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Texas is a NCAA Tournament threat with no permanent head coach. What does it do now?

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Texas does not have a permanent men’s basketball coach anymore, which is a hairy situation at any time. It’s a holy mess when that’s the case in the middle of the actual basketball season, and the basketball team hopes to chase down a championship or two. Not the time for an existential crisis. Not in a conference that’s a thumbscrew. And yet here Texas is, having to figure itself out all over again at the most difficult time imaginable.

What happens now in Austin, after Chris Beard’s firing on Thursday?

A lot. A whole lot of things happen. Make sure a promising season doesn’t unspool completely. Evaluate the men left in charge of the program. Poke around to see who else might be interested in taking over. And, by extension, find out how attractive the job is or how many problems exist – real or perceived – that might reveal Texas isn’t the shimmering beacon of dominance it believes it is, or at least can be.

The Athletic spoke to a variety of sources within the college basketball community, including coaches and agents. Some were granted anonymity either for competitive reasons or because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

“I think it’s a good job,” one coaching agent said. “But I don’t know that it’s the end-all, be-all no-brainer.”

It’s never good to have more questions than anyone can handle six days into the calendar year. Texas simply doesn’t have a choice but to find answers, in a hurry.

Saving the season

On Friday morning, the Longhorns woke up as the No. 13 team in the NCAA’s NET rankings, and anywhere from No. 9-17 by the leading analytic sites. They also woke up another day closer to two decades without a Final Four bid. The chance to be the team that ends the drought is real, and the urgency to protect that potential is extreme for acting head coach Rodney Terry and his staff.

The good news? Even Big 12 peers believe all is not lost, just because the previous head coach lost his job. “I think they will be great, honestly,” one conference assistant coach said. “(Terry) has been a successful head coach before and his voice will resonate with those guys. He will get them to buy into his system. Their roster, top to bottom, is still one of the most talented in the league.”

Or as another Big 12 head coach put it: “(Terry) is doing a good job. They play hard and are still on top of everything. They’re playing with passion.”


Rodney Terry is 5-1 as Texas’ acting head coach, and won 163 games in 10 years as a head coach at Fresno State and UTEP. (Scott Wachter / USA Today)

Now that there’s finality and players know Beard isn’t coming back, the priority is to keep the threads from fraying. Texas will have four former head coaches in the building every day: Terry (Fresno State and UTEP), assistant Bob Donewold (multiple overseas teams), chief of staff Chris Ogden (UT-Arlington) and special assistant Steve McClain (Wyoming and Illinois-Chicago). There can be some comfort in knowing none of the drivers are on their learner’s permit.

But none of them are Beard, either, and how that affects preparation or in-game strategizing is clearly in the balance. Every remaining regular season opponent, as of Friday, is ranked inside the top 37 of KenPom. Any slippage – even a little – could have significant ramifications.

“There’s basketball acumen on that staff,” another coaching agent said. “And they’ve clearly got very good talent. Does that translate to them winning at the same level as Chris Beard? No. Definitely not. Chris Beard as a game manager and Xs and Os guy, an on-court coach – probably one of the top five, six, seven in college basketball. So there’s going to be a clear dropoff no matter what. But Texas is uniquely positioned where they’ve got guys with experience.”

GO DEEPER

O’Neil: Texas made the only responsible decision

Rodney Terry’s balancing act

Less than a year ago, upheaval at Louisville left Mike Pegues as a power-conference interim coach with a lot of season ahead of him. Pegues doesn’t know Rodney Terry, but he has a suggestion for Texas’ acting head coach: Start a journal. Write it all down, good and bad. These will be three unusual and trying months. Maybe the toughest stretch of Terry’s coaching career. But having a catalog of thoughts and experiences when it’s all over will be valuable. “It’s a lot,” says Pegues, who’s now a Butler assistant.

The situations sit at opposite poles, yes. Texas is a No. 3 seed in The Athletic’s latest Bracket Watch and its interim coach has 319 games of head coach experience to draw upon. Louisville was cratering and the interim leader hadn’t been a head coach since he ran a grassroots team. But the checklist is the same, and it means Terry isn’t merely charged with putting together game plans that win in the Big 12. The job is far more fraught than that.

He’s performing emotional triage on his players — probably twice over now, after Beard’s initial suspension last month and then again after the official dismissal Thursday. He’s reshuffling staff duties. He’s likely delicately putting his own touch on the operation while also not changing so much that it’s counterproductive. And even if auditioning for the full-time gig is not front of mind, Terry is inevitably showcasing his coaching ability under a scorching spotlight, for anyone who might want to hire him if Texas doesn’t.

How nimbly Terry navigates the asteroids coming at him, every day, is a massive variable. “At least in Texas’ case, I would like to think they have something to play for,” Pegues says. “If I’m Rodney Terry, I’m trying to convince the guys, we lost our leader, there’s no ducking that, we’re in a tough time. But we also put ourselves in a really good position to this point. If we can come together and concentrate on getting better every day, we still have the opportunity to do everything we set out to do.”

GO DEEPER

Roundtable: Will Chris Beard coach again? Can Rodney Terry earn the full-time job at Texas?

Never mind the joyous water bottle celebration after Terry led Texas to a win over Rice on Dec. 12, his first game as acting head coach. These are young men in their late teens and early 20s, all with exospheric aspirations. Terry’s roster is naturally on edge, at some level.

Pegues spent his first night as Louisville’s interim head coach contacting the team’s leaders, knowing he had to salve wounds and worries as quickly as possible. During a team meeting the next day, he gave players the floor to air out their emotions. He also understood the work of managing feelings wouldn’t be done when they left that space. “Guys have questions they can’t get immediate answers to,” Pegues says. “There’s a sense of why is this happening to me, and why is this happening to us, and what do I do from here. Human nature is to look at the big picture and not concentrate on practice that day. It’s easy to lose sight of what’s right in front of you.”

So far, Texas has won five of its six games with Terry as acting head coach. Very good sign. But in the two games against KenPom top 40 teams, the Longhorns beat Oklahoma by one and dissolved defensively in a loss to Kansas State. Two games into an 18-game Big 12 schedule, Texas has only just now entered the gauntlet. How a shaken group of players reacts to any upcoming adversity lands, fairly or not, at Rodney Terry’s feet.

All while he surely knows everyone wonders if he’s good enough to do this past April. “If Rodney Terry went to a Final Four, it’s probably hard not to take a look at him,” one agent says. “I don’t think it’s a very smart move. They shouldn’t have anybody there who’s on this staff.”

He’s been around some. But Terry never has faced something like this.

“People have them as a lock to finish on the high end of the Big 12 and put themselves in position to play in the NCAA Tournament,” Pegues said. “Winning is still an expectation around there.”

