College football Week 10 roundup with the 5 things that matter, winners and losers, overrated and underrated parts of the weekend, and what it all means.
College Football Week 10 Roundup
Week 10 Roundup
CFN 1-130 Rankings | Week 10 scoreboard
Bowl Projections, College Football Playoff Predictions
Week 11 opening lines | AP | Coaches
College Football Playoff Top 25 Prediction
Big Game Reaction: Purdue, UNC, Bama, more
Ranking the 13 teams still alive for the playoff
– Tough Week For Top Teams: One Really Big Thing
– UC & CFP expansion: Most Overrated Thing
– Clemson coming back: Most Underrated Thing
– Georgia’ coronation: What It All Means, Week 10
– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak
Winners & Losers From Week 10
Winner: Tennessee 45, Kentucky 42
America was so busy watching whatever that Alabama-LSU thing was that it missed 87 combined points, close to 1,100 yards of total offense, a wonderful day by Tennessee QB Hendon Hooker, and it all happening with the Vols having the ball for fewer than 14 minutes. If it wasn’t the SEC Game of the Year, it was sure close. Meanwhile …
Loser: South Carolina 40, Florida 17
Florida was 3-1 with only a missed two-points conversion against Alabama away from a potentially special start. I went so far as to make the case for the Gators being second or third in the country. Since then, Florida is 1-4 with the lone win coming against Vanderbilt.
The running game out of South Carolina we’ve all been waiting for kicked in. Kevin Harris and ZaQuandre White combined for 239 yards as the team ripped through the Gators 40-17. Now, at 4-5, Florida needs to win two of its last three against Samford, at Missouri, and Florida State just to go bowling. 5-4 South Carolina is a lock for an extra game.
Winner: Arizona and UNLV
No team should go through a season without a win.
Yes, Cal got hammered with COVID problems and was missing a bulk of its players, but few teams have bigger and deeper injury issues than Arizona. The Wildcats got their first win of the season – and first since the middle of 2019 – with a 10-3 victory over the Bears.
UNLV won a game over Nevada to end the 2019 season, and hadn’t won since. It finally got over that hump with a 31-17 victory on the road over New Mexico.
Loser: Bad scoring defenses & FBS wins
It shouldn’t come as too much of a shock that the teams that give up the most points are usually among the worst teams in college football. That doesn’t always work out, though, depending on how high-powered the offense is.
UMass was able to beat UConn a few weeks ago, but the team with the nation’s worst scoring defense – allowing 45 points per game – just lost to Rhode Island. Akron has the fifth-worst scoring D in college football, and it beat Bowling Green a few weeks ago.
That means the seven teams with the worst scoring defenses in the country – FIU, Tulane, Akron, New Mexico State, Kansas, Arkansas State, and UMass – have combined to go 2-55 against FBS teams this season, and 6-1 against the FCS squads.
Winner: Big Ten defenses
The Big Ten boasts four of the top ten defenses in college football. After stuffing Rutgers, Wisconsin is No. 1 allowing 214 yards per game – a whopping 16 fewer than Georgia. Michigan (6), Minnesota (7), and Iowa (10) are all playing some D, but …
Loser: Big Ten passing offenses
It sometimes helps the defenses when the offenses don’t do much.
There are the service academies, a few Mountain West schools, Colorado, a Georgia Southern team that runs some form of the option, and a slew of Big Ten teams that don’t throw. Illinois (124th), Minnesota (122nd), Wisconsin (121st) can at least run, but the passing yards aren’t there.
The same can’t be said for Northwestern, Indiana, and Iowa who all are outside the top 100 in passing.
– Tough Week For Top Teams: One Really Big Thing
– UC & CFP expansion: Most Overrated Thing
– Clemson coming back: Most Underrated Thing
– Georgia’ coronation: What It All Means, Week 10
NEXT: The really big college football thing was …
The Really Big College Football Thing Was …
Mediocre performances by teams that need to kick it all in.
1000% guilty as charged on this, but it’s always funny how everyone – again, me, too – loves to yell at great teams for not blasting mediocre teams by a gajillion.
It’s like they’re not trying hard enough, or not fully focused, or don’t quite get that their performances are affecting all of our daily lives. However, at this time of year, appearances matter.
This was supposed to be a light week in the race for big things. North Carolina was supposed to beat Wake Forest, so that wasn’t a stunner, and almost no one thought Michigan State would just roll through Purdue.
But Alabama 20, LSU 14? That came out of nowhere.
The Tide D rose up when it had to, and any landing you can walk away from is a good one in the big Power Five conferences, but that wasn’t exactly confidence-inspiring from an Alabama team that lost to Texas A&M and had issues with what turned out to be a mediocre Florida squad.
Washington was struggling all year to do much of anything, but this was when Oregon was going to get up for the big rivalry game and make a statement that it’s absolutely one of the four best teams in college football.
RB Travis Dye was special and the Ducks won by ten in a driving rainstorm for half the the game, but … meh.
Nebraska plays everyone strong, but we know how that works. It gives it the old college try, and then loses because it’s not all that great at football right now. Even so, Ohio State got the No. 5 ranking by the CFP – it was going to show that the Oregon loss was an aberration and … whatever. 26-17 over the Huskers.
Michigan State and Wake Forest might have been the only two huge CFP losers up top, but no one looked all that great. This is when we’re supposed to find that team that can challenge Georgia at some point, and at the moment, no one is doing it.
And the College Football Playoff committee is watching.
This goes triple for …
– SEC games, Big Ten Os Winners & Losers
– UC & CFP expansion: Most Overrated Thing
– Clemson coming back: Most Underrated Thing
– Georgia’ coronation: What It All Means, Week 10
NEXT: The most overrated college football thing was …
The Most Overrated College Football Thing Was …
The Cincinnatisplaining, College Football Playoff expansion, and how it all ties together.
The fumble across the goal line by Tulsa’s Steven Anderson wasn’t done being reviewed in Cincinnati’s 28-20 win, and social media was already tripping over itself making excuses and diving head-first into the whataboutism pool.
No, it’s not okay to need to get out of a November home game against a mediocre Group of Five team by hanging on for dear life, especially since GameDay was in town, and especially since College Football Playoff committee chairman Gary Barta flat-out said the performances against bad Navy and Tulane teams the previous weeks weren’t good enough, and especially because …
We shouldn’t have to be doing this at all.
This stinks, and it’s not fair to anyone, especially the Bearcat fans.
It’s a wonderful time to be into Cincinnati, and why not?
Too many college football media people who should know better were whining about the Bearcats being ranked sixth in the first CFP rankings, as if it was history’s greatest injustice – wrong view, wrong take, wrong everything.
That was AMAZING – the University of Cincinnati football program that has one good win and a fat load of nothing else was given more respect than 9-0 Oklahoma, and it was right there walking step for step with the Ohio States and Michigans and Alabamas of the college football world.
Did you see Clemson in the College Football Playoff top 25, much less just outside of the top four? How about LSU, or Florida State, or Nebraska, or USC, or Texas, or …
The problem isn’t that Cincinnati struggled against Tulsa. It’s that we’re forced to nitpick and get all weird and negative because that’s the deal. That’s the playoff system.
I’ve seen all the Cincinnati games. As a totally neutral observer, I think it could beat anyone in the country on the right day, but it’s 9-3 at generous best in the weekly SEC or Big Ten grind, and it’s certainly not unbeaten in any of the other Power Five conferences, and …
You might think it’s up there with 1944 Army in terms of historical greatness. It shouldn’t come down to opinion – and that includes the ranking system.
Of course Cincinnati should be in the College Football Playoff if it goes unbeaten and wins the American Athletic Conference title. However …
Of course the Big Ten champion should be in, and so should the champions of the Pac-12, Big 12, ACC, SEC, and I’ll throw the Mountain West in there, too.
Enough is enough. Teams have to be able to play their way into a playoff system and this has to be taken away from the whims and opinions of the people talking this all over in Grapevine, Texas, as you’re reading this.
The College Football Playoff expansion talks will go on in early December, and there won’t be anything really changing until 2024 at the earliest.
