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BERKELEY, Calif. — Joe Starkey thought he had blown the call.

Hours after “the most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heartrending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football,” Starkey attended a neighborhood party near his home in Walnut Creek, California, about 15 miles East of Cal’s Memorial Stadium. The date was Nov. 20, 1982, and Starkey had spent the day calling the Big Game, featuring archrivals Cal and Stanford.

Starkey, the eighth-year radio play-by-play voice for Cal, scrambled to find a highlight of what had happened in the final four seconds, a scene that would become known in sports lore simply as: The Play.

Trailing 20-19, Cal fielded a kickoff with four seconds left. The Bears made five laterals, the last going to Kevin Moen. As Starkey shouted, “The band is out on the field!” Moen weaved through Stanford band members, crossed the goal line and plowed into trombonist Gary Tyrrell.

Final score: Cal 25, Stanford 20.

“I thought I’d screwed it up completely,” Starkey said. “I was too excited, not enough detail.”

Even in the KGO radio booth, amid the mayhem and excitement after Cal’s victory, Starkey felt fear run through him.

“I realized pretty quickly the magnitude of what had happened,” he said. “Now, my fear is, did I do it right? Did I make the call right? Did I screw it up and say something I shouldn’t have, or did I miss something I should have had? That haunted me.”

Eventually, Starkey warmed up to the call that would change his life, the one that will forever be associated with him. He’s called Super Bowls as the San Francisco 49ers radio play-by-play voice. While working for ABC at the 1980 Winter Olympics, he did an impromptu call of the third period of the U.S.-Russia “Miracle On Ice” game, which aired on ABC’s West Coast radio affiliates.

But no single moment will compare to the one 40 years ago in Strawberry Canyon. The one that got him recognized on the streets of Tokyo and in a hotel pool in Rome with the drummer for the Rolling Stones. Now 81, Starkey will call his final Big Game this week as he prepares for retirement after 48 seasons as the voice of the Bears.

“They’re going to bury me with it,” Starkey said of his famous call. “It will be the first words when I die in the obituary. It lives on forever, apparently. This is 40 years later, and it’s starting all over again.”

NOVEMBER 20 BEGAN like any other football Saturday for Starkey, then 41. He drove to the game with his wife and sons, and arrived at the stadium two hours before kickoff. Pregame always began an hour before, but Starkey used the extra time to finalize his notes and chat with the broadcasters from Cal’s opponents to gain a nugget or two. He knew plenty about Stanford, especially star quarterback John Elway, the son of college coach Jack Elway, and a high school standout in California.

The booth configuration was standard: Starkey and color commentator Jan Hutchins, a longtime Bay Area sportscaster; producer/engineer Neil Hogue; spotter Jim Starkey, Joe’s 15-year-old son; and a statistician. The broadcast didn’t include a sideline reporter.

“It was one of my first games,” Jim Starkey said. “I had just started spotting for him that year.”

Cal came in at 6-4, Stanford at 5-5. Joe Starkey expected “just a very normal Big Game day with a big crowd.” He’s not one for premonitions about events or potential historic moments, but sensed early on that the 85th Big Game would be special.

“The level of play, the amount of big plays, was so dramatic,” he said. “I’ve always said that even if there was no band on the field and game-winning laterals, it would have been one of the best two or three Big Games I ever saw.”

Cal wide receivers Mariet Ford and Wes Howell made highlight-reel touchdown catches. Elway, whose Pro Football Hall of Fame career featured many clutch drives, converted a fourth-and-17 from Stanford’s 13-yard line with less than a minute left.

“If that’s an incomplete pass, there is no ‘Band on the field,'” Starkey said. “They lose.”

Stanford set up for a field-goal attempt that everyone, including Starkey, expected to be the game winner. But rather than ensure the field-goal attempt would be the final play, Stanford took a timeout with eight seconds left. Mark Harmon converted the 35-yard field goal. Four seconds remained.

“The Stanford assistant coaches, many of whom I’ve known for years, have told me that there was actually a very aggressive shouting match going on between the coaches upstairs as to when they should stop the clock,” Starkey said. “The guys who wanted eight seconds, unfortunately for Stanford, won out over the guys who wanted four seconds.”

Stanford was flagged for excessive celebration after the field goal, a penalty Starkey hated then and hates now. Harmon kicked off from the 25-yard line rather than the 40, creating a shorter distance for Cal to ultimately cover.

“If they don’t get those 15 yards, does that play work?” Starkey said. “Do they actually bring it all the way back?”

STARKEY HAS NEVER rehearsed his calls, even when a significant play is approaching. He came close in 1992 when Jerry Rice was about to set the NFL’s touchdown receptions record, but ended up reacting to the moment in real-time.

As Stanford prepared for the kickoff, Starkey essentially began wrapping up the game, crediting the Cardinal for their drive despite “defeat staring them straight in the face.” He could see Stanford preparing to hoist the Axe, the Big Game’s rivalry trophy, which the Cardinal had won in 1981. He paid no attention to the Stanford band.

Jim Starkey stood up and stretched a bit, ready to pack up his binoculars. He briefly left the booth before returning, sitting to his father’s left as Stanford kicked off. Joe’s wife, Diane, sitting not far from the KGO booth, remembers seeing groups of fans leaving early.