Defining Texas, the job

We’re also heading toward a referendum on Texas men’s basketball. There’s a $300 million arena that just opened. There’s a $60 million practice facility that just opened. There’s a recruiting base as fertile or more fertile than any in the country; it’s not a stretch to say Texas could field competitive teams without crossing state lines to find players. “It’s as good as it’s ever been,” one coaching agent said. “The job itself is positioned pretty well.”

Also? All the money and resources and available talent haven’t brought Texas anywhere near a national title in a very, very, very long time.

“In the last 12 years, they’ve won five NCAA Tournament games,” another coaching agent said. “Not great, right? I mean, Saint Peter’s won three last year.”

Maybe Beard was en route to straightening it all out, but there’s clearly a gap between what Texas should be doing and what Texas is doing. Running one of the more prominent athletic programs at any school is complicated. Running one of the more prominent programs at Texas adds an exponent to the chore. “Texas is big,” one person with knowledge of the school’s athletics operations said. “There’s a lot of moving parts within the day-to-day operations at the place, and then there’s moving parts outside of the operation. Sometimes those parts work together. Sometimes those parts are drastically different. And then sometimes the parts within each place change. There is a lot going on, a lot of the time. To compartmentalize and simplify is very important.”


Sir’Jabari Rice and Texas are playing in a brand-new arena that opened this season. (Scott Wachter / USA Today)

The job has everything any coach could want and the job is also much more difficult than anyone might imagine. Both of these things are true. It’s certainly as good an explanation as any for why such a well-armed operation isn’t making much postseason noise.

The impending move to the SEC, and the impending competition with all its characters on the men’s basketball sidelines league-wide, only underscores the idea that a Texas men’s basketball coach will have to be extremely good on the floor and extremely dynamic off of it – and stumbling or coming up short in either way means you’re probably not going to succeed. The pool of people who can handle both elements, deftly, is not shallow … but isn’t diving-tank deep, either.

Still, one agent pointed out that Texas women’s volleyball program just won a national championship. Other sports thrive as well. The place is equipped to produce high-level performance. That much is undeniable. But the agent wondered, rhetorically, why it’s not happening for football and men’s basketball.

“In those sports,” the person familiar with Texas athletics said, “it’s hard to just be the program.”

Choosing the next coach

At some point, athletics director Chris Del Conte and any other stakeholders have to find a permanent solution. At this point, most people only have speculative thoughts about the direction Texas’ athletics director will go. But his past hires provide a few tea leaves to read. He hired Jamie Dixon at TCU after Dixon put together a long and successful Pittsburgh tenure. He grabbed Steve Sarkisian for Texas football, coming out of the Nick Saban rehabilitation program. He plucked Vic Schaefer from Mississippi State after Schaefer led the women’s basketball program there to a pair of Final Fours and an Elite Eight. Go back even to 2018 and the search for a new softball coach; it ended with Mike White, who’d won nearly 80 percent of his games in nine seasons at Oregon. And, of course, Chris Beard.

Splash. Names. Brands. It’s certainly not absurd to respond to a terribly messy situation with a statement hire that wipes the slate clean.

And most people figure Del Conte doesn’t have to think small. Not when Texas was paying the last guy $5 million a year, and surely has enough left in the couch cushions to present a compelling package.

“It’s a big brand,” one coaching agent said. “So I think there’s going to be a lot of interested parties.”

As The Athletic’s Seth Davis noted in his list of candidates for the job, those interested parties may well be very big names. An asterisk on that: Most observers feel the big swings might not connect. That Texas will wind up being a leverage play for a lot of coaches who are looking for more security or more money or more love, or all of the above, from their current employer.

But Del Conte has more than enough time to do his homework behind the scenes and suss out what’s real and what’s bound to be a disappointment. He’ll also have time to examine the hefty buyouts that may get in the way. (UCLA’s Mick Cronin, Missouri’s Dennis Gates and Oklahoma State’s Mike Boynton, to name a few, fall into that bucket.) In the end, he won’t be bereft of options, even if the options aren’t necessarily galaxy-shaking.

A few names that teeter on big swings, where it’s a little less if Del Conte would be allowing Texas to be used? Eric Musselman has a new contract at Arkansas potentially running through 2028. His buyout, though, is a relative pittance at $2 million after this season. Would Sean Miller leave Xavier after one season? Xavier pours a ton into its men’s basketball program and Miller can lead a pretty low-profile life in Cincinnati, which wouldn’t necessarily be the case in Austin. But could be worth a call. Illinois gave Brad Underwood a new contract through 2028 and a freshly renovated practice facility. Underwood might think he has the better job as it is. Flip side? He sprung onto the scene at Stephen F. Austin, and if Illinois doesn’t pull out of its current malaise, maybe he’s open to a change of scenery.

Dana Altman, meanwhile, doesn’t have Oregon humming lately — 15 losses last season, an 8-7 record so far in 2022-23 — but maybe that’s a springboard to hitting refresh at 64 years old, looking for one last run. Altman certainly would be a fit, from talent-acquisition and demeanor perspectives.

Is Jerome Tang too much Baylor for Texas fans to handle? Not that Tang necessarily would leave Kansas State after a year, either, but Texas offers resources that the 56-year-old won’t find in Manhattan. (Like, potentially doubling his salary, to begin with.) Boynton and Gates would merit a look if the buyouts aren’t an issue; there’s some risk, particularly with Gates being all of 14 games into his first power-conference job at Missouri, but the upside is steady, long-term plays. Andy Kennedy finished second in the race for two power conference jobs last cycle, per a source with knowledge of those discussions, and the UAB coach could be an intriguing wild card here. Wake Forest’s Steve Forbes would bring a personality Texas fans can latch on to and a high-effort system those fans can get behind, but the 57-year-old is credibly comfortable in Winston-Salem. Does he want to take on all of what Texas is?

And, well, Rodney Terry can make this a moot discussion by April.

In all, the last time it hired a men’s basketball coach, Texas surely figured it had covered any angle and checked every conceivable box. It found its answer. Less than two years later, it’s facing all the same questions — and a few more — all over again.

(Top photo of Texas’ Dillon Mitchell: Chris Covatta / Getty Images)



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O’Neil: Texas made the only responsible decision by firing Chris Beard

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It’s complicated.

That’s the go-to, right? That the only two people who know what happened between Chris Beard and Randi Trew are Beard and Trew, and trying to make decisions based on that gray area is tricky.

