- Miami’s strong resume, including wins against Notre Dame and Florida State, has sparked debate about them being the No. 1 team.
- Penn State’s playoff hopes are in jeopardy following a damaging loss to UCLA, making their path to a 10-2 record difficult.
- Despite a loss to Florida, Texas may still have a chance to salvage its season with key upcoming games against Oklahoma and Georgia.
Week 6 in college football was pure gold for us here at Overreaction HQ, with fan bases and pundits all over the map experiencing peak elation, existential despair, and every emotion in between. Our job of course is to try and sort everything out.
We’ll go through the top five overreactions of the weekend, with the goal of providing enough perspective to get a feel for whether these kneejerk responses are justified or just one-week blips on a long season. So whether you’re feeling high in the sky or down in the dumps, take a deep breath, and let’s delve into what we’ve just witnessed.
Miami should be No. 1
We will concