Missouri muscled up with some big boy football to get past South Carolina Saturday, dominating in the trenches with some old school Southeastern Conference blocking and tackling.
So, yes, the Tigers will be a factor this season. With some other programs faltering, Truman can now see its path to the College Football Playoff bracket.
Some huge SEC wars still loom, of course, and the Tigers will spend the second half of their season on the road. But Elit Drinkwitz has a chance to build something special with this team.
Let’s take a quick look at what happened elsewhere:
Clemson took a 34-21 pratfall against Clemson, thus ending its bid for the CFP. After slapping back at his critics last week, Swinney followed up with a disastrous performance while falling to 1-3.
Indiana, on the other hand, took a metaphorical shovel to the head of its skeptics while savaging Illinois 63-10. The Fighting Illini’s bid for a CFP slot took a massive hit while Hoosiers basked in the “told you so” glow.
Billy Napier’s hope of prolonging his coaching tenure at Florida evaporated with a 26-7 no-show at Miami. The Gators were big underdogs to the excellent Hurricanes in that game, yes, but they weren’t the least bit competitive. Now they have Texas and Texas A&M up next.
Oklahoma, on the other hand, dispatched Auburn 24-17 to improve to 4-0. The Sooners started last year 4-1 before reality hit, so they can’t get too excited just yet. But OU has already banked two victories over Top 25 teams and it has a tune-up game against Kent State ahead of its Red River Rivalry game against Texas.
Coaching legend Bill Belichick suffered further humiliation against UCF, which then trolled him on social media. When a Hall of Fame coach is getting trolled by UCF, its time to reconsider the comeback.
Clemson’s ongoing collapse was the big story of the weekend. Writing for USA Today, Blake Toppmeyer shed no tears to Dabo:
Obscured in the smokescreen of Dabo Swinney’s petulant [last] week was the reality that Clemson’s coach presides over a football team that’s gone belly up by mid-September.
That’s as shocking as it is unacceptable, that a team with this much veteran talent keeps playing this poorly. While Swinney shamelessly plays the victim card, Clemson fans have every right to be fuming mad. Swinney’s pathetic rant became the appetizer to another lousy performance.
Clemson just got routed by an average Syracuse team, in a development that seemed unfathomable as recently as the summer, when Swinney predicted his team could go 16-0.
Never mind 16-0. The Tigers have 6-6 in their sights, and they’ve lost five of their last six games against Power Four competition.
This is just one more example of about how NIL money leveled the competitive playing field in college sports. Clemson is one of the many programs that had inherent advantages until it didn’t.
In today’s game, a middling program like Texas Tech and go out and buy a better team if the rich boosters back the plan.
MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE
Questions to ponder while trying to square the laws of physics with how Missouri running back Ahmad Hardy breaks all those tackles:
Can we all live with the reality that Curt Cignetti has a legit powerhouse at Indiana?
Now that he has shredded the Sam Houston defense, is Arch Manning finally ready to face real teams?
Is Sam Pittman’s financial team already mapping out his buyout investments?
THE GRIDIRON CHRONICLES
Here is what folks have been writing about college football:
Bill Connelly, ESPN.com: “One of the stories of the offseason was that it felt like the top of the sport was a bit more decentralized, that the best teams maybe weren’t quite as dominant and more teams had semi-legitimate national title shots. As it turns out, we were underselling it. In the preseason, the Allstate Playoff Predictor gave Texas a 24.7% chance at the title, with four teams over 10% and 17 teams over 1%. Four weeks later, no one is over 12.5%, and 20 teams are at 1% or higher. Eight teams are within three points of No. 1 in FPI, and while Oregon has separated itself a bit in SP+, teams No. 2 through 14 are separated by less than a touchdown. Maybe the Ducks are indeed the best the sport has to offer this season; it’s hard to argue with a combined four-game scoreline of 203-37 (though Indiana’s 219-33 scoreline is even more garish). But it feels like we know even less about the top of the sport now than we did four weeks ago, and that’s an incredible feeling.”