Except, no. It really isn’t. In fact, millions and millions of people in this country make the very uncomplicated decision every day to have healthy, safe, non-physical relationships with their partners. That’s not to say it’s easy. Interpersonal relationships are at the heart of this world spinning on its axis, and they are fraught with challenges. Parent-to-child, friend-to-friend, partner-to-partner, spouse-to-spouse, there isn’t one of us who hasn’t at one time fought with, been frustrated, exasperated, moved to tears by, or wanted to storm out on someone in our lives. It happens.

But we avoid the gray area because there is no gray area; there is a clear delineation between black and white. We stop at the line — maybe even teeter on the edge of it sometimes — but we stop because we remember the very simple lesson taught in toddlerhood: Do the right thing. Not the easy thing. The right thing.

Chris Beard didn’t do the right thing, and that’s why he’s no longer the coach at the University of Texas. It’s that simple. This is not about the legalese of when allegations turn into charges turn into convictions or Trew’s initial account to police and her turnabout 11 days later. Whether the district attorney chooses to continue the case is immaterial (Beard is scheduled for a hearing on Jan. 18 in district court).

The university made that abundantly clear in its explanation of its dismissal. It was not acting on the portion of its contract clause that allows Beard to be fired for being charged with a felony; it was enforcing the portion that allowed him to be dismissed for conduct unbecoming. As Texas’ vice president for legal affairs Jim Davis wrote in a letter to Beard’s attorney, “Chris Beard engaged in unacceptable behavior that makes him unfit to serve as head coach at our university.’’

That’s it. It’s that simple. His behavior is unacceptable. He is unfit. Something happened between a woman and the head basketball coach at Texas that was bad enough that it merited a 911 call, which resulted in a bite mark and scratches on Trew’s body, which gave the police cause to charge Beard with a third-degree felony. And that, Texas has decided, is enough. I was admittedly hard on the administration for its long road to this decision but I applaud the school for not only getting here, but getting here for the right reasons.

I take no great pleasure in any of this. I do not cheer the demise of a successful career, nor do I scream any sort of vindication. The times I’ve worked with and spoken to Beard — as recently as the week before his arrest — he’s always been considerate, professional and engaging. I respected him as a coach, and I liked what I knew of him as a person.

But that doesn’t diminish what happened, or make the inexcusable excusable, even though some would like that to be the case. It’s become, frankly, exhausting how everyone rushes to find the loophole for the accused, to protect their rights and ignore the simple rights of a person to not be assaulted. We’ve all become so numb to it all. When the news initially broke of Beard’s arrest, my Twitter mentions were filled with smart-ass jokes that were in poor taste at best, and deplorable at worst.

We have become so inured to bad behavior, that we barely seem to recognize it anymore. Rather than be horrified by the video of Dana White and his wife coming to blows during a New Year’s Eve party, we write it off as some sort of normal drunken behavior. It is not normal for a man and a woman to hit each other. It’s just not.

In its letter to Beard’s lawyer, Texas alluded to the idea that Beard himself did not grasp what he did, that he does not “understand the significance of the behavior he knows he engaged in, or the ensuing events that impair his ability to effectively lead our program.’’ It is hard to fathom that he could ever envision a way back from this, that he was either that ill-informed, or that arrogant. As soon as that 911 call hit dispatch, his career at Texas was over. It’s more than bad P.R. or giving trolling opponents the layup of poster boards with Beard in prison stripes.

It’s what a coach is supposed to represent — a leader, a role model, an adviser, a mentor. How could Beard sit across from a parent or guardian and promise to protect, guide and mold their son after that?

Sadly, plenty of people read that last sentence and rolled their eyes, amused at the concept of coaches as good people. We’ve gotten lazy there, too. The bad apple thing and all. The truth is, there are plenty of coaches — more than not — who fit that bill. Who develop lifelong relationships with players and guide them long after their eligibility runs out; who keep their office doors open and their phones on if someone needs to talk; who help kids overcome hardships or succeed where everyone else thought they would fail; who offer opportunity over obligation; who do not put their university in the uncomfortable position of defending them or waiting for a felony charge to be dropped so they can get back to coaching a game.

Who, just like millions and millions of ordinary folk, wake up every day and decide to do the right thing.

Chris Beard didn’t, and that’s why he’s no longer the head coach at Texas.

(Top photo: John E. Moore III / Getty Images)



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College basketball rankings: A shakeup after Xavier’s upset of UConn

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A new year has dawned, and with it a new season. College hoops has officially pivoted from nonconference play — replete with easy buy games, titillating challenges, and tournaments played inside casinos and at tropical locales — to conference play, during which teams must travel through frigid temperatures and try win games in hostile cauldrons. That means no more hiding, and no more smooth sailing for anyone. It’s nothing but frigid, choppy waters ahead.

So this might be the last time all season that I can say there was not much movement on my ballot. Here, then, for the first time in 2023, I present the correct order of the top 25 teams in men’s college basketball, as submitted to the Associated Press on Sunday night:

Seth Davis’ Top 25 for Monday, Jan. 2

Dropped out: North Carolina (16), Kentucky (19), Memphis (21)

Almost Famous: Auburn, Florida Atlantic, Illinois, Missouri, Providence, Saint Mary’s, Utah State

Notes on the votes

• Those of you who follow my rankings closely (and you know who you are) understand that I consider far more than just whether a team won or lost games the previous week. I put added weight on whom it played, how it played, and most of all, where it played. We all know it’s really, really hard to win on the road. Conversely, that means a top-25 team should win at home, especially if it’s against a team that’s ranked lower or not at all.

I had three results inside my top five from last Saturday that I needed to consider: UConn’s 83-73 loss at Xavier, Kansas’ 69-67 home win over Oklahoma State, and Arizona’s 69-60 win at Arizona State. I almost left UConn at No. 2, because there is no shame in losing to a good team on the road, and the Huskies have been arguably the best team in the country this season. I was compelled, however, to bump Arizona up a couple of spots because its win was decisive, and it happened against a good team on the road. Arizona also had a neutral-court win over Indiana and a home win over Tennessee in December, which pushed its 81-66 loss at Utah on Dec. 1 deeper into the rearview mirror. Most teams will have a bad game once in a while, and that loss was to a conference opponent on the road.

As for Kansas, I generally don’t believe in punishing teams after wins, but the Jayhawks were playing at home against an unranked team in Oklahoma State that has lost this season to Southern Illinois and UCF, and they darn near lost. I don’t consider moving a team down one slot much of a punishment anyway, but the Jayhawks dropped because of my decision to leapfrog Arizona.