“It wasn’t like, you think 40 years later, this was going to be such a momentous event,” Diane said. “But people said to me later, who were out on the street, people were at intersections and nobody was moving, because they were listening to it on the radio.”

Joe expected a squib kick, which would limit the chances of a long return. That’s what Harmon did.

“The Bears need to get out of bounds,” Starkey began his call, thinking Cal could attempt a Hail Mary if it immediately reached the sideline.

He thought Cal might pull off a successful lateral or two before the play would end. Moen took the kickoff and passed the ball backward to Richard Rodgers, who then found Dwight Garner. The young running back’s knee nearly hit the ground — or did, according to anyone affiliated with Stanford, including a group of players who ran onto the field to celebrate — before he pitched the ball back to Rodgers.

Things were getting interesting, but a Cal touchdown? “I still didn’t believe it,” Starkey said. He continued to watch the ball, which Rodgers had pitched to Ford as the action shifted closer to Stanford’s sideline. By this point, Starkey’s color man and spotter had become irrelevant.

“Strictly me,” Starkey said. “I’m making every bit of the call.”

A split second before three Stanford defenders converged, Ford pitched the ball over his shoulder to Moen at around the Stanford 25-yard line.

“It’s again, serendipity, a fluke, whatever you want to call it,” Starkey said. “When he throws that ball over his shoulder, he is hoping and praying that maybe there’s a Cal guy behind him that can catch this, but he can’t possibly know that.”

The excitement in Starkey’s voice built as the play continued, but after the Ford lateral to Moen, his voice amplified. Stanford band members had entered the field.

“It changes everything. How do I describe this? It’s so bizarre,” Starkey said. “I’ve broadcast nearly 1,000 college and pro football games. I’ve never seen anything that matches what happened at the end of that game. To this day, you’ll see a game where they’ll have laterals at the end of the game, trying to save a play, save a touchdown.

“But the wild card is always the band.”

While Starkey tried to describe the scene before him, Hutchins started screaming, completely immersed in what was unfolding. It was similar in 1972 when, as a young sports reporter in Pittsburgh, Hutchins stood on the sideline at Three Rivers Stadium as Steelers fullback Franco Harris made the “Immaculate Reception” and ran right by him.

He’s grateful his audio track has been edited out of clips that show The Play.

“I was not thinking, I was totally being, which is why I started screaming,” Hutchins said. “They’ve taken my whole soundtrack out because I was gibberish and ruining your chance to hear what Joe had to say. I try to live like this most of the time anyhow, but I was flat-out in the moment. I was not thinking anything.

“I was experiencing what I knew was one of the most fantastic sporting results ever.”

Even while shouting about Moen entering the end zone, Starkey had seen flags fly during the play and posed the essential question: “Will it count?” Would Cal’s win — and Starkey’s incredible call — be wiped away by a penalty on the Bears?

At worst, Starkey had become really excited for nothing. But it was better than the alternative.

“My theory had been, even then as a young broadcaster, is you can always apologize, but do it all the way through the first time,” he said. “If you stop and then it counts, then there’s no record of it, you screwed it up, and now it’s lost for posterity. In any sport, whatever I was doing, it was call the play and feel free to say, ‘Gee folks, I guess I messed that up.'”

Starkey’s rule is why only one call of The Play truly resonates. There had been a local TV broadcast and a Stanford radio broadcast, but both cut off the call midstream, thinking there was no way the touchdown would count.

“The worst thing would be doing what the other broadcasts did,” Starkey said. “They wrote it off too soon.”

Starkey’s eyes locked on the officials. He theorized to the audience that Cal might have made a forward lateral during the return.

“It is louder than you can ever imagine,” Jim Starkey said. “Half the stadium, the red is not believing it, and the blue is saying, ‘It happened.’ You had the band on the field, all these bodies, and since I had binoculars, I saw [Moen] running into the end zone. But you still don’t know if it’s truly going to happen because it’s just chaos.”

The crew congregated around referee Charles Moffett, who confirmed Moen had crossed the goal line, that every lateral was legal and that the penalty was against Stanford for players and band members entering the field. Moffett raised his arms: Touchdown.

“I get kind of wacky and scream and yell,” Joe Starkey said.

He then delivered the famous summation of The Play: “The most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heartrending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football. California has won the Big Game over Stanford!”

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0:50

November 20th is the 40th anniversary of when Cal improbably took down Stanford and its band with an infamous kick return.

WHEN DIANE STARKEY saw her husband after he finished his postgame duties, she joked, “I bet you’re excited about this one.” But she could tell Joe, always the self critic, thought he’d left out too many details in the call. He had hit the emotional notes, but worried he missed something big. Then, Diane heard the replay.

“Amazing, unbelievable, I didn’t realize he knew that many adjectives,” said Diane, a longtime school teacher. “It was a true moment, full of real emotion, and people react to that. This man is so excited about the team he loves.

“He’s always been on the more emotional side of broadcasting.”

Starkey immediately recognized The Play and his call would resonate, but he thought it would be confined to the Bay Area or the West Coast. For a while, he was right.