Andy Staples, On3.com: “Way back in 2023, when Florida coach Billy Napier was saying that his 6-7 debut season a year earlier was the product of a necessary slow build, Napier’s coaching staff sent eight players on the field to attempt to block a Utah field goal in the fourth. Eight. Starting with that baseline, perhaps sending out 10 to attempt to block a Miami field goal more than two years later represents progress. At this rate, maybe — just maybe — by 2028 Napier and his staff of millions will figure out how to put exactly 11 players on the field on the critical play of important games. Or maybe Saturday was another step toward the logical end. At some point, Florida’s decision-makers will decide they’ve seen all they need to see. They decided to fire Napier after the Texas A&M loss last season, but then changed their minds as then-freshman quarterback D.J Lagway gave the program a glimmer of hope. When the Gators lost to USF in game two, the decision was all but made. But it seemed so early. Maybe Napier had a miracle run in him. But it seems obvious now that there will be no miracle run.”
Connor O’Gara, Saturday Down South: “When you blow an 18-point lead to Memphis in the fashion that Arkansas did — with multiple turnovers deep in Memphis territory and an inexplicable Taylen Green sack that pushed the Hogs out of field-goal range — it puts everything into question. Unfortunately for Pittman, the only question is whether he’ll be able to coach the remainder of the season or if Hunter Yurachek will pull the plug on Pittman altogether. Time will tell what happens there, especially with a schedule that’ll pit Arkansas against ranked foes in seven of the last eight games. Two things can be true at the same time. One is that Pittman provided a shot of life to a program that it desperately needed it back in 2019 on the heels of the Chad Morris era. The other is that Pittman had a great 2021, and then followed that by going 4-14 in one-score games since the start of 2022 and 2-10 in those games since the start of 2023.”
Patrick Stevens, Washington Post: “No. 19 Indiana’s 63-10 demolition of the No. 9 Fighting Illini looked quite a bit like what it did to several teams last season, which included blowouts of Nebraska (56-7) and Purdue (66-0). But no one was considering either of those teams to be playoff contenders at any point during the 2024 season. The same could not be said of the Illini (3-1, 0-1 Big Ten), a squad that won 10 games last season, had developed the identity expected from a Bret Bielema-coached team and welcomed back plenty of holdovers this fall. Indiana (4-0, 1-0) shrugged and put on a show for the packed crowd under the lights in Bloomington. The Hoosiers were responsible for one of the most sobering stats of the weekend: a 312-2 advantage in rushing yards.”
John Talty, CBSSports.com: “There was nothing Bill Belichick or his son, defensive coordinator Steve Belichick, could do to stop it. Desperately trying to get back in the game after cutting UCF’s lead to 27-9, the North Carolina defense needed to force some quick three-and-outs in the fourth quarter to have any sort of hope at making it a game. Instead, UCF had its way with UNC on an 18-play, 93-yard touchdown drive that took up 10:36 of game time and definitively extinguished any faint hope the Belichicks had at avoiding their second loss of the season. They sat there helpless as one of football’s finest defensive minds had no answer for quarterback Tayven Jackson, who is on his third college team. UCF convincingly defeated UNC, 34-9. Getting completely dominated when it mattered most aptly sums up what the Belichick experiment has been like so far at North Carolina. Amidst all the fanfare — and off-field drama — this is a bad football team. A really, really bad football team. Worse, frankly, than even the biggest haters likely expected.”
MEGAPHONE
“It hurt. I’m human, I’m not a cyborg. This is my life, man. I’ve been here 23 years, I love this place. I give this place the very best I’ve got every single day. There’s never been a day when I haven’t given Clemson every ounce I have. I’m hurt. I invested my life here. If I don’t get the job done, I feel responsible. I feel the pain — not just mine, I feel everybody’s.”
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, after his team’s faceplant against Syracuse.
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Jeff Gordon | Post-Dispatch
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