College football Week 13 roundup with the 5 things that matter, winners and losers, overrated and underrated parts of the weekend, and what it all means.
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College Football Week 13 Roundup
Rankings AP | Coaches | CFN 1-127 Rankings
CFP Top 25 Prediction | Week 13 Early Lines
Bowl Projections | Week 13 Scoreboard
5. Winners & Losers From Week 13
– Week 13 Winners & Losers
– Sarah Fuller kicked a football: One Really Big Thing
– Rivalry weekend?: Most Overrated Thing
– Oregon St 41, Oregon 38: Most Underrated Thing
– The season is hanging on: What It All Means, Week 13
Winner: RB Jaret Patterson, Buffalo
The 5-9, 195-pound junior ran for 301 yards and four touchdowns against Bowling Green in a 42-17 Buffalo win a few weeks ago. That was good. His 36-carry, 409-yard, eight touchdown game in the 70-41 win over Kent State was better.
Loser: RB Kevin Marks, Buffalo
No, he’s not a loser in any way, except for the attention and spotlight. All he did was run for 90 yards or more in each of the last three games and rip off 97 yards and two scores against Kent State. Did the highlight shows do anything on him? Nope – it was all about that Patterson guy.
Winner: QB Michael Penix Jr., Indiana
It was ugly, the running game saved the day with its best performance of the year, and Indiana got the 27-11 win over Maryland. Nothing went quite right and Penix was awful, completing 6-of-19 passes for 84 yards with no touchdowns with 29 rushing yards. However, he’s a winner – the Hoosiers got the W. It was such a miserable performance, though, that it made a loser out of …
Loser: The Ohio State pass defense
Everyone gets an off day, but it’s not exactly a good look for Ohio State when the guy who looks and plays like he couldn’t hit water if he was standing in a rainstorm got you for 491 passing yards and five touchdowns the week before. Rutgers has the second-worst pass defense in the Big Ten, allowing 260 yards per game. Ohio State is dead last, allowing 291 yards per game.
Winner: QB Trevor Lawrence, Clemson
That’s how you come back after not playing for over a month. Lawrence hit 70% of his passes for 403 yards and two touchdowns without an interception in the 52-17 win over Pitt. He didn’t even put in a full day’s work – DJ Uiagalelei got a TD pass, too.
Loser: Clemson running game
It’s stalling a bit too much. Facing Pitt and its great defensive front had something to do with that this week, but the Tigers have failed to average four yards per carry in any of the last four games.
How many times did they fail to get to four yards per pop last year? Once – the win over Texas A&M. Clemson ran for four yards or more per carry in 26 out of 27 games before this recent stretch.
Winner: UCF 58, USF 46
Now THAT’S a War on I-4. USF and UCF combined for 1,223 yards of total offense for the game with a combined 59 points in the second half. USF’s Jordan McCloud threw for 404 yards and four scores, UCF’s Dillon Gabriel threw for 336 yards and four touchdowns, and the two teams essentially had the same rushing day – 242 for USF, 241 for UCF.
Loser: UCF defense
UCF was outgained by USF 646 yards to 577, after being outgained the week before by Cincinnati 482 yards to 359.
UCF had gone 26 of its previous 28 games winning the total offense battle. The two outliers? The 2019 Fiesta Bowl against LSU, and last year’s loss to Pitt. The last time UCF lost the total yard battle two games in a row was in mid-October of 2018 against Memphis and East Carolina on the road – UCF won both games.
– Sarah Fuller kicked a football: One Really Big Thing
– Rivalry weekend?: Most Overrated Thing
– Oregon St 41, Oregon 38: Most Underrated Thing
– The season is hanging on: What It All Means, Week 13
NEXT: The really big thing was …
4. The Really Big Thing Was …
Sarah Fuller kicked a football.
It was only a squib kick to start the second half, and the rest of the Vanderbilt Commodores were so awful in the 41-0 loss to Missouri that Fuller didn’t get to attempt an extra point or do anything else, but it doesn’t matter.
Would it have been nice if she nailed the 36-yard game-winning field goal? Yeah, of course.
Was it a signature final act by a head coach – Derek Mason was fired on Sunday after an 0-8 start – on his way out? Maybe, but so what?
A barrier was broken.
Social media had its typical range of thoughts, emotions and musings – from the kick being the next best thing to curing the coronavirus, to a misogynistic football side wailing that this marked the end of the sport, as well as the American way of life – all while the TV talking heads went a bit overboard trying to say all the right things to sell the moment. But that’s okay – it was something historic in a sport that’s not exactly welcoming to the slightest change in any norm or tradition.
College football has been going on for over 150 years, and in 2020, a female put on the pads and she played in an SEC game.
Completely and totally ignore what this wasn’t, and please, don’t argue over or analyze the kick.
Fuller – or someone else – will soon get a shot at a scoring opportunity that will change the outcome of a game, and there will be a day when we won’t think twice when a young woman attempts a kick, or catches a pass, or does some other football thing just like the guys. But that’s for later.
In this weirdest, craziest, and most abnormal college football season ever, we got to see something that was simply … good.
You want something positive to come out of playing college football in a pandemic? You want something more from this God-awful mess than whether or not it’s Alabama or Ohio State or Clemson playing for the national title?
Sarah Fuller ran out onto the field and kicked a football. And it was cool.