That doesn’t do Cincinnati fans any good right now.
– SEC games, Big Ten Os Winners & Losers
– Tough Week For Top Teams: One Really Big Thing
– Clemson coming back: Most Underrated Thing
– Georgia’ coronation: What It All Means, Week 10
NEXT: The most underrated college football thing was …
The Most Underrated College Football Thing Was …
Clemson 30, Louisville 24
Clemson keeps on winning.
I’m a lonely wolf when it comes to this, but I’ll believe Clemson isn’t winning the ACC Championship when it finally doesn’t happen.
The Wake Forest loss to North Carolina wasn’t actually counted as an ACC conference game – don’t ask – so it still has to lose twice for Clemson to possibly take the Atlantic Division.
NC State, at Clemson, at Boston College. The Demon Deacons could lose two of those three, or even all three.
The bigger issue for Clemson is NC State – it has to lose twice, too, because tie-breakers become sticky.
It could lose at Wake Forest, and/or to Syracuse, and/or to North Carolina, and …
It’s going to have to take something crazy for Clemson to pull this off, but it actually won’t be that insane.
After all the disappointment for a program that’s in National-Title-or-Failure mode, it keeps on fighting. The O was still lousy and inconsistent, but DJ Uiagalelei was terrific in the comeback against Louisville, leading the way to 13 unanswered fourth quarter points and the win.
Again, a whole lot of weird things have to come together for the Tigers to pull this off, but after six straight ACC championships, just say you’ve been warned.
– SEC games, Big Ten Os Winners & Losers
– Tough Week For Top Teams: One Really Big Thing
– UC & CFP expansion: Most Overrated Thing
– Georgia’ coronation: What It All Means, Week 10
NEXT: What It All Means: Week 10
What It All Means: Week 10
College football needs Georgia to be bad or weird for at least one game.
What’s the line? The only thing worse than anger is apathy?
I find cilantro worse than both of those, but you get the point.
The 2021 college football season is effectively over – at least that’s how everyone is acting.
Georgia has already been gifted the national title – even though 97% of all sports fans can’t name one current player – and now the season is about the coronation and performance art to get there.
And why shouldn’t fans feel that way?
Look at 2020 Alabama, or 2019 LSU. Those two weren’t without their respective charm, but college football works better when there are other real options.
As I’ve joked with the College Football Playoff types, the problem isn’t that the tournament is bad, it’s that we were spoiled.
Clemson vs Alabama. Deshaun vs Derrick. Jalen almost pulling it out, and Deshaun taking it right back.
And then we got Tua, and DeVonta, and that classic against Georgia before the College Football Playoff turned into predictable blowouts.
Week 10 Roundup
CFN 1-130 Rankings | Week 10 scoreboard
Bowl Projections, College Football Playoff Predictions
Week 11 opening lines | AP | Coaches
College Football Playoff Top 25 Prediction
Big Game Reaction: Purdue, UNC, Bama, more
Ranking the 13 teams still alive for the playoff
At this point, that fun isn’t going to come from the current teams. It’s almost mid-November – the cake is all but baked on most of the top ten. It’s unfortunate, but Georgia will have to come back down a level for the rest of the season to be truly interesting.
An injury to the starting quarterback wouldn’t do it – and no, no one wants that. JT Daniels is better than Stetson Bennett, anyway.
There isn’t any one player the Dawgs can absolutely not live without – all due respect to DT Jordan Davis – but WR George Pickens was probably that guy and he hasn’t been able to go all year thanks to a knee injury.
It might have to be this weekend.
Tennessee has the high-octane offense that Georgia hasn’t dealt with all season long. It’s in Knoxville, the place will be humming, and this might be the one last chance to see something interesting until the SEC Championship.
Until Georgia looks even slightly vulnerable, we’re just going through a fun exercise to see who’s No. 2.
– SEC games, Big Ten Os Winners & Losers
– Tough Week For Top Teams: One Really Big Thing
– UC & CFP expansion: Most Overrated Thing
– Clemson coming back: Most Underrated Thing
– Georgia’ coronation: What It All Means, Week 10