Sports broadcasts were different in 1982. Media mechanics didn’t allow clips to go viral, even ones that would belong among the most famous playcalls in sports history.

But the elements and emotion attached to one of the most incredible unscripted sporting moments eventually broke through the media barriers of the time and reached a larger audience. The call also made Starkey into a celebrity.

Once, Starkey and Diane were vacationing in Tokyo when a Cal fan spotted him and said, “Oh, Joe Starkey, the band is on the field.” The same thing happened when they went to Athens.

“He’s been recognized in all sorts of places,” Diane said.

In 1987, Starkey and Diane took their youngest son Rob, then 11, on a summer trip to Italy and Greece. The vacation ended in Rome at the Cavalieri Hilton hotel. On a blisteringly hot day, Starkey’s wife and son decided to take a nap, so he grabbed a book and went down to the hotel pool.

While Starkey read poolside, the Rolling Stones, who were performing in Rome, and their families sat down next to him. Starkey and Charlie Watts, the Stones’ legendary drummer, struck up a conversation about the band’s tour through Europe.

“Then he says, ‘Ya know, mate, it really is hot, you want to go in the pool?'” Starkey said. “I said, ‘Hell yes.'”

They went to the shallow end of the pool and continued to talk more about music and the Stones, a passion for Starkey. As they chatted, Lou Ferrigno, the actor and bodybuilder, and star on the TV show “The Incredible Hulk,” joined them.

At this moment another man jumped into the pool and started swimming toward them. As he approached from the other side, Watts lamented that fans just wouldn’t leave them alone.

“The guy comes up to the three of us and says, ‘Aren’t you the Cal football announcer?'” Starkey said, laughing. “Charlie said, ‘What’s that all about?’ I said, ‘I broadcast college football. He’s obviously a Berkeley guy.’ I didn’t go into all the stuff about the laterals.

“He wouldn’t have cared. He’s from England.”

Soon after the 1982 Big Game, people began calling KGO radio, asking for tapes of The Play. As sports director, Starkey realized he couldn’t keep asking for copies to be sent out. Plus, since ABC owned the rights, there were legal hurdles to jump over before distributing.

Starkey approached KGO’s station manager with a plan: Transfer him the rights to The Play. He would arrange for the tapes to be produced and would sell them solely at the manufacturing cost.

“I said, ‘I guarantee you I will not do it for money, strictly for cost,'” Starkey said. “So he says, ‘Gimme a buck.’ So I’ve had the rights to The Play for 40 years for a dollar. It hasn’t made me a lot of money, but there have been commercials over the years where people wanted to use it and they had to pay me whatever rates.

“But it’s basically been my play.”

Jim Starkey understood his dad’s initial angst about the call.

“As a professional broadcaster, you’re always supposed to paint the picture, especially in radio, and he’s very studious about that,” Jim said. “He knows the numbers, he’s always very good about knowing both teams, and college teams have a lot of players. I think there are no names actually said in the [call].

“It was right for the moment, but if you look at it in a classroom, you’d probably say, ‘Not the way it’s supposed to go.'”

As the years went by, Starkey warmed up to his call. He now considers it his co-favorite, along with a 25-yard touchdown pass to Terrell Owens that lifted the 49ers past the Green Bay Packers in the 1999 NFL playoffs, a play known as “The Catch II,” after Dwight Clark’s original 17 years earlier.

The USA-Russia Olympic hockey call also sticks with Starkey, who “used a lot of the same adjectives” as he did for The Play.

“It was so unique,” Hutchins said. “It would have been easy for him to get carried away or to get lost, but he stayed in his broadcaster brain the whole way through that thing. It was kind of funny to me, my reaction versus his, but it was evidence and a testimony to just how professional he always was.”

The way Starkey described The Play jibed with his general broadcast style. He wasn’t a football lifer, like others in the booth. The Chicago native played second-string in junior college but had no football broadcasting experience before landing the Cal job in 1975. Starkey had worked in banking in Los Angeles and the Bay Area before breaking into sports broadcasting, his dream job.

“I tend to be a fan in moments like that, where I really kind of let it loose,” he said. “You hope you don’t lose the detail by just screaming and yelling, but I have no problem with being excited about a particular moment. There’s such exuberance and astonishment in the call.

“People get caught up in that and appreciate the pure drama of what was going on.”

Despite his initial angst about the call, Starkey embraces its significance, both personally and historically. The call is an identifier and an icebreaker — “Apparently nuns in convents know The Play,” he jokes — and so distinct that it will never be replicated.

Four decades later, Starkey’s call has a place in sports history, and has far exceeded his initial assessment.

“The things I said and didn’t say, I thought made sense after a while,” he said. “As the years went on, I realized, ‘No, that’s exactly the way you should have done it,’ to capture the excitement of the moment and the mystique that built up around it as this absolutely unique football play.”

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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.

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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.

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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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6 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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6 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

10 p.m. ET | ESPN+

10 p.m. ET | ESPN

9 p.m. ET | ESPN+

9 p.m. ET | ESPN+

6 p.m. ET | ESPN+

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).

play

0:49

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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