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  • Eli Lederman

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    Eli Lederman

    ESPN Staff Writer

      Eli Lederman covers college football and recruiting for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2024 after covering the University of Oklahoma for Sellout Crowd and the Tulsa World.

  • Jake Trotter

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    Jake Trotter

    ESPN Senior Writer

      Jake Trotter is a senior writer at ESPN. Trotter covers college football. He also writes about other college sports, including men’s and women’s basketball. Trotter resides in the Cleveland area with his wife and three kids and is a fan of his hometown Oklahoma City Thunder. He covered the Cleveland Browns and NFL for ESPN for five years, moving back to college football in 2024. Previously, Trotter worked for the Middletown (Ohio) Journal, Austin American-Statesman and Oklahoman newspapers before joining ESPN in 2011. He’s a 2004 graduate of Washington and Lee University. You can reach out to Trotter at jake.trotter@espn.com and follow him on X at @Jake_Trotter.

Sep 26, 2025, 01:00 PM ET

STILLWATER, Okla. — Earlier this month, Oklahoma State athletic officials, regents and donors took a chartered flight to Oregon for the Cowboys’ Week 2 game against the Ducks.

The trip’s purpose went beyond watching the game. The group of roughly 50 visited Nike’s headquarters and toured a winery founded by an Oklahoma State alum in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. But OSU’s power brokers also wanted to see for themselves what it would take to compete against the very best in college football’s revenue-sharing era.

The game itself would reveal just how far the Cowboys had fallen in a little over a year under their legendary head coach. In a 69-3 beatdown, the Ducks handed OSU its worst loss since Nov. 8, 1907 — days before Oklahoma gained statehood.

The charter flight back to Stillwater was somber. Nobody, at least loudly or openly, called for the head coach to go. But to some, that sentiment felt palpable.

“I think there was a faction of people that just wanted to see change,” said one OSU source. “Oregon helped that for some of them. Tulsa helped them even more.”

Two weeks later came the biggest gut punch. The Golden Hurricane beat the Cowboys in Stillwater for the first time since 1951, controlling the game on six days’ rest while OSU came off a bye.

On Tuesday, the school finally made a move that would’ve been unthinkable only two years ago — when the Cowboys played in the Big 12 title game — but lately had seemed inevitable following 11 straight losses to FBS opponents.

Three games into his 21st season, OSU fired Mike Gundy.

“We all have high expectations for OSU football because of Mike Gundy,” athletic director Chad Weiberg said. “Unfortunately, the results of the last year have not met the standard.”

Gundy had spent 35 years at OSU. Four as a quarterback. Ten as an assistant. Twenty as head coach, with just two losing seasons — his first and his last. In between, Gundy delivered 18 consecutive winning seasons, tying Oklahoma‘s Bob Stoops for fifth-most among FBS coaches since 1978, behind only Bobby Bowden, Frank Beamer, Mack Brown and Tom Osborne.

When OU and Texas bolted for the SEC ahead of the 2024 season, OSU seemed poised to rule a weaker Big 12. Instead, the Cowboys went 0-9 in league play last fall, culminating with a 52-0 loss at Colorado.

By the end of it, then-board chair Jimmy Harrel led an unsuccessful push to have Gundy fired last December, according to multiple OSU sources. The winningest coach in school history still had enough support to weather one bad season.

But that backing quickly dried up during the Oregon and Tulsa debacles. As one school source put it, if the Cowboys were going to get the outside financial support necessary to compete at the top of the sport, they had to make a change.

“We’re not the only school trying to win football games,” Weiberg said. “We’ve got to continue to step up and compete at the highest level if we want to win at the highest level.”

Interviews with several program sources recounted the week that resulted in one of the most pivotal decisions in school history — and why the coach who turned OSU into a perennial winner couldn’t hang on to his job any longer.

IN THE 104 seasons before Gundy took over in 2005, OSU reached double-digit wins three times. In two decades, Gundy led the Cowboys to eight 10-win seasons, turning OSU into a consistent winner and unapologetically putting the Cowboys on the map nationally at the same time.

He grew a mullet. He danced down to the floor in the locker room after big wins. And he delivered one of the most quotable lines in college football history — “I’m a man! I’m 40!”

Unlike OU and Texas, Gundy rarely landed top-25 recruiting classes.

But the Cowboys managed to compete with the Big 12 bluebloods by unearthing hidden gems, who later developed into standouts with the help of Rob Glass, one of the country’s most respected strength and conditioning coaches. Justin Blackmon and James Washington both arrived as two-star recruits. They each left with the Biletnikoff Award, given to college football’s most outstanding receiver.

“That’s always been our secret sauce,” said one program source. “We were really good at evaluating talent. Then you get them in with Rob Glass, and all of a sudden your two- or three-star guy becomes a four- or five-star player.”

In 2011, with that blueprint, OSU won its first outright conference title since the World War II era and finished third in the BCS rankings, narrowly missing out on reaching the national title game.

A decade later, the Cowboys came up just short at the goal line against Baylor in the Big 12 championship. With another yard, the Pokes likely would’ve advanced to the four-team College Football Playoff.

But OSU’s formula for success began to fray in college football’s money era. The kinds of players OSU previously developed began leaving for bigger paydays elsewhere.

For many years, the Cowboys boasted one of the biggest megadonors in college football history: oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, who famously bankrolled OSU’s facilities with billions and financed the football stadium now bearing his name. But Pickens died in 2019, just before paying players became paramount and the decisive competitive edge.

Team sources said OSU spent just $7 million on its roster last season — $13 million less than Ohio State spent on the Buckeyes’ 2024 national championship team.

Money also intensified tension within the program. A week before the 2024 opener last August, Gundy complained about players asking for more money just before the season.

“Tell your agent to quit calling us,” he said then. “It’s nonnegotiable now.”

Multiple OSU sources said that frustration was primarily directed at returning starting quarterback Alan Bowman and his representation.

After Bowman completed just 8 of 22 passes with an interception before halftime against Utah in Week 4, the seventh-year senior was benched for the second half of OSU’s Big 12-opening loss. The move, and the defeat, set the tone for what would ultimately become the worst season of Gundy’s career.

“It’s just amazing how quickly we slid down,” said an OSU source. “We really went into the [new] Big 12 thinking we’d be the leader of the pack, and it didn’t work that way. And I think Coach Gundy would admit he was late to the NIL game.”

Earlier in his tenure, Gundy had led OSU to improbable turnarounds following ugly early-season losses.

After falling to Central Michigan on a Hail Mary in 2016, the Cowboys rebounded to finish with 10 wins. In 2023, OSU bounced back from a dismal 33-7 loss to South Alabama to reach the Big 12 championship game as Gundy cruised to Big 12 Coach of the Year for a second time in three seasons.

But Gundy couldn’t orchestrate such a turnaround last year. In early November, after six straight losses, he created a local firestorm by suggesting negative fans “can’t pay their own bills.”

By December, after he fired his entire coaching staff, it was unclear if Gundy himself would return this fall. On Dec. 7, he reached an agreement with the regents to take a $1 million pay cut that went toward NIL; he also accepted a reduced buyout.

OSU sources pointed out that the December drama severely limited the pool of coordinators willing to come to Stillwater amid so much uncertainty.

The Cowboys badly needed a rising play-calling star, like in 2010, when Gundy turned things over to Dana Holgorsen, who transformed OSU’s offense and laid the foundation for the Big 12 title attack that Todd Monken (now the Baltimore Ravens‘ offensive coordinator) led the next year.

OSU also needed its next Jim Knowles, a 2025 version of the coordinator who whipped the Cowboys into a defensive stalwart by 2021, when they nearly made the playoff. (Knowles coordinated Ohio State’s top-ranked defense last year and is now at Penn State).

Instead, Gundy settled for Doug Meacham and Todd Grantham — Meacham was the inside receivers coach at TCU; Grantham had been freshly demoted from coaching defensive line to an advisory role with the New Orleans Saints.

Gundy also gave Meacham and Grantham full authority to hire their own assistants — effectively isolating himself inside the program he built.

The Cowboys increased their roster salary for the 2025 season to $16 million, according to team sources. What followed was a massive roster overhaul. More than 60 newcomers arrived — and 35 didn’t show up until June. Of the program’s 38 transfer additions, only eight started against Tulsa on Sept. 19.

“You can’t build a football team [and have immediate success] that way,” said one OSU source.

Expectations may not have been high coming in, but injuries rendered any chance for a fast start impossible.

Starting quarterback Hauss Hejny, a TCU transfer expected to lead the offense, broke his left foot in the opener against UT Martin. A week later, left tackle Markell Samuel aggravated a stress fracture during the team’s walkthrough in Oregon and was sidelined, too.

OSU’s beleaguered offense went three-and-out or turned the ball over on 10 of its first 12 drives against the Ducks. Against Tulsa, the Cowboys managed only a field goal through three quarters.

“With Oregon, you could say, well, they might be the No. 1 team in the country,” said an OSU source. “But losing to [Tulsa] for the first time in 74 years at home, I knew it wouldn’t be good — and it wasn’t.”

ON MONDAY, THREE days after the Tulsa loss, Gundy held his normal weekly press conference. He said he didn’t want the 2025 season to be his final one at OSU and added he still had “the same amount of energy” as his first day on the job.

On Tuesday morning, Gundy held a staff meeting. He told his assistants to simplify the schemes so the players could think less and play faster. He suggested playing more music in practice to bolster enthusiasm. He wanted the players to celebrate more. He even tasked coaches to encourage specific transfer newcomers.

An hour or so later, Weiberg visited Gundy’s office to tell him he’d been fired. The concept of Gundy leading the Cowboys for the remainder of the season was never discussed.

“We all know he had a propensity for being unpredictable when he had the job,” a program source said. “What would that have looked like for the next nine games without it?”

The timing of the announcement — four days after the Tulsa loss and one day after his Monday press conference — angered many former OSU players, who found it disrespectful.

“Total bulls—,” said one.

Program sources, describing Weiberg’s meeting with Gundy as friendly, noted Gundy never inquired about timing. Still, many found the timetable curious, if not puzzling.

“Everybody is just lost around here,” one OSU athletics source admitted on the day of Gundy’s firing, “trying to figure out what’s about to happen next.”

During the first decade-plus of Gundy’s tenure, OSU had a clear, entrenched power structure — with Burns Hargis as president, Mike Holder as athletic director and Pickens as primary donor. Gundy often butted heads with Holder and Pickens. But in the end, they always worked out their differences.

Lately, OSU’s power structure has been murky. Weiberg has been working without a signed contract. President Kayse Shrum, one of Gundy’s biggest backers, who succeeded Hargis, resigned in February.

The regents are also mostly new, with Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, an OSU grad whose term is up in 2026, having appointed the entire board.

Athletic department sources attributed the delay in firing Gundy to logistics. Because of conflicting schedules, the school couldn’t get new president Jim Hess and the regents together until Monday to formalize the decision (though many within the athletic department wondered what OSU’s leadership did all weekend that prevented them from meeting earlier).

After Weiberg delivered him the news on Tuesday, Gundy went to the weight room to find Glass, his longtime confidante. But an OSU administrator had already summoned Glass upstairs to meet Weiberg and get the update.

Players trickled in for a previously scheduled afternoon meeting, only to learn over social media that Gundy had been fired. The OSU coaching staff found out the same way.

Cale Gundy, Mike’s brother and a former OU quarterback and assistant coach, was riding a John Deere mower cutting their father’s grass in Midwest City, Oklahoma, where the Gundy brothers once starred in high school. Cale saw his dad walk out of the house with a suspicious grin. He knew then something had happened to Mike.

“It had been on my mind 24 hours a day,” said Cale, whose son, KC, is a quality control assistant at OSU. “Dad said, ‘Well, they fired your brother.'”

Weiberg met with the players, informing them his door was open if they had questions. He also let them know that Meacham, an OSU alum, would be the interim head coach.

The decision to fire Gundy triggered a 30-day window for players to leave via the transfer portal. It has already caused fallout on the recruiting trail. Four-star, in-state running back recruit Kaydin Jones pulled his commitment from OSU. A number of others, including three-star quarterback Kase Evans, have followed suit.

“It’ll be in disarray like crazy,” said one source close to the team. “It’s going to be a mess the rest of the year.”

As Weiberg addressed the media to explain the firing, Gundy and his wife, Kristen, visited Stillwater High School, where their son, Gage, coaches quarterbacks. After the practice, Gundy briefly chatted with Stillwater offensive coordinator Charlie Johnson, a former OSU offensive lineman who started 115 games in the NFL (Gundy watched Stillwater’s practice again on Thursday from the stands with his dogs).

The firing never came up. But Johnson could see the pain in his eyes.

“I think it’s a slap in the face to do it when they did it. I don’t think that it showed Coach Gundy the respect that he deserves,” Johnson said. “That’s just not the way that that should happen to somebody that’s meant so much to the program, to the school, to the kids.”

Before Gundy and Kristen went to dinner in downtown Stillwater — their first fall date night in ages — they swung by OSU’s indoor facility, where the Cowboys had just finished practice.

Gundy addressed the players. He challenged them to come together, to play for one another and to keep fighting. He told them they could beat Baylor on Saturday and believed they would soon turn their season around. He also reminded them that the OSU program was bigger than any one person, including him.

“Then it ended with a lot of hugging,” one assistant said, “and a lot of crying.

“It was Coach Gundy at his finest moment.”

WEIBERG VOWED TUESDAY to find a coach who would bring winning back to Stillwater.

“We’ve proven that we can win here,” said Weiberg, who confirmed he would be leading the coaching search. “We’ve proven that we have a lot of support for this program. The ingredients are here. … But there are things about the game that have changed. So I want to hear what the vision is from any of our candidates.”

Weiberg also promised that the school will, in time, celebrate the man who won 170 games.

“We are forever grateful to Mike Gundy,” he said.

Gundy’s OSU chapter is over. But his career might not be.

“Mike wants to coach — 100%,” Cale Gundy said. “He’s as fiery and passionate about coaching as ever and he wants to do it.” On several occasions, Mike had tried to hire his younger brother. To this point, Cale has resisted — he’s enjoyed his post-coaching life too much.

“That’s where we’re different,” Cale Gundy said. “But I can tell you this, and I told him this [Tuesday] — ‘If you go coach somewhere else, I’m going to go with you — and we’ll go fight like hell.'”

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Flyers honor late Parent with tribute before game

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November 23, 2025

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Flyers honor late Parent with tribute before game

  • Associated Press

Nov 22, 2025, 10:40 PM ET

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.”

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Blackwood makes 35 saves as Avs win 8th straight

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November 23, 2025

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Blackwood makes 35 saves as Avs win 8th straight

  • ESPN News Services

Nov 22, 2025, 11:41 PM ET

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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Bring on Rivalry Week! Status quo Saturday means chaos looms

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November 23, 2025

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Bring on Rivalry Week! Status quo Saturday means chaos looms

  • David HaleNov 22, 2025, 11:55 PM ET

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

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.

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’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.

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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.

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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