– Week 13 Winners & Losers
– Rivalry weekend?: Most Overrated Thing
– Oregon St 41, Oregon 38: Most Underrated Thing
– The season is hanging on: What It All Means, Week 13
NEXT: The most overrated thing was …
3. The Most Overrated Thing Was …
Wasn’t this supposed to be Rivalry Weekend?
Minnesota and Wisconsin have the oldest rivalry in FBS college football, and it didn’t happen.
Washington and Washington State would’ve been a blast with two new coaching staffs and a new era for the Apple Cup, and … nope.
Ole Miss and Mississippi State was actually a good game – a 31-24 Rebel win. Lane Kiffin and Mike Leach started out their new yearly fight, but it barely induced a national yawn.
Auburn vs. Alabama bombed worse than Quibi, and Nebraska vs. Iowa just isn’t quite a thing yet on the rivalry circuit.
Oh yeah, and Michigan and Penn State played each other. It’s okay – you were probably watching Maryland and Indiana, or some SEC game.
There was a Louisiana vs. ULM here, and a Central Michigan vs. Eastern Michigan there, but …
Meh.
The War on I-4 between UCF vs. USF – a 58-56 Knight win – was awesome – and the Stanford 24-23 win over Cal was a thriller thanks to the blocked extra point, but this season is all so disjointed and off that the rivalry aspect didn’t resonate.
However …
– Week 13 Winners & Losers
– Sarah Fuller kicked a football: One Really Big Thing
– Oregon St 41, Oregon 38: Most Underrated Thing
– The season is hanging on: What It All Means, Week 13
NEXT: The most underrated thing was …
2. The Most Underrated Thing Was …
Oregon State 41, Oregon 38.
Let’s start with blowing off this false narrative – the Pac-12’s chances of making the College Football Playoff didn’t suffer a mortal blow just because Oregon lost. It didn’t help that the defending Pac-12 champs lost to Oregon State in the fog, but the league needs 1) an unbeaten champion, 2) it really needs to be USC for branding purposes, and 3) there has to be a whole lot of help.
The Pac-12 has to have a shiny, unbeaten champion, and now the pressure and spotlight are on Washington to at least get to the title game.
If Washington and either USC or Colorado are unbeaten in the championship, and if Alabama gets rid of Florida in the SEC Championship, and if Notre Dame beats Clemson in the ACC Championship, and if maybe Ohio State really can’t go, and/or Texas A&M loses to Auburn, and …
The Pac-12 needs help, but an unbeaten Power Five champ is still an unbeaten Power Five champ.
Oregon, though, would’ve given the Pac-12 a whole lot more national sizzle if it could’ve kept winning.
However, the truly underrated aspect was Oregon State. Head coach Jonathan Smith has made the program competitive again in a hurry, RB Jermar Jefferson ran for 226 yards, and this game provided what all rivalries need.
A rivalry.
No longer called the Civil War, the Beavers lost in this thing 11 of the last 12 years and last won in 2016 when both programs stunk. And that goes to a bigger overall point.
The Pac-12 needs more good teams. Oregon State will never be a huge national program, but if it’s respected enough to make it a tough fight every time out, and if it’s considered a good win to take it down, that’s a huge plus.
– Week 13 Winners & Losers
– Sarah Fuller kicked a football: One Really Big Thing
– Rivalry weekend?: Most Overrated Thing
– The season is hanging on: What It All Means, Week 13
NEXT: What It All Means: Week 13
1. What It All Means: Week 13
What’s so strange about the season is how so many huge college football things are happening or about to happen, and it’s all just sort of chalked up to this being so – sorry – 2020.
It’s to the point now where it’s almost a foregone conclusion that Jim Harbaugh and Tom Herman are going to be fired.
Those aren’t two random head coaches at directional Group of Five state schools. That’s, respectively, the head coach at the University of Michigan and the head coach at the University of Texas we’re talking about.
Penn State started 0-5 for the first time in the program’s history, and it beat Michigan. Penn State beating Michigan is supposed to shake up the college football world – okay, fine. It’s just a weird year.
Week 13 Roundup
Rankings AP | Coaches | CFN 1-127 Rankings
CFP Top 25 Prediction | Week 13 Early Lines
Bowl Projections | Week 13 Scoreboard
Rutgers is pretty good at football. LSU is pretty bad at football. Michigan State beat Northwestern and it actually had College Football Playoff implications – at least a wee bit.
Wisconsin can’t get on the field, Ohio State is a missed game away from probably seeing all its championship dreams go down the drain, and Nebraska is still awful because head coach Scott Frost just can’t get this engine to turn over.
And now, while games being canceled or moved has become a daily ritual, and with the pandemic keeping this season hanging on by a shoestring, the biggest things of all are about to happen.
This is normally the weekend we’re about to figure out the College Football Playoff, but instead, we’re soon going to get Notre Dame against Clemson for the ACC championship. We’re almost certain to get Iowa State in the Big 12 title game against Oklahoma, and we’re going to have a discussion about Group of Five programs that really might belong in the playoff.
And we’re going to get to see the Florida and Alabama offenses go toe-to-toe in the SEC title game in a battle for the conference title, a College Football Playoff spot, and maybe the Heisman.
Hopefully.
We’ve come this far, and we’re so close to getting this season in, taking a breath, and hoping to start 2021 almost like normal.
Now we just need the biggest thing about the 2020 season to not be for it to all shut down just before the finish.
– Week 13 Winners & Losers
– Sarah Fuller kicked a football: One Really Big Thing
– Rivalry weekend?: Most Overrated Thing
– Oregon St 41, Oregon 38: Most Underrated Thing