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Bill Self’s deft coaching moves send Kansas to another comeback win

• I’m guessing there is still some confusion as to why I have Houston at No. 8 when the Cougars were No. 3 in the AP poll last week and are No. 1 in the NET, KenPom and BartTorvik. The answer lies in their resume. Houston’s best win was at Virginia. A fabulous road win, no doubt, but Virginia also lost its next game at Miami. Other than that, Houston’s best win came in Fort Worth over unranked Saint Mary’s. It also has several wins over unranked teams that were uncomfortably close, including Saturday’s 71-65 home win over UCF. It’s notable that Houston is No. 7 in Kevin Pauga’s KPI rankings, which is based solely on results, whereas the other metrics are intended to be predictive. There are also some head-to-head results to consider. Houston lost at home to Alabama, so shouldn’t the Cougars be ranked behind the Crimson Tide? And Alabama lost to Gonzaga in Birmingham later that week, so shouldn’t the Tide be behind the Zags? Given that Houston is by far the best team in its conference, I expect this team will keep winning and rise in the rankings accordingly, but that’s why I have the Cougars where they are. Metrics are useful, but they’re not gospel.

• To expand on my point about the metrics, let’s look at some teams where the rankings seem to be way off, for better and worse. Is there anyone who would argue that Miami doesn’t deserve to be ranked? Well, the Hurricanes are 33rd in the NET, 37th on KenPom, and 50th on BartTorvik. Yet, KPI has them at No. 9. They shouldn’t be ranked that high, but in this case, KPI is much closer to accurate.

Then there are the two teams that the metrics love to hate: Wisconsin (44 NET, 42 KenPom, 49 BartTorvik) and Providence (57 NET, 44 KenPom, 58 BartTorvik). KPI is split on this one – it has Wisconsin at 12, and Providence at 64. This is all because the metrics do not like teams that win a lot of close games. Yet, when they calculate the standings and the Quad records, a win counts the same whether it comes by one or 100. By the way, Providence has a big game Wednesday night at home against UConn. The Huskies won’t be in a great mood, but it’s not often you get to play a top-five team on your home court. The Friars would do well to at least pass the eye test.

On the flip side, the metrics are smitten with West Virginia (13 NET, 20 KenPom, 13 BartTorvik, 25 KPI), even though the Mountaineers’ best win was at Pittsburgh and they just lost at Kansas State in their Big 12 opener. Auburn also has strong metrics and continues to be ranked in the AP top 25 even though the Tigers’ resume is very meh. Their best win was on a neutral court over Northwestern, and they have losses in December to Memphis (neutral) and USC (road).

• The big winner this week, of course, was Xavier. That was an amazing win the Musketeers pulled off Saturday under immense pressure. The two things that stood out to me were Jack Nunge’s 15 points, three rebounds and three assists while battling a virus. Most people don’t want to get out of bed when they’re that sick, much less play a high-level basketball game, but Nunge pulled through like a champ. The other was the contributions off the bench by 6-7 senior forward Jerome Hunter, a Glue Guy who played for Sean Miller’s brother, Archie, at Indiana. Xavier is a really good offensive team but only a so-so-defensive one. Hunter gives this team the toughness it needs at that end of the floor. He will become an extremely valuable piece during the dog days of February.

• I’ve been more supportive of North Carolina and Kentucky than my fellow voters, but those teams made it easy for me to drop them after losing to Pitt and Missouri, respectively. Speaking of Missouri, I gave the Tigers a hard look, not only for their win over Kentucky but also their evisceration of Illinois in the Braggin’ Rights game. Frankly, I’m not quite sure just how good those teams are, and the Tigers had a very suspect nonconference schedule otherwise, so I decided to wait just a little bit longer before putting a number next to their name. But if they keep playing like this, it’s only a matter of time.

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Is John Calipari now the Jimbo Fisher of college basketball?

• Memphis’ loss at Tulane on Sunday opened up another spot. I’ve been stumping for Creighton the last couple of weeks — I even gave the Jays a coveted Buy-Plus rating in my annual Hoop Thoughts Stock Report — so I gave them the final spot even though it doesn’t take much to beat Butler and DePaul at home. My point all along was that the reason Creighton plummeted so badly was because Ryan Kalkbrenner was out, but now that he’s back, I expect them to surge again. They’ve got Seton Hall at home and UConn on the road this week, to be followed by Xavier (road) and Providence (home) next week. We’ll find out soon enough whether my faith in this team is justified.

(Top photo of Xavier’s Colby Jones: Dylan Buell / Getty Images)



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Ranking 131 college football teams after Week 12: TCU keeps proving it belongs

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There has been a general sense around the College Football Playoff conversation that TCU is lucky to be there and that one loss will knock the Horned Frogs out. But that shouldn’t be the case.

No doubt, TCU has needed a number of second-half comebacks to win, none more notable than the fire drill game-winning field goal to beat Baylor on Saturday. But this goes back further. Last week, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith dismissed the Frogs and said they hadn’t played anyone and that “competition matters.” He read off the schedule and said it isn’t deserving of a top-four ranking, even if undefeated.

It got a lot of reaction, because that’s the point, after all. But Smith was not alone. Paul Finebaum, in the same segment, agreed and downplayed the quality of the Big 12.

What Smith, Finebaum and others missed is that the Big 12 is the deepest conference in the country. Eight of 10 teams are bowl-eligible. There are no pushovers, and the nine conference games are more than the SEC or ACC. Among the CFP top four, TCU has the strongest strength of schedule in multiple ratings, including ESPN’s FPI and Sagarin. The Horned Frogs are No. 1 in ESPN’s strength of record, which evaluates the chances the average top-25 team would have that same record against the same schedule.

An undefeated TCU will make the CFP. We know that. The conversation we should be having is whether or not a one-loss TCU should get in.

All of that said, the place where you can ding the Frogs is they lack a true marquee win. Georgia beat Oregon and Tennessee. Ohio State and Michigan beat Penn State. Every team TCU has defeated has at least three losses. That’s in part due to the depth of the conference. But if you want to prove you can beat a top-tier team, TCU hasn’t done that and won’t have a chance to. (Michigan and Ohio State will try to prove it against each other.) That ultimately could be what keeps TCU out if it doesn’t win the next two games.

But what you can’t say is that TCU hasn’t played anyone. You can’t say it hasn’t deserved these victories. After a weekend in which Georgia, Ohio State and Michigan all struggled against far inferior opponents, maybe pulling out a late November comeback at Baylor proved the Horned Frogs do belong.

Here is this week’s edition of The Athletic 131.

1-10

Rank Team Record Prev

1

11-0

1

2

11-0

2

3

11-0

3

4

11-0

4

5

10-1

7

6

9-2

6

7

10-1

9

8

9-2

5

9

9-2

8

10

9-2

11

There is no change in the top four, and the moment of truth is here. After Michigan escaped Illinois, I thought I would finally put Ohio State ahead. Then the Buckeyes had to escape against Maryland. Every argument you can make about these two teams has its points. Ohio State has a better second win (Notre Dame), while Michigan didn’t play anyone in nonconference. Michigan flattened Penn State, while Ohio State needed a fourth-quarter comeback. Ohio State’s struggles in certain conditions make me think this could be a replay of last year, when Michigan’s toughness in the trenches won out. But now Wolverines running back Blake Corum may be hurt, and quarterback J.J. McCarthy has not been very good. I’m not sure if Michigan can win a big game with his arm.

I still lean toward Michigan slightly, but now it will finally be settled on the field and we can move on to arguing if the loser should be in the CFP.


Michigan held onto an undefeated record before the Ohio State game. (Rick Osentoski / USA Today)

USC finally got a marquee win, beating UCLA 48-45, which moves the Trojans ahead of LSU. The Tigers do have wins against Alabama and Ole Miss and the schedule is tougher. But USC doesn’t have a lopsided loss, and the Oregon State win on the road is valuable. Either way, both of these teams still control their destiny for the CFP, I believe.

Clemson jumps up to No. 7 due to Tennessee’s lopsided loss to South Carolina. The loss to Notre Dame still holds Clemson down, but the Florida State win has gotten better with time.

Tennessee’s 63-38 loss to South Carolina makes the Vols a very difficult team to place. They’re out of the CFP race, but wins against LSU and Alabama keep them from dropping further. The only other change is Washington moving into the top 10 after Utah’s loss to Oregon.

11-25

Penn State is an odd team to judge as well. The 9-2 Nittany Lions have seven blowout wins, but they’re against relatively weak competition. None of the wins stand out. They got manhandled at Michigan but played Ohio State tough. Oregon stays ahead of Penn State because it has two marquee wins against Utah and UCLA. Notre Dame continues to inch up and up, and Clemson’s move back up makes that Irish win even better. The Irish also moved ahead of Florida State because of the Clemson results between them.

The Group of 5’s New Year’s Six spot is still likely to go to the American Athletic Conference champ, but it’s about time Coastal Carolina, UTSA and Troy are recognized for the seasons they’re having as well.

26-50

Illinois stays put after the narrow loss at Michigan because of the effort and because of other results around the country. UCF drops out of the top 25 after a loss to Navy but remains ahead of Cincinnati because of the head-to-head. That could change when Cincinnati and Tulane meet this week. Iowa is back, controlling its destiny in the Big Ten West after beating Minnesota. Kirk Ferentz keeps doing just enough.

South Carolina is another tough team to place. The blowout win against Tennessee is one of the most impressive of the season, but the Gamecocks also got trounced by Florida last week and lost to Arkansas earlier in the season. The Razorbacks stay behind Liberty because of the head-to-head loss.

Oklahoma moves ahead of Oklahoma State after Saturday’s 28-13 Bedlam win. Boise State’s win at Wyoming clinched the Mountain West’s Mountain division and home field in the league championship game. The Broncos are 6-1 since a 2-2 start, when they fired their offensive coordinator and QB Hank Bachmeier entered the transfer portal. They’ve figured things out, but losses to UTEP and BYU still keep them behind other Group of 5 teams.

51-75

Wisconsin sneaked into bowl eligibility for the 21st consecutive season with a 15-14 comeback win against Nebraska. It hasn’t been pretty, but it looks like Jim Leonhard will probably get the full-time job. Houston demolished East Carolina 42-3 and continues to be one of the most inconsistent teams in the country. James Madison is 7-3 in its first FBS season, but it is not eligible for the postseason as a transitioning FCS team. However, the Dukes can still win a share of the Sun Belt East if they beat Coastal Carolina this week.

Iowa State lost 14-10 to Texas Tech and will miss a bowl game. The Cyclones are 3-11 in one-possession games over the past two seasons. SMU has allowed 145 points over the past three games, including 59 in Thursday’s loss to Tulane. Wyoming’s narrow loss to Boise State doesn’t drop the Cowboys far. Appalachian State and Georgia Southern will play for bowl eligibility in their rivalry game next week, as App State is not yet eligible because it has two FCS wins. Texas A&M got past UMass in another uninspiring performance. How about Vanderbilt? The Commodores have defeated Kentucky and Florida in consecutive weeks.

Fresno State turned around its season in a big way and clinched the Mountain West’s West division with a 41-14 win against Nevada, its sixth consecutive win. San Diego State has won five of six (the loss coming to Fresno State) and quarterback Jalen Mayden has given that offense a boost for the first time in a long time.

76-100

Miami had nine yards at halftime against Clemson and lost 40-10. The Canes must beat Pitt to get to a bowl game. Georgia Tech beat North Carolina 21-17, and Brent Key is 4-3 as interim head coach with two Top 25 wins. Ohio’s bounce-back continued with a 32-18 win against Ball State, and the Bobcats are one win away from winning the MAC East, but the status of injured quarterback Kurtis Rourke is key.

Cal beat rival Stanford 27-20. UConn lost to Army 34-17 and must wait and hope for a bowl selection. FAU lost 49-21 to Middle Tennessee with bowl eligibility on the line and must beat WKU next week. Rice (at North Texas) and UTEP (at UTSA) also need upsets next week to get to bowl games and perhaps save their coaches’ jobs. Indiana beat Michigan State 39-31 in double overtime despite being heavily outgained and completing just two passes. Virginia Tech ended its long losing streak with a 23-22 win at Liberty. UNLV began the season 4-1 but has lost six consecutive games after a 31-25 loss at Hawaii, ending its bowl hopes.

101-131

Bowling Green got bowl-eligible with a last-second touchdown at Toledo in the snow in a wild finish. The Falcons are still in the mix for the MAC East title if they can beat Ohio. Buffalo’s game against Akron was snowed out and could impact that MAC East tiebreaker. Navy beat UCF and Army beat UConn, and both did so without completing a pass. Neither academy will have a bowl game or the Commander-In-Chief’s trophy to compete for (because Army has two FCS wins and Air Force clinched the CIC), but that rivalry game is always special. The middle of the MAC continues to have a lot of parity. UMass fought valiantly against Texas A&M and covered the spread in a 20-3 loss, but it’s not enough to move out of the bottom spot.

(Top photo:  Tom Pennington / Getty Images)



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Entertainment

Taylor Swift Midnights album covers from Duke, Steelers, F1

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6:45 PM ET

  • Jeremy WillisESPN.com

Pop music megastar Taylor Swift released her latest studio album, titled “Midnights,” on Friday.

The 13-track album is Swift’s 10th. According to Spotify, the album broke the platform’s record for most album streams in a single day, and Swift broke the record for most-streamed artist in a single day.

The cover art for the album features a closeup of Swift looking closely at a lighter. It is surrounded by a white border with the track titles listed on the left side. Consider Swift’s visage the face that launched a whole bunch of sports memes.

Sports teams were quick to replicate the cover on social media. Here are a few of the memes:

The Duke Blue Devils rattled off their hoops accomplishments. The Virginia Cavaliers featured basketball player Samantha Brunelle and tallied the titles for all the programs at the school.

Two football teams in Pittsburgh used the meme to promote this weekend’s games.

In F1, Mercedes and Ferrari replaced Swift with their prominent drivers including Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.

The Ole Miss Rebels and Texas Longhorns also reinvented Swift’s cover. They should get extra credit for their track lists.

“You’re On Your Own, Bevo” sounds like an absolute banger.



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Sports

College football SP+ rankings after Week 7

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It’s been 21 years since Tennessee finished in the AP top five. It had almost been that long since the Vols had beaten Alabama, too, but Saturday’s thrilling 52-49 win in Knoxville is allowing UT fans to dream big again. The advanced stats, meanwhile, are backing up the dreams.

In this week’s SP+ rankings, the Vols jumped to fifth. If they finish there, it would be their best ranking since 1999. This being a predictive ranking and not a measure of résumés, they are still behind Bama overall (though the gap is closing quickly). But considering they are now given at least 71% win probability in five of their final six regular-season games, the odds of a huge season — first 10-win season since 2007? first 11-win season since 2001? first 12-win season since 1998? — are only increasing.

Below are this week’s SP+ rankings. What is SP+? In a single sentence, it’s a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. I created the system at Football Outsiders in 2008, and as my experience with both college football and its stats has grown, I have made quite a few tweaks to the system.

SP+ is indeed intended to be predictive and forward-facing. It is not a résumé ranking that gives credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling — no good predictive system is. It is simply a measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football. If you’re lucky or unimpressive in a win, your rating will probably fall. If you’re strong and unlucky in a loss, it will probably rise.

This week’s movers

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 10 teams whose ratings rose the most this week:

  • Hawai’i: up 4.9 adjusted points per game (ranking rose from 131st to 127th)

  • Syracuse: up 4.3 (from 57th to 38th)

  • Old Dominion: up 3.9 (from 90th to 85th)

  • South Alabama: up 3.5 (from 66th to 50th)

  • UCF: up 3.2 (from 38th to 25th)

  • New Mexico State: up 3.2 (from 127th to 125th)

  • Arizona: up 3.1 (from 96th to 88th)

  • TCU: up 3.0 (from 23rd to 13th)

  • Charlotte: up 2.6 (from 125th to 122nd)

  • Bowling Green: up 2.6 (from 124th to 121st)

Moving down

Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:

  • Notre Dame: down 4.9 points (ranking fell from 27th to 43rd)

  • BYU: down 4.4 (from 52nd to 70th)

  • NC State: down 3.4 (from 32nd to 41st)

  • Alabama: down 3.1 (from second to third)

  • UConn: down 3.1 (from 122nd to 126th)

  • Coastal Carolina: down 3.0 (from 46th to 61st)

  • Liberty: down 2.8 (from 72nd to 82nd)

  • Mississippi State: down 2.7 (from 12th to 20th)

  • Texas: down 2.5 (from fifth to sixth)

  • Colorado State: down 2.5 (from 126th to 128th)

Conference rankings

Here are FBS’ 10 conferences, ranked by average SP+:

1. SEC: 13.1 average SP+ (34.4 average offensive SP+, 21.4 average defensive SP+)
2. Big 12: 11.9 average SP+ (35.4 offense, 23.5 defense)
3. Big Ten: 9.8 average SP+ (30.0 offense, 20.3 defense)
4. Pac-12: 5.7 average SP+ (32.4 offense, 26.8 defense)
5. ACC: 3.7 average SP+ (29.5 offense, 25.8 defense)
6. AAC: 1.1 average SP+ (29.0 offense, 27.8 defense)
7. Sun Belt: 0.2 average SP+ (27.3 offense, 27.1 defense)
8. Conference USA: -10.7 average SP+ (24.4 offense, 35.1 defense)
9. Mountain West: -14.0 average SP+ (17.0 offense, 31.0 defense)
10. MAC: -14.5 average SP+ (21.5 offense, 35.9 defense)

We have long taken to referring to these 10 conferences as the Power Five and Group of Five, but with those averages, I think we need a new set of tiers for this season: Power Three, Middle Four and Faraway Three. The Sun Belt currently ranks seventh, but its average is almost as close to second place as eighth. And of the 32 teams ranked 100th or worse at the moment, 26 reside in one of the bottom three conferences. (Three others are independents.)

Meanwhile, 17 of the top 25 teams are from either the SEC, Big 12 or Big Ten, and another four are from the Pac-12. So maybe it’s Power Four and Middle Three?

Résumé SP+

Since the College Football Playoff rankings are on the horizon, I’m also including Résumé SP+ rankings in this piece each week.

As mentioned above, SP+ is intended to be a power rating, not a resume evaluation tool, but Résumé SP+ attempts to fill that latter gap. It is a look at two things: (1) how the average SP+ top five team would be projected to perform against your schedule (in terms of scoring margin) and (2) how your scoring margin compares to (1). Throw in a seven-point penalty for every loss a team has suffered, and you can say that this is what the CFP rankings would look like if SP+ were in charge.

(Note: Because of the high bar teams have to clear in getting compared to an average top-five team, and because of the loss adjustment, almost every team here ends up with a negative score. It is what it is.)

Here is your Résumé SP+ top 15 after seven weeks:

1. Ohio State (6-0): +8.5 PPG
2. Georgia (7-0): +8.3
3. Tennessee (6-0): +0.0
4. Michigan (7-0): -2.0
5. Ole Miss (7-0): -2.9
6. Alabama (6-1): -3.5
7. TCU (6-0): -6.3
8. Clemson (7-0): -8.8
9. Syracuse (6-0): -9.4
10. UCLA (6-0): -11.7
11. UCF (5-1): -13.1
12. USC (6-1): -13.9
13. Texas (5-2): -15.0
14. Illinois (6-1): -16.1
15. Oklahoma State (5-1): -16.4

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Sports

Mandel’s Final Thoughts: Could Tide be vulnerable vs. Vols? Plus Sooner madness, L.A. greatness

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And now, 23 Final Thoughts from a Saturday that began at 11 a.m. Dallas time in front of 90,000 at the Cotton Bowl and ended at 11:30 p.m. Palo Alto time in front of a few thousand half-awake fans at Stanford Stadium who unwittingly (and unfortunately for them) saw the most incredible ending of the whole darn day.

1. CBS has apparently hired a psychic to run its programming department. Two years in a row, they’ve used their one prime-time pick of the season to air an Alabama-Texas A&M matchup. Both years, the Tide were massive favorites. Both years, it came down to the final play. The Aggies won on a walk-off field goal in 2021. The Tide survived on an A&M incompletion in 2022.

And now, those CBS suits are about to be big winners again. Next week, they get the biggest Alabama-Tennessee game since Nick Saban was still coaching the Dolphins.

2. Fans under the age of around 25 might not even realize that the Tide and Vols are traditional rivals, mainly because Saban’s program has won the past 15 meetings and generally fought in a different weight class than the long-dormant Vols. But lo and behold, these two will meet in Knoxville next week both with undefeated records and top-8 rankings, and for once, Alabama may be the more vulnerable team.

Especially if Heisman winner Bryce Young can’t play.

3. Alabama’s 24-20 escape against ostensibly overmatched A&M (3-3, 1-2 SEC) was a weird, weird game.



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Sports

Replacing Karl Dorrell at Colorado: Candidates range from a current SEC coach to an NFL OC

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Paul Chryst’s ouster from Wisconsin Sunday was a surprise. But Karl Dorrell? Not at all.

Colorado is 0-5 and 4-13 in the past two seasons. The roster is dreadful by Power 5 standards. This is going to be a really tough job. It doesn’t have a great recruiting base, and it’s got a pretty shaky positioning regarding conference stability. Colorado also hasn’t had back-to-back winning seasons in almost 20 years, dating back to 2004-05. There’s been just one Top 25 season in the past 20 years, a No. 17 finish in 2016 under Mike MacIntyre.

How can Colorado fix this? Who wants to try? The latter is just as important a question.

We think Colorado will try and keep the search focused on candidates with head coaching experience, but there are a couple of men without that experience we think the Buffaloes may consider.

Candidates with head coaching experience

Bronco Mendenhall: Former BYU and Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall is available. He’s a defensive-minded coach who had a solid run at Virginia after going 99-43 at BYU. He knows this region well and would feel like a pretty safe hire. Would he fire up the fan base? Probably not, but could he develop the Buffaloes into a bowl team? Probably.

Kalani Sitake: The guy who followed Mendenhall at BYU, Sitake would also make some sense. His teams are always very physical and play hard.



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Sports

College football SP+ rankings after Week 4

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In Week 4 of the 2022 college football season, the teams that hadn’t yet looked vulnerable finally did so (except Minnesota, anyway). Georgia dilly-dallied for long periods in its win over Kent State, Michigan had to lean heavily on Blake Corum to stay ahead ahead of Maryland, USC needed all of 60 minutes to fend off Oregon State, and in the end, 12 of the remaining 33 unbeaten FBS teams lost, five as favorites.

Now that the ground has settled and all of the top teams (except Minnesota) have had at least one close call, the SP+ ratings look … about as they did before the season. Alabama’s back on top, Ohio State and Georgia are nearly tied for second, and of the teams in the current SP+ top 10, nine were projected 13th or higher in the preseason. (The exception? You guessed it: Minnesota!)

That’s not to say nothing has changed, however. The Big 12’s brilliant early showing has given it five teams in the top 23 and eight in the top 40 (and has prevented Oklahoma from falling after Saturday night’s loss to Kansas State). Out west, the Pac-12 has shown all sorts of life, jumping the ACC in the averages and landing five teams in the top 25. Beneath the surface, there is plenty of change afoot.

What is SP+? In a single sentence, it’s a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. I created the system at Football Outsiders in 2008, and as my experience with both college football and its stats has grown, I have made quite a few tweaks to the system.

SP+ is intended to be predictive and forward-facing. It is not a résumé ranking that gives credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling — no good predictive system is. It is simply a measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football. If you’re lucky or unimpressive in a win, your rating will probably fall. If you’re strong and unlucky in a loss, it will probably rise.

This week’s movers

After four weeks, nearly half the SP+ formula is based on actual performances instead of preseason projections. While that makes it rather impressive that so few teams have changed at the very top of the rankings, it does mean that lots of teams moved up and down significantly this week.

Moving up

Here are the 12 teams that moved up at least 11 spots after Week 4:

  • Kansas: up 29 spots from 81st to 52nd

  • Coastal Carolina: up 20 spots from 71st to 51st

  • South Alabama: up 19 spots from 83rd to 64th

  • West Virginia: up 18 spots from 58th to 40th

  • Georgia Southern: up 18 spots from 104th to 86th

  • Illinois: up 16 spots from 63rd to 47th

  • Western Kentucky: up 16 spots from 64th to 48th

  • Texas State: up 14 spots from 124th to 110th

  • California: up 12 spots from 75th to 63rd

  • Temple: up 12 spots from 123rd to 111th

  • Washington: up 11 spots from 35th to 24th

  • James Madison: up 11 spots from 79th to 68th

As you might glean from that list, the movement is a combination of both stellar Week 4 performances (hello, Coastal, WVU, WKU, Temple, and others) and the increased weight in 2022 performances to date (Kansas, Illinois, Cal, Washington). And if you were finding some gambling value in Kansas this season, that is probably about to come to an end. The books and metrics have adjusted.

Moving down

On the flipside, here are the 10 teams that moved down at least 12 spots:

  • Boise State: down 33 spots from 45th to 78th

  • North Carolina: down 23 spots from 44th to 67th

  • Virginia Tech: down 18 spots from 61st to 79th

  • Miami: down 18 spots from 27th to 45th

  • Arizona State: down 17 spots from 48th to 65th

  • Fresno State: down 15 spots from 55th to 70th

  • Wisconsin: down 14 spots from 15th to 29th

  • Wyoming: down 13 spots from 94th to 107th

  • Boston College: down 13 spots from 80th to 93rd

  • Vanderbilt: down 12 spots from 87th to 99th

After almost giving up more points to Notre Dame than the Fighting Irish’s first three opponents had combined, North Carolina has plummeted to 113th in defensive SP+, which is how you almost fall out of the overall top 70 with a top-10 offense.

Meanwhile, Boise State … yikes.

Conference rankings

1. SEC: 13.7 average SP+ (34.1 average offensive SP+, 20.6 average defensive SP+)
2. Big 12: 13.2 average (35.1 offense, 21.9 defense)
3. Big Ten: 10.6 average (31.1 offense, 20.4 defense)
4. Pac-12: 5.8 average (30.4 offense, 24.6 defense)
5. ACC: 4.0 average (30.3 offense, 26.2 defense)
6. AAC: 1.0 average (28.5 offense, 27.5 defense)
7. Sun Belt: -3.2 average (24.9 offense, 28.1 defense)
8. Conference USA: -8.7 average (25.0 offense, 33.7 defense)
9. Mountain West: -10.3 average (20.1 offense, 30.3 defense)
10. MAC: -12.0 average (23.6 offense, 35.5 defense)

Nine of the Big 12’s 10 teams have risen in the rankings since the start of the season. Kansas has risen by 51 spots, and five other teams have risen by double digits. The SEC is doing fine overall — seven of the top 17 teams, only one outside the top 60 — but its averages are sliding a bit because of drops from teams like Texas A&M, and the Big 12 has damn near reeled it in for the top spot.

Meanwhile, as mentioned above, the Pac-12 has jumped the ACC into fourth place overall. The top three conferences still have some distance on everyone else, but it has been a lovely bounceback year to date out west.

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Sports

Ranking every college football team after Week 3: Washington is back on the rise

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What a difference a year makes in Seattle.

A year ago at this time, Washington was 1-2 with losses to FCS Montana and Michigan in which the Huskies scored 17 combined points. On Saturday, the Huskies scored 39 points in a dominant win against a Michigan State team that was ranked No. 11 in the AP poll. And the game wasn’t nearly as close as the 39-28 final score. Washington had 503 total yards and averaged 9.9 yards per pass. With the win to move to 3-0, the Huskies have moved into the top 25 in this week’s edition of The Athletic 131.

Washington’s fall off a cliff under former head coach Jimmy Lake en route to a 4-8 record last season was stunning because it happened so quickly. This was a program that won 32 games from 2016 to 2018 under Chris Petersen. Recruiting had gone relatively well, and it’s one of the best-resourced programs in the West. But the offense had become anemic.

Enter Kalen DeBoer and Michael Penix Jr. DeBoer has won basically everywhere he’s been. He’s 82-9 as a head coach, including a 67-3 stretch at NAIA Sioux Falls from 2005 to 2009. He helped turn around Indiana and Fresno State as the offensive coordinator, then went back to Fresno State and produced a 9-3 record in his second season as head coach.

Penix was electric as Indiana’s quarterback when healthy, but he dealt with several injuries. He’s reunited with DeBoer in Seattle, and Washington football is fun again. Through three games, he’s completing 66 percent of his passes for 359.7 yards per game with 10 touchdowns and one interception.

Everyone wrote off the Pac-12 after Week 1, but we may need to reevaluate that. Washington is the biggest reason why.

Here is the latest edition of The Athletic 131.

The only change in this group is USC’s move up to No. 8 after a 45-17 win against Fresno State. The Trojans look like the best-case scenario under Lincoln Riley right now. The offense is electric. The defense has shown holes (81st in yards per play), but it’s fourth in the nation with 10 takeaways. The trip to Oregon State this week will be an interesting test.

Michigan is a dominant 3-0 but has played three of the worst teams in the country. A home game against Maryland this week will be the first time we can actually begin to evaluate the Wolverines.

The polls have come around to put Georgia at No. 1, and its Week 1 win against Oregon looks even better now after the Ducks’ dominant win against BYU.

11-25

Rank Team Record Prev

11

3-0

13

12

3-0

25

13

2-1

21

14

3-0

20

15

2-1

15

16

2-1

16

17

2-1

18

18

2-1

11

19

2-1

19

20

3-0

49

21

3-0

22

22

2-1

26

23

2-1

24

24

3-0

27

25

3-0

29

Penn State’s 41-12 win at Auburn has quickly changed the view on what is possible for this team. Auburn may not be a good team, but the Nittany Lions were able to run for 245 yards against a good front. The aforementioned 41-20 Oregon win at BYU suddenly makes the Pac-12 look much better now to go with USC, Washington and Utah, which beat San Diego State 35-7.

Texas, Wake Forest and Ole Miss also move into the top 25. The Longhorns avoided an Alabama hangover and pulled away from UTSA in the second half, Wake Forest held off Liberty and Ole Miss pounded Georgia Tech 42-0.

The polls have Utah ahead of Florida and Baylor ahead of BYU, and the coaches poll has Michigan State ahead of Washington. Why? I have no idea. In these rankings, when two teams are close, the head-to-head winner gets the advantage, especially three weeks into the season.

I saw a lot of comments about Minnesota’s ranking last week. It’s barely moved in the rankings because it’s played two of the worst teams in the country and an FCS team. It’s the same reasoning with Michigan and with Ole Miss. It’s not a negative and not a positive. Sometimes you get jumped if someone else has a more impressive win. Minnesota was No. 39 in my preseason ranking and still sits there now. Beat Michigan State, and it’ll most likely be in the top 25.

North Carolina’s win against Appalachian State continues to look better, and the Mountaineers’ Hail Mary win against Troy coupled with Texas A&M’s win against Miami was a boost as well. Maryland’s 34-27 win against SMU was a solid performance.

Kansas and Syracuse! KU is in the top 35 after a 3-0 start with road wins against West Virginia and Houston. Syracuse is 3-0 with wins against Louisville and Purdue. It’s not hard to see a 5-0 Orange start going into the NC State game. Tulane makes the biggest jump this week, from No. 110 into the top 50 after a win against Kansas State to move to 3-0. Notre Dame’s close escape from Cal coupled with Marshall’s loss to Bowling Green drops both teams. Arizona’s 31-28 win against North Dakota State was impressive as an underdog, and the Wildcats are officially a pretty good team.

Several teams slipped into this group with losses — Purdue, Texas Tech, Houston, UTSA and Auburn — but there’s not much movement otherwise. Indiana barely escaped Western Kentucky and Rutgers barely escaped Temple, but both are 3-0. Wyoming’s 17-14 win against Air Force moved the Cowboys to 3-1, with the loss to Illinois.

Vanderbilt’s comeback win at Northern Illinois to move to 3-1 is a real sign of progress for the program. Rice’s 33-21 win against Louisiana was one of the most surprising results of the weekend. Eastern Michigan won at Arizona State, becoming the first MAC school to win a regular-season game against the Pac-12. Northwestern has followed up its Ireland win against Nebraska with losses to Duke and FCS Southern Illinois at home.

South Alabama let a win at UCLA slip away with a field goal as time expired, and Troy let App State win on a Hail Mary. Tough losses. San Diego State is now 1-2 with two blowout losses to Pac-12 teams. Very quickly, this doesn’t look like the Aztecs of old.

(Top photo of Michael Penix and Kalen DeBoer: Joe Nicholson / USA Today)



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