124th)

James Madison: up 3.6 points (from 59th to 47th)

Central Michigan: up 3.5 points (from 125th to 114th)

Oregon State: up 3.5 points (from 114th to 106th)

After losing to Delaware and UConn by a combined 89-26, FIU unleashed a nearly perfect performance out of nowhere Tuesday, heading up to Western Kentucky and winning 25-6. James Madison, meanwhile, knocked Old Dominion out in a delightful Saturday slugfest, scoring 42 straight points to turn a 27-21 deficit into a 63-27 rout.

But we need to talk about Temple for a second: The Owls hadn’t topped three wins since 2019, watching their meticulously rebuilt program crumble to the ground in the 2020s. But then they hired KC Keeler. It might have been the best hire of last offseason. The 66-year-old has them at 4-3 following Saturday’s 49-14 blowout of Charlotte.

Temple hasn’t had the athleticism to keep up with high-level power-conference opponents — Oklahoma and Georgia Tech beat the Owls by a combined 87-27 — but against teams in their weight class, they’re 4-1, having overachieved against SP+ projections by an average of 19.4 points and having lost only to unbeaten Navy in the last minute. What a turnaround.

Here are the five power-conference teams that rose the most:

Minnesota: up 3.1 points (from 57th to 49th)

UCF: up 3.0 points (from 58th to 51st)

Cincinnati: up 1.8 points (from 30th to 25th)

Stanford: up 1.7 points (from 108th to 101st)

North Carolina: up 1.6 points (from 103rd to 98th)

Minnesota sure does love playing Nebraska. The Gophers pummeled the Huskers on Friday night 24-6 to move to 5-2 on the season. Without that ghastly egg-laying loss at Cal in Week 3, they’d be ranked and looking at a potential 9-3 finish or so.

Moving down

Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:

UTSA: down 5.0 adjusted points per game (ranking fell from 61st to 71st)

Tennessee: down 4.0 points (from 11th to 18th)

Rutgers: down 3.8 points (from 50th to 67th)

Nebraska: down 3.7 points (from 20th to 26th)

West Virginia: down 3.6 points (from 80th to 97th)

Memphis: down 3.5 points (from 24th to 30th)

Northern Illinois: down 3.3 points (from 118th to 127th)

South Carolina: down 3.3 points (from 40th to 52nd)

USC: down 2.9 points (from 14th to 16th)

Clemson: down 2.8 points (from 39th to 46th)

There’s no great shame in losing at Alabama, but Tennessee’s slippage here has been a long time coming: The Vols have now underachieved against projections for five straight games, and they’ve done so by double digits in each of the past two. The defense, which finished sixth in defensive SP+ last season, has underachieved in every game and is down to 44th, and while the offense propped the Vols up for a while, it has also underachieved the past two weeks. Continued underachievement at that level would put them in danger of losing at Kentucky this coming week.

Who won the Heisman this week?

I am once again awarding the Heisman every single week of the season and doling out weekly points, F1-style (in this case, 10 points for first place, nine for second, and so on). How will this Heisman race play out, and how different will the result be from the actual Heisman voting?

Here is this week’s Heisman top 10:

1. Gunner Stockton, Georgia (26-for-31 passing for 289 yards and 4 touchdowns, plus 59 non-sack rushing yards and a touchdown against Ole Miss).

2. Fernando Mendoza, Indiana (24-for-28 passing for 332 yards and 4 touchdowns, plus 18 non-sack rushing yards against Michigan State).

3. Jeremiyah Love, Notre Dame (24 carries for 228 yards and a touchdown, plus 37 receiving yards against USC).

4. Julian Sayin, Ohio State (36-for-42 passing for 393 yards and 4 touchdowns against Wisconsin).

5. Alonza Barnett III, James Madison (17-for-25 passing for 295 yards and 2 touchdowns, plus 165 non-sack rushing yards and 4 TDs against Old Dominion).

6. Taylen Green, Arkansas (19-for-32 passing for 256 yards and 3 touchdowns, plus 131 non-sack rushing yards and 2 TDs against Texas A&M).

7. Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt (14-for-22 passing for 160 yards and a touchdown, plus 94 non-sack rushing yards and 2 TDs against LSU).

8. Colin Simmons, Texas (4 tackles, 3 sacks and 1 forced fumble against Kentucky).

9. Dylan Riley, Boise State (15 carries for 201 yards and a touchdown against UNLV).

10. Haynes King, Georgia Tech (14-for-21 passing for 205 yards, plus 120 non-sack rushing yards and a touchdown against Duke).

It was tempting to just give each of the top three names a share of No. 1 for the week. Love’s domination of USC was vital to Notre Dame’s playoff hopes (and really fun to watch), and Mendoza was ridiculous yet again — his Total QBR has now topped 90.0 in four of the past five games, and he’s completing 74% of his passes with a 21-to-2 TD-to-INT ratio. Kurtis Rourke was so good for the Hoosiers last season, and Mendoza is raising the bar.

I had to give No. 1 to Stockton, though. He had to be great for the Dawgs to keep up with Ole Miss, and when the Georgia defense finally showed up, Stockton raised his game even further. Awesome stuff.

Honorable mention:

Byrum Brown, USF (14-for-24 passing for 256 yards and 3 touchdowns, plus 123 non-sack rushing yards and a TD against Florida Atlantic).

Zabien Brown, Alabama (seven tackles and a 99-yard pick-six against Tennessee).

Anthony Hankerson, Oregon State (25 carries for 204 yards and 4 touchdowns against Lafayette).

Caleb Hawkins, North Texas (18 carries for 133 yards, plus 90 receiving yards against UTSA).

Brad Jackson, Texas State (26-for-38 passing for 444 yards, 2 TDs and 1 INT, plus 77 non-sack rushing yards and a TD against Marshall).

Nick Minicucci, Delaware (32-for-50 passing for 422 yards and a touchdown, plus 20 non-sack rushing yards against Jacksonville State).

Dante Moore, Oregon (15-for-20 passing for 290 yards, 4 TDs and 1 INT, plus 49 non-sack rushing yards against Rutgers).

Kejon Owens, Florida International (22 carries for 195 yards and a touchdown, plus seven receiving yards against Western Kentucky).

(By the way, a quick shoutout to Curry College’s Montie Quinn, who broke the Division III record with 522 rushing yards … on 20 carries! The Colonels beat Nichols 71-27, and his seven touchdowns alone gained 399 yards, including jaunts of 85, 84, 76, 64 and 58 yards.)

Through eight weeks, here are your points leaders:

1. Ty Simpson, Alabama (29 points)
2. Taylen Green, Arkansas (27)
3T. Fernando Mendoza, Indiana (19)
3T. Gunner Stockton, Georgia (19)
3T. Demond Williams Jr., Washington (19)
6T. Luke Altmyer, Illinois (16)
6T. Julian Sayin, Ohio State (16)
8. Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss (15)
9. Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt (14)
10. Jayden Maiava, USC (12)

For the first time all season, the points race and the current Heisman betting odds have begun to match up. Six of the above names are also in the top 10 per ESPN BET: Mendoza (No. 1 betting favorite), Simpson (No. 2), Sayin (No. 3), Stockton (No. 5), Pavia (No. 8) and Chambliss (No. 9T).

My 10 favorite games of the weekend

1 and 2. Stanford 20, Florida State 13 and California 21, North Carolina 18 (Friday). We had matching last-minute goal-line stands in the Bay Area, though Stanford-FSU gets the edge for adding in a mini-Hail Mary (to get to the Stanford 9 with two seconds left) and an untimed down following a pass interference call (which followed an errant snap). And are we sure Gavin Sawchuk didn’t make it to the end zone? One of the most unique finishes you’ll see.

Cal, meanwhile, merely forced a fumble millimeters before the end zone with four minutes left. Boring.

play

0:48

Cal forces UNC fumble at the goal line for a touchback

Cal’s Brent Austin punches the ball out of Nathan Leacock’s hands at the goal line to force a fumble and subsequent touchback.

3. FCS: East Texas A&M 52, Incarnate Word 45. With 6:45 left, East Texas A&M took its first lead 45-42 after trailing by as many as 21 earlier in the game.

With 1:55 left, UIW’s Will Faris hit a 57-yard field goal to tie the game at 45-45.

With 0:27 left, ETAMU not only scored the winning points but did so with one of the most physical runs of the week.

Hot damn, EJ Oakmon.

4. Louisville 24, No. 2 Miami 21 (Friday). Louisville’s offense hasn’t carried its weight at times this year, but the Cardinals scripted out two early touchdowns and got a beautiful, 36-yard burst from Chris Bell. The defense took it from there. T.J. Capers‘ interception — the Cardinals’ fourth of Carson Beck — clinched the upset and sent the ACC race into chaos.

5. FCS: Lamar 23, UT Rio Grande Valley 21. UT Rio Grande Valley is 5-2 in its debut season; the Vaqueros have acquitted themselves well, and they almost took down a ranked Lamar team in Beaumont with two fourth-quarter touchdowns. But Ben Woodard nailed a 57-yard field goal with 1:03 left, and Mar Mar Evans picked off a desperate Eddie Lee Marburger pass with 14 seconds left. Lamar survived.

6. No. 9 Georgia 43, No. 5 Ole Miss 35. I almost just assumed that Ole Miss would score late and send this one to overtime. Alas. A heavyweight matchup in a heavyweight environment.

7. Tulane 24, Army 17. I reflexively made the Chris Berman “WHOOOP” sound when this happened.

8. Arizona State 26, No. 7 Texas Tech 22. Texas Tech backup quarterback Will Hammond finally looked like a backup, but the Red Raiders overcame a number of miscues to take the lead with two minutes left, only for ASU to respond with a 10-play, 75-yard drive capped by Raleek Brown‘s last-minute touchdown.

9. TCU 42, Baylor 36. One of many games with lengthy weather delays, this one almost saw a three-minute, 21-point comeback. TCU led 42-21, but Keaton Thomas returned a fumble for a touchdown, Sawyer Robertson completed a 35-yard touchdown to Kole Wilson, and Baylor recovered an onside kick with 30 seconds left. But Namdi Obiazor picked Robertson off near midfield, and the Horned Frogs survived.

10. UAB 31, No. 22 Memphis 24. You get points for creativity, Memphis. After Greg Desrosiers Jr. had his game-tying, 41-yard touchdown disallowed — replay determined he was down just short of the goal line — Memphis proceeded to commit two false starts and a delay of game, and backup quarterback AJ Hill‘s fourth-down pass to Cortez Braham Jr. was incomplete by inches. I’ve never seen a team lose a game like that.

11. Division II: Benedict 31, Edward Waters 27.

12. UCLA 20, Maryland 17.

13. Houston 31, Arizona 28.

14. FCS: Chattanooga 42, ETSU 38.

15. Marshall 40, Texas State 37 (2OT).

16. No. 16 Missouri 23, Auburn 17 (OT).

17. Iowa 25, Penn State 24.

18. Division III: No. 14 John Carroll 31, No. 11 DePauw 27.

19. NAIA: Faulkner 36, Cumberlands 35.

20. Florida 23, Mississippi State 21

It says a lot about the week that we had two SEC overtime games, and neither made the top 15.

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Takeaways: Notre Dame and Arizona State make comeback statements

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8 hours ago

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October 21, 2025

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Takeaways: Notre Dame and Arizona State make comeback statements

Oct 20, 2025, 08:25 AM ET

Week 8 had its share of surprises as four Associated Press Top 25 teams fell to unranked opponents.

One of the upsets of the week came from Arizona State as it handed then-No. 7 Texas Tech its first loss of the season. The Red Raiders fell to 6-1, 3-1 in the Big 12, and dropped to fourth in the conference standings. The Sun Devils, on the other hand, are bouncing back from two losses this season, looking for back-to-back Big 12 title game appearances and a potential spot in the College Football Playoff.

Notre Dame is another team making a comeback this season. After an 0-2 start, the Fighting Irish are on a five-game winning streak after a big rivalry win over then-No. 20 USC on Saturday. And Vanderbilt — one of the hottest teams in the sport — is showing just how different this season has been.

Which team is Arizona State’s toughest matchup ahead as it looks to be a Big 12 title contender? After a tough start to the season, can Notre Dame continue its hot streak and make another run at the CFP? What accomplishments has Vanderbilt crossed off through Week 8?

Our college football experts break down key storylines and takeaways from the week.

Jump to:
Freeman at it again | ASU’s road back
Vanderbilt’s rise | Pitt’s freshman QB

Marcus Freeman is the comeback king

No win was more impactful to the College Football Playoff picture than Notre Dame‘s season-saving victory against USC on Saturday. For the second straight year, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman has pulled his team out of an absolute pit and back into the hunt for a national title. Last year, it was the baffling Week 2 home loss to Northern Illinois that was followed by 13 straight wins and a spot in the national championship game. Most teams don’t play 13 games in a season, let alone win that many in a row.

Now, the Irish have won five straight after their 0-2 start and are back on the selection committee’s radar. Yes, there is still work to be done, and yes, the Irish remain in must-win mode for the rest of the season. But USC was their toughest opponent left. And Notre Dame continues to improve every week, particularly on defense. If that continues, Notre Dame won’t just be a playoff team — it will be capable of making another run at winning it. Freeman already wrote the blueprint. — Heather Dinich

Don’t forget about Arizona State

After a close loss to Mississippi State and an embarrassing 43-10 loss at the hands of Utah, defending Big 12 champion Arizona State appeared to be on its way to a disappointing encore season following their surprise College Football Playoff appearance last year.

In reality, Kenny Dillingham’s team just needed to feel like an underdog again.

Texas Tech came into Tempe undefeated with its own CFP hopes. But the Sun Devils, led by quarterback Sam Leavitt, who had his best performance of the season, outlasted the Red Raiders 26-22 to put themselves right back into the mix for the Big 12.

Dillingham, as he’s prone to do, responded appropriately: by producing another iconic postgame interview moment and then dancing with his team in the locker room.

“Good programs don’t turn left or right. They just turn a little bit,” Dillingham said of how ASU dealt with the blowout loss to Utah. “We didn’t turn the ship a different direction. We just moved it five to seven degrees. The guys responded.”

Arizona State is now tied for third place in the conference, but the Sun Devils are sitting in a very comfortable position. They don’t play the two teams above them (BYU and Cincinnati, who do play each other) and currently don’t have another ranked team on the rest of their schedule. Iowa State in Ames next week is probably their toughest matchup remaining. The roadmap back to Dallas is there for the taking. — Paolo Uggetti

Vanderbilt’s rise the latest evidence that 2025 is different

In a span of five days, Indiana beat an AP top-5 road opponent for the first time, then locked in coach Curt Cignetti to a $93.25 million contract. Two days after the Cignetti deal was announced, Vanderbilt beat LSU 31-24 in an outcome that surprised no one who has watched the Commodores (and, for that matter, LSU) play this season. Welcome to college football in 2025.

Vanderbilt is 6-1 for the first time since 1950, beat LSU for the first time since 1990 and has two wins against AP top-15 opponents for the first time in the same season. The Commodores on Sunday received their first AP top-10 ranking since 1947. But again, when you study Vandy and especially the offense, under the direction of quarterback Diego Pavia and coordinator Tim Beck, it’s difficult to be shocked by any of this.

Clark Lea has possibly forever changed the course of Vanderbilt’s program by bringing in the New Mexico State crew: Pavia, Beck, chief consultant Jerry Kill and others. Vanderbilt will host ESPN’s “College GameDay” this week and face Missouri in a game with legitimate College Football Playoff implications. That’s where we are with college football in 2025, and what a place to be. — Adam Rittenberg

True freshman QB Heintschel sparking Panthers

After back-to-back losses to Backyard Brawl rival West Virginia and Louisville, Pittsburgh’s season appeared to be heading south.

But then coach Pat Narduzzi made a quarterback change, swapping incumbent starter Eli Holstein for true freshman Mason Heintschel.

The Panthers have since reeled off three consecutive wins, including Saturday’s 30-13 victory at Syracuse — with Heintschel becoming the first Pitt true freshman quarterback to win three straight since Pat Bostick in 2007, according to ESPN Research.

Since taking over, the dual-threat Heintschel ranks eighth with 787 passing yards and fifth in rushing with 141 yards among Power 4 quarterbacks.

The Panthers (5-2, 3-1 ACC) are hanging around in the wide-open ACC, with a series of big opportunities looming at the end of the season.

Pitt closes the season with consecutive tilts against No. 13 Notre Dame, No. 7 Georgia Tech and No. 9 Miami. — Jake Trotter

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NHL rink report: Matthew Schaefer’s hot start, Tusky’s debut, games of the week

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8 hours ago

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October 21, 2025

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NHL rink report: Matthew Schaefer's hot start, Tusky's debut, games of the week

Matthew Schaefer has had quite the debut in the NHL, hasn’t he? He has scored a point in every game he has played — including a fun first NHL goal. ESPN analyst John Tortorella noted that he reminds him of Hall of Famer Chris Pronger with his skating; that’s not bad at all for the New York Islanders‘ first overall pick from the 2025 draft.

The debut has also been historical. Schaefer started his NHL career with a five-game point streak (and counting). That’s the second-longest point streak by any defenseman from the start of their career, behind only Marek Zidlicky (six games) in 2003-04. He is the first 18-year-old defenseman in NHL history to achieve that (every other 18-year-old on the list was a forward).

His first NHL goal was electric. There was a big scrum in front on an Islanders power play. Amid the chaos, the puck was lost, and Schaefer barged in from the blue line and poked the puck that was barely visible under Logan Thompson‘s pads into the net in a seamless motion. Among his many other traits, the hockey IQ is quite high.

Schaefer turned 18 on Sept. 5; yes, just over a month ago. He is the youngest defenseman to make his NHL debut, to record a point in his NHL debut, the youngest NHL player on record to score his first goal on the power play, and the youngest player to play 25-plus minutes in a game.

He’s also garnering a lot of early “Isles franchise player of the future” nods from the Islanders faithful. It might be a bit early to be doling out accolades like that. But Matthew Schaefer is definitely fun to watch, and the best is yet to come.

Jump ahead:
Games of the week
What I liked this weekend
Hart Trophy candidates
Social post of the week

Biggest games of the week

7:30 p.m. ET | ESPN

Obviously the biggest game of the week from a storyline perspective is Brad Marchand returning for his first game in Boston. He was injured the last time the Panthers visited Boston, so all of the pomp and circumstance will come during this game.

Marchand is a banner- and statue-level guy in Beantown, without question. I expect an extended ovation, then the fans booing him when he levels David Pastrnak in a scrum.

7 p.m. ET | ESPN+

Two playoff teams from last season. Star power aplenty, with Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt on one side, against Auston Matthews, William Nylander and John Tavares on the other.

But there’s another wrinkle to this one. Greg Wyshynski and I created a brand new “North American Hockey Championship” title belt for our digital show “The Drop,” and it’s currently held by me thanks to the Canadian victory in last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off. This is how title defenses work: For every Canada vs. USA international game, men’s or women’s, the title is automatically on the line. In addition, the challenger can choose any NHL game with any sort of Canada vs. USA connection for the belt to be up for grabs.

In this case it’s easy — an American team visiting a Canadian one — and it’s the team for which Wysh grew up rooting against the one for which I grew up rooting. If the Devils win, then the U.S. is the new North American hockey champion. If the Leafs win, Canada retains.

Other key matchups this week

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10 p.m. ET | ESPN

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What I liked this weekend

Friday was a big day for college hockey. On paper, Boston University vs. Michigan State was already a heavyweight matchup — 34 NHL prospects with 20 NHL teams were represented in the game. The game was broadcast on ESPN2, which is terrific for a matchup so early in the college hockey season. This is the dawn of a new era of NCAA on the ice, with the rules surrounding CHL players changing, and the continued growth and interest in the college game.

The Spartans led 2-0 through two periods, but BU fought back, and the game went to overtime tied 3-3. BU’s Cole Eiserman (Islanders prospect) appeared to win it, but MSU’s Shane Vansaghi (Flyers) swept the puck away before it crossed the goal line. The Spartans brought it back the other way, and Matt Basgall (undrafted) scored off a feed from Ryker Lee (Predators).

Also, count me in as a fan of the NHL’s newest mascot, Tusky. I like Tusky’s overall look, and particularly his dark blue mohawk. I thought the introduction of breaking through blocks of foam ice was cute, and the name is easy for kids to say. I’m a massive fan of mascots — they are critical to game presentation and in-arena fun, to social content, and especially to helping kids and new hockey fans make core memories. I look forward to seeing what fun things the Mammoth have planned for Tusky.

MVP candidates if the season ended today…

Vegas center Jack Eichel leads the league with 15 points. He had some support for the Hart among our ESPN hockey crew this preseason, and could remain a top candidate all season (particularly if the scoring keeps up).

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Jack Eichel nets goal for Golden Knights

Jack Eichel lights the lamp for Golden Knights

Speaking of lighting up the scoreboard, Ottawa Senators forward Shane Pinto has seven goals through six games, with all seven of them at even strength. The Senators will need to find other sources of scoring while Brady Tkachuk is out.

Given that goaltender Connor Hellebuyck won the Hart last season, we can’t forget the netminders this season either. You would have to take a long look at New York Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin. Despite going 2-2-1, he boasts a .962 save percentage and is allowing only one goal per game on average. Scott Wedgewood might win out among goalies, however, as he has started the season 5-0-1 with a .938 save percentage, saving 136 of 145 shots for the first-place Colorado Avalanche.

And hey, if the season ended today, I’d even toss Matthew Schaefer‘s name in the mix based on all the ridiculous stats I highlighted earlier.

Hockey social media post of the week

One of my favorite people on social media is “Kickball Dad” — especially when the Miami Dolphins do something to annoy him, or he’s zipping around the backyard on his mower. He might also be the first person in recorded history to shoot hockey pucks on the beach in the Bahamas.

He’s also a massive Devils fan and made a video going to the home opener:

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