College football Week 9 takeaways: Boise State’s CFP chances, Miami’s state title and more
As we say goodbye to October and enter the final full month of the regular season, some teams made a big push to stay in College Football Playoff conversations this past week.
No. 15 Boise State continued its storybook run with a 29-24 win over UNLV. In what was set to be its most challenging remaining matchup, the Broncos pulled off the win. With their only loss coming to No. 1 Oregon — and by only three points — could we see a rematch between these opponents in the playoff?
After trailing in the last four minutes, No. 16 Kansas State beat Kansas on a field goal, keeping its title and playoff hopes alive. The Wildcats are 4-1 in conference play but have a big hurdle ahead with matchup against No. 11 Iowa State on Nov. 30.
Our college football experts break down key storylines and takeaways from Week 9.
The Group of 5 playoff spot is Boise State’s to lose
On Friday night at UNLV, Boise State won its most difficult remaining game, adding to its playoff resumé and cementing the Broncos as the clubhouse leader for a guaranteed spot in the CFP as one of the five highest-ranked conference champions. Boise State shouldn’t have to displace the No. 12-ranked team for a seat at the table, either — the Broncos are good enough that they can be ranked in the committee’s top 12 on their own merit.
Boise State’s resumé includes a win against a 7-1 Washington State team and a 6-2 UNLV team. Those alone are better wins than some other contenders have stockpiled (see: Clemson, Indiana.) The Broncos have a Heisman Trophy contender in running back Ashton Jeanty. They have a defense that has given opposing quarterbacks nightmares. And they have the best loss in the country — by a field goal at Oregon, which should be the committee’s No. 1 team. If Boise State runs the table and finishes as a one-loss Mountain West Conference champion, the Broncos will almost certainly have a chance to compete for the national title — and maybe meet Oregon again along the way. — Heather Dinich
Notre Dame continuing to benefit from Texas A&M’s success
As Texas A&M jumped ahead of LSU and began to distance itself, sending Kyle Field into a frenzy Saturday night, another group of college football fans cheered along with great interest. Notre Dame supporters weren’t merely taking pleasure in a loss for former coach Brian Kelly, they recognized that a schedule that has dragged down the Fighting Irish profile is starting to become more of a selling point. A season-opening win against Texas A&M in College Station, against what is now the only undefeated team in SEC play, is looking better and better for Notre Dame. The Irish will be rooting for the Aggies the rest of the way.
Notre Dame also helped itself with a definitive win against previously undefeated Navy, which could still win the AAC. The Irish also have Army, currently undefeated, later in the season. Although opponents such as Florida State and perhaps even USC won’t help Notre Dame’s profile, an 11-1 mark shouldn’t keep the Irish out of the CFP, as some thought it would after a Week 2 loss to Northern Illinois. That defeat continues to look worse — NIU fell to Ball State on Saturday — but good wins should outweigh bad losses, and Notre Dame has one that keeps getting better. The Irish also are stacking drama-free wins, as their past three have come by an average of 32.3 points. — Adam Rittenberg
Miami proudly proclaims state championship
Miami might not have thrown for 300 yards or scored 40 points, but what the Hurricanes did in a 36-14 win over Florida State was statement enough for coach Mario Cristobal.
So much so that he ended his news conference with a mic-drop moment.
“Critically important to go out there and beat this program and to be undefeated in the state of Florida,” Cristobal said. “I think it sends a strong message. I think all recruits, in-state and out-of-state, can now clearly see the trajectory of this program versus the trajectory of the other programs.”
He slammed his fist on the podium to further underscore his point, then left.
While those rival schools will no doubt keep what Cristobal said in the back of their minds, it is important to understand why Cristobal said what he said. When he arrived at Miami in 2022, the Seminoles were on the rise under Mike Norvell and Florida had made it to multiple New Year’s Six games under Dan Mullen.
In his first game against Florida State as head coach that season, the Seminoles won 45-3. The sting from that game provided endless motivation. Even without that result, Cristobal knew what his program needed to do in facing such a “monumental task” to get back to competing for championships.
“We knew when we came here that we were going to get our teeth kicked in early,” Cristobal said. “It’s a great example of working your butt off and keeping your head down and not worrying about all that crap that comes with rebuilds.”
Miami opened the season with an emphatic 41-17 win over Florida that served notice things would be different this year. Next came a 50-15 win over USF. Finally Saturday night, the first win over Florida State for Cristobal as a head coach. Miami is 8-0. Florida State dropped to 1-7 and is out of bowl contention, a year after winning the ACC title. Florida is 4-3, facing an end-of-season gauntlet against four top-25 teams that will make it challenging to get to six wins.
For further proof of how much Miami values being state champ, linebacker Francisco Mauigoa showed up to the postgame news conference wearing a black T-shirt that said, “We run FL,” featuring a broken spear and the mounted heads of a bull and a gator. — Andrea Adelson
Most disappointing in Big 12?
In the preseason media poll, Utah (20), Oklahoma State (14), Kansas (5) and Arizona (3) were four of the fives teams that received first-place votes (Kansas State was the other with 19). As such, they were all dreaming about the College Football Playoff. A few months later, those same four schools are a combined 3-17 in the Big 12 in what has turned into a competitive race to be considered the most disappointing team in the conference.
Preseason polls are wrong all the time, but there has rarely ever — maybe never? — been such a miscalculation of conference strength.
Conversely, BYU is 8-0 after being picked to come in 13th, while Colorado (6-2, 4-1) and Arizona State (5-2, 2-2) have taken significant steps forward after being slotted at No. 11 and last place, respectively.
There are obviously several factors in play here, but perhaps it is best a reflection of how different teams can be year over year now in college football with the lax transfer restrictions. It’s too early to know if this is instructive about what things will be like in the future, but it has made for an interesting year in the new-look Big 12. — Kyle Bonagura
Oregon looks comfortable at the top
There was no doubt that the Ducks would get up for their matchup against Ohio State a few weeks ago. But after outlasting the Buckeyes in a thriller, the comedown could have caught them off guard and led to a debilitating loss against an inferior opponent. Instead, Dan Lanning and Oregon have not let up — on a short-week trip to Purdue, the Ducks shut out the Boilermakers, and this week, they made Illinois, the 20th ranked team in the country, look helpless on both sides of the ball.
Lanning has said he doesn’t care about the Ducks being ranked No. 1, and that mindset seems to have trickled down to the rest of his team.
“Everybody wants to be at the top of the food chain. Every day we know we got a target on our back, but we don’t really care who’s coming after us,” wide receiver Tez Johnson said. “We don’t care about the number one spot. We just care about going one-and-oh at the end of the week. I mean, it is good, but we don’t really care … we just want to win football games.”
Oregon is 8-0 for the first time since 2013 and ranked No. 1 for the first time since 2012. With an offense that looks far more in sync than it did at the beginning of the year and a defense that continues to improve, it doesn’t appear to be slowing down.
Next week, the Ducks head to Michigan for what is arguably the toughest matchup remaining on their schedule, but nothing suggests they won’t be ready for any game that’s left between them and an undefeated regular season.
“I think just the way Coach Lanning has done it from the top down, everyone’s focused on a week at a time,” quarterback Dillon Gabriel said. “We’re just so focused on being team oriented because the rest will take care of itself.” — Paolo Uggetti
Farmageddon looming large
Kansas State escaped the Sunflower Showdown with a 29-27 victory Saturday night over Kansas. The Wildcats trailed with 4 minutes to go. But K-State linebacker Austin Romaine upended scrambling Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels and Brendan Mott recovered the fumble. Chris Tennant then tied a career high with a 51-yard field goal to lift the Wildcats to their 16th straight victory in the series.
The dramatic win kept K-State alive in the Big 12 title and playoff races. Going forward, the Wildcats should be considerable favorites in their next three games leading into a Nov. 30 showdown at Iowa State.
The Cyclones, who had a bye over the weekend, are undefeated and in the thick of the playoff conversation as well. If Iowa State can also take care of business, the Cyclones and Wildcats could square off in the most meaningful Farmageddon tilt in the history of college football’s longest uninterrupted rivalry (108 games). — Jake Trotter
Alabama isn’t done
During a Saturday morning chat with Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer, less than five hours before hosting his homecoming matchup against fellow scrambling top-25 SEC foe Missouri, anyone seeking a sense of panic, worry or fear for his future would’ve been disappointed. Instead, he talked very matter of fact about a pregame routine of media, a team walkthrough at the hotel and “taking care of what we can control, and that’s football. Specifically, taking care of the football.”
That is exactly what Alabama did, taking advantage of Missouri’s wounded offense to snatch three interceptions. Meanwhile, Jalen Milroe‘s first game this season without a touchdown pass (he did run for a score) was also his first game in a month without at least one pass picked off. DeBoer reminded Saturday morning before kickoff and Saturday evening after the win that Milroe “has been thrown so much change” between a new offensive playbook and the absence of so many teammates from last season’s CFP team. But he also admitted that his staff was doing a better job in more recent days of “adjusting what we do to the personnel we have, especially a quarterback that in our opinion is the best in the nation from a football and leadership standpoint.”
Even with the two losses that everyone in Nick Saban-spoiled Tuscaloosa has had to make their own adjustments to, ESPN analytics say the Tide still have a 53% chance to return to the CFP. No one is more aware of that than the head coach and team that appears to be emerging from a roller-coaster October with the most stability it has enjoyed in quite a while. — Ryan McGee
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Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — Roki Sasaki donned a No. 11 Los Angeles Dodgers jersey atop a makeshift stage Wednesday afternoon and called it the culmination of “an incredibly difficult decision.”
When Sasaki was posted by the Chiba Lotte Marines in the middle of December — a development evaluators have spent years anticipating — 20 major league teams formally expressed interest. Eight of those clubs were granted initial meetings at the L.A. offices of Sasaki’s agency, Wasserman. Three were then named finalists in the middle of January, prompting official visits to their ballparks. And in the end, to practically nobody’s surprise, it was the Dodgers who won out.
The Dodgers had long been deemed favorites for Sasaki, so much so that many viewed the pairing as an inevitability. In the wake of that actually materializing, scouts and executives throughout the industry have privately complained about being dragged through what they perceived as a process that already had a predetermined outcome. Some have also expressed concern that the homework assignment Sasaki gave to each of the eight teams he initially met with, asking them to present their ideas for how to recapture the life of his fastball, saw them provide proprietary information without ultimately having a reasonable chance to get him.
Sasaki’s agent, Joel Wolfe, admitted he has heard some of those complaints over the past handful of days.
“I’ve tried to be an open book and as transparent as possible with all the teams in the league,” said Wolfe, who has vehemently denied claims of a predetermined deal from the onset. “I answer every phone call, I answer every question. This goes back to before the process even started. Every team I think would tell you that I told each one of them where they stood throughout the entire process, why they got a meeting, why they didn’t get a meeting, why other teams got a meeting. I tried to do my best to do that. He was only going to be able to pick one.”
Sasaki, 23, is considered one of the world’s most promising pitching prospects, with a triple-digit fastball and an otherworldly splitter. Through four seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball, Sasaki posted a 2.10 ERA, a 0.89 WHIP and 505 strikeouts against just 88 walks in 394⅔ innings. But he has openly acknowledged to teams that he is not yet fully formed, and many of those who followed him in Japan believed his priority would be to go to the team that had the best chance of making him better.
Few would argue that the Dodgers don’t fit that description. Their vast resources, recent run of success and sizeable footprint in Japan made them an obvious fit for Sasaki, but it was their track record of pitching development that landed them one of the sport’s most intriguing prospects.
“His goal is to be the first Japanese pitcher to win a Cy Young, and he definitely possesses the ability to do that,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “We’re excited to partner with him.”
Sasaki will join a star-studded rotation headlined by Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, decorated Japanese countrymen who signed free agent deals totaling more than $1 billion in December 2023. The Dodgers went on to win the ensuing World Series, then doubled down on one of the sport’s richest, most talented rosters.
Over the past three months, they’ve signed starting pitcher Blake Snell for $182 million, extended utility man Tommy Edman for $74 million, given reliever Tanner Scott $72 million, brought back corner outfielder Teoscar Hernandez for $66 million, added another corner outfielder in Michael Conforto ($17 million) and struck a surprising deal with Korean middle infielder Hyeseong Kim ($12.5 million). At some point, they’ll finalize a contract with another back-end reliever in Kirby Yates and will bring back longtime ace Clayton Kershaw.
But Sasaki, who has drawn the attention of Dodgers scouts since he was throwing 100-mph fastballs in high school, was the ultimate prize.
“As I transition to the major leagues, I am deeply honored so many teams reached out to me, especially considering I haven’t achieved much in Japan,” Sasaki, speaking through an interpreter, said in front of hundreds of media members. “It makes me feel more focused than ever. I am truly grateful to all the team officials who took the time to meet with me during this process.
“I spent the past month both embracing and reflecting on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to choose a place purely based on where I can grow as a player the most,” Sasaki continued. “Every organization helped me in its own way, and it was an incredibly difficult decision to choose just one. I am fully aware that there are many different opinions out there. But now that I have decided to come here, I want to move forward with the belief that the decision I made is the best one, trust in those who believed in my potential and (have) conviction in the goals that I set for myself.”
Major League Baseball heard complaints from rival teams about a prearranged deal between Sasaki’s side and the Dodgers before he was posted, prompting an investigation “to ensure the protocol agreement had been followed,” a league official said in a statement. MLB found no evidence, prompting Sasaki to be included as part of the 2025 international signing class.
Because he is under 25 years old and spent less than six seasons in NPB, Sasaki was made available as an international amateur, his earnings restricted to teams’ signing-bonus pools. The Dodgers gave him $6.5 million, which constitutes the vast majority of their allotment, and will control Sasaki’s rights until he attains the six years of service time required for free agency. Sasaki said his immediate goal is to “beat the competition and make sure I do get a major league contract.”
Sasaki combined to throw barely more than 200 innings over the past two years and is expected to be handled carefully in the United States. The Dodgers won’t set a strict innings limit for him in 2025 but will deploy a traditional six-man rotation, which also makes sense with Ohtani returning as a two-way player. The Dodgers’ initial meeting with Sasaki saw them tout the way their training staff, pitching coaches and performance-science group work in harmony. In their second, they brought out Ohtani, Edman, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts and Sasaki’s catcher, Will Smith, in hopes of wooing him. And in the end, it was Ohtani who broke the news to the Dodgers’ front-office members, letting them know they landed Sasaki in a text before his agent could get around to calling.
Friedman described it as “pure excitement.” Many others, however, rolled their eyes at what they felt was inevitable. Wolfe denied that, saying, “I don’t believe [the Dodgers] was always the destination.” But then he went on to describe how prevalent the Dodgers are in Japan. Their games are on every morning and rebroadcast later at night. Dodgers-specific shops outfit stadiums throughout the country.
“They’re everywhere,” Wolfe said. “And I think that all the players and fans see the Dodgers every day, so it’s always in their mind because of Ohtani and Yamamoto. But when (Sasaki) came over here, he came with a very open mind.”
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Greg Wyshynski
NHL teams don’t necessarily need a goaltender that can drag them to the Stanley Cup, mostly because those types of netminders are unicorns. What they need is a goalie that can make a save at a critical time; and, perhaps most of all, not lose a game for the team in front of them.
As the NHL playoff picture comes into focus, so does the quality of every team’s most important position. Will their goaltending be the foundation for a playoff berth and postseason run? Or is it the fatal flaw in their designs on the Stanley Cup?
The NHL Bubble Watch is our monthly check-in on the Stanley Cup playoff races using playoff probabilities and points projections from Stathletes for all 32 teams. This month, we’re also giving each contending team a playoff quality goaltending rating based on the classic Consumer Reports review standards: Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor.
We also reveal which teams shouldn’t worry about any of this because they’re lottery-bound already.
But first, a look at the projected playoff bracket:
Ohio State‘s 34-23 victory over Notre Dame in Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship game was the most-watched game of the season. However, it was a double-digit drop in viewers from last year.
ESPN announced Wednesday that the Buckeyes’ second national championship in the CFP era averaged 22.1 million viewers. It was the most-watched, non-NFL sporting event over the past year, but a 12% drop from the 25 million who tuned in for Michigan’s 34-13 victory over Washington in 2024.
It was the third-lowest audience of the 11 CFP title games, with all three occurring in the past five years. The audience peaked at 26.1 million viewers during the second quarter (8:30 to 8:45 p.m. ET) when the score was tied at 7.
Since Alabama’s 26-23 overtime victory over Georgia in 2018, the past seven title games have had an average margin of victory of 25.4 points. Ohio State had a 31-7 lead midway through the third quarter before Notre Dame rallied to get within one possession with five minutes remaining in the fourth.
Georgia’s 65-7 rout of TCU in 2023 was the least-viewed title game (17.2 million) followed by Alabama’s 52-24 win over Ohio State in 2021 (18.7 million). The first title game in 2015 — the Buckeyes’ 42-20 victory over Oregon — remains the most-watched college football game by viewers in the CFP era, according to Nielsen at 33.9 million.
This was the first year of the 12-team field. The first round averaged 10.6 million viewers with the quarterfinals at 16.9 million. The semifinals averaged 19.2 million, a 17% decline from last year. Both semifinal games in 2024 though were played on Jan. 1. Michigan’s OT victory over Alabama in the Rose Bowl drew a bigger audience (27.7 million) than the Wolverines’ win in the title game.
CFP games ended up being nine of the 10 most-viewed this season. Georgia’s OT win over Texas in the SEC championship on ABC/ESPN was sixth at 16.6 million.
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