- Florida’s loss to South Florida puts coach Billy Napier back on the hot seat.
- Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa State secured significant wins against rival or Power Four opponents.
- Oklahoma State and SMU suffered brutal losses, with SMU blowing a late 14-point lead.
Take a deep breath and prepare yourself for a brutal paragraph:
Leading South Florida 16-15 with 2:52 to play and taking over near its 40-yard line, No. 15 Florida threw an incompletion, gained two yards on a short run and then tossed another incompletion before punting the ball back to the Bulls, who went 87 yards in eight plays to hit the game-winning field goal from 20 yards as time expired.
The Gators’ possession went all of those two yards and took 27 seconds, including the time for punter Tommy Doman to take a snap, drop the ball onto his foot and deliver a 47-yard punt that pinned the Bulls at their own 11-yard line. Amid a loss that Billy Napier will never live down, this horrifically botched 27-second span will be difficult to top when we eventually look back at the worst coaching moments of the 2025 season.
Florida made the unique decision to retain Napier last November — his buyout played a huge role, of course — and seemed to have earned the dividends from this patience as the Gators surged to the finish line last season and then opened this year in the mix for the College Football Playoff.
The 18-16 loss erases any lingering goodwill from the Gators’ recent turnaround and will fling Napier firmly back on the hot seat. It’s not just the nature of the loss, of course; while that’s an inescapable part of the conversation, that the defeat came to in-state upstart South Florida is even more infuriating.
On the other hand, this win establishes the Bulls as the team to beat in the Group of Five race for the playoff, ahead of Tulane, Memphis, Boise State, UNLV and others. USF has made huge gains under third-year coach Alex Golesh, who won seven games in each of his first two seasons but has clearly built a team capable of double-digit wins in the regular season. That doesn’t make things any easier to swallow for the Gators.
Florida, South Florida and Illinois stand atop the biggest winners and losers from Saturday’s college football action:
Winners
Oklahoma
There may be a question about what it means to beat No. 13 Michigan 24-13 but there’s no questioning the terrific optics of beating a recent national champion with some room to spare — in prime time, no less, as the only game between ranked teams all weekend. That’s great news for No. 24 Oklahoma and coach Brent Venables. The Sooners have to be very happy about the play of transfer John Mateer, who threw for 270 yards, ran for 74 yards and had three total touchdowns. If Michigan is the fourth-best team in the Big Ten, this is a very telling result against an opponent picked closer to sixth or seventh in the SEC. This is another positive sign for those optimistic about thios year’s odds of a major turnaround from the Sooners.
Illinois
No. 12 Illinois is surging into this season and beginning to develop the resume needed to earn an at-large College Football Playoff appearance. After breezing through Western Illinois in the opener, Illinois rode a plus-five edge in turnover margin and beat Duke 45-19, outscoring the Blue Devils 31-6 in the second half to notch an impressive win against a very solid Power Four opponent. This is a huge one for the Illini. Lopsided wins against Power Four competition in non-conference play are always noteworthy, especially against teams also battling for eight or more wins in the regular season. But with this year’s Big Ten schedule featuring tough road trips to Indiana and Washington in addition to home games against Ohio State and Southern California, a loss to the Blue Devils could’ve ended up being extremely costly in the selection committee’s final comparison of at-large teams.
Missouri
Missouri put up 583 yards of total offense, 249 on the ground, and overcame a 21-6 deficit in the first quarter to beat Kansas 42-31 in the first revival of this bitter rivalry since the Tigers joined the SEC in 2012. Two backs did the heavy lifting: Jamal Roberts ran for 143 yards on 13 carries with a long of 63 yards, while Ahmad Hardy added 100 yards and a score on 22 carries. This running game helped Missouri control the clock and keep Kansas and quarterback Jalon Daniels on the sidelines; overall, the Tigers had possession for over 40 minutes.
Iowa State
Here’s the latest reason to think this could be a special season for the No. 18 Cyclones: they beat Iowa in Ames. The Hawkeyes had claimed six wins in a row at Jack Trice Stadium but were upended 16-13 in the latest narrow result in a series recently defined by ISU kicker Kyle Konrardy’s late-game brilliance. After kicking a 54-yard field goal in the final seconds of last year’s game to give the Cyclones the 20-19 win, Konrardy drilled a 54-yard try on Saturday with just under two minutes to play. Despite those chronic failures at home, ISU has won three of four in this unpredictable series.
Arch Manning
After an inauspicious debut as the full-time starter in last week’s 14-7 loss to No. 1 Ohio State, Manning had a mostly get-right afternoon to lead No. 6 Texas to a 38-7 win against San Jose State. The good part: Manning completed 19 of 30 attempts and had over 300 yards of total offense and five touchdowns, four through the air. Now, the bad: Between a red-zone interception and a strip-sack fumble that nearly cost the Longhorns a touchdown, the redshirt sophomore still has obvious work to do on his ball control and placement. This is still progress, though.
Losers
Michigan
Coach Sherrone Moore exits this loss and heads off a two-game suspension, and things would not be great when he comes back in late September if the Wolverines lose to Nebraska. Things don’t look that great, period, even if Bryce Underwood’s struggles against Oklahoma shouldn’t come as a surprise. For starters, making young quarterbacks look bad is kind of Venables’ thing. And Underwood had all of one game of college experience under his belt before completing 9 of 24 throws for 142 yards. The offense definitely needs to expand and push things downfield to really turn the Wolverines into a threat to Ohio State, No. 2 Penn State and No. 5 Oregon.
Arizona State
The No. 10 Sun Devils trailed Mississippi State 17-0, which was surprising enough, and then stormed back to take a 20-17 lead on a short field goal with 1:38 to play. As in, an 18-yard field goal. Like, a field goal kicked from about as close as you can get without scoring a touchdown. It’s easy to defend and hard to criticize coach Kenny Dillingham’s decision to kick: kicking gives you the lead with 98 seconds left, and ASU had just been stuffed on successive plays from right on the doorstep. But the inability to punch the ball into the end zone gave Mississippi State quarterback Blake Shapen the chance to toss a 58-yard score with 30 seconds left for the win. Needless to say, this is a disastrous result for the Big 12, which saw the preseason conference favorite lose to what is seen as the weakest team in the SEC.
Oklahoma State
The investment gap between Oregon and Oklahoma State is clear, as longtime OSU coach Mike Gundy said heading into his team’s game against the Ducks, and so is the talent gap. In hindsight, maybe Gundy shouldn’t have said anything. With a little extra motivation against an opponent closer to a team from the Championship Subdivision than those Oregon will face in the Big Ten, the Ducks scored 20 points in the first quarter, 21 in the second and 28 in the third before slowing down in the fourth quarter of a 69-3 win. After he went winless in Big 12 play last season and barely retained his position for one more season, this is the type of loss that portends the end of Gundy’s record-setting tenure.
SMU
After taking a tough loss to Auburn in the opener, Baylor rebounded to beat No. 16 SMU 48-45 in double overtime behind a huge afternoon from quarterback Sawyer Robertson, who finished with 440 yards and four touchdowns. Let’s count the three ways this was an absolutely brutal loss for SMU, beginning with the fact that Baylor has now taken 14 in a row in the series dating to 1986. In addition, the Mustangs led 38-24 with under six minutes to go before the Bears forced overtime on a Robertson touchdown pass with 34 seconds left. Lastly, this loss marks the third in a row for the Mustangs against Power Four opponents, following losses to Clemson and Penn State to end last season.
Iowa
There’s still time for South Dakota transfer Mark Gronkowski to show why he was so hyped this offseason as the missing piece capable of bringing Iowa’s offense in line with the rest of the Big Ten. But let’s not sugarcoat what we’ve seen through two weeks: Previously one of the top quarterbacks in the FCS, Gronkowski has flopped in the transition to the Power Four with only a combined 127 passing yards on 3.3 yards per attempt in games against Albany and the Cyclones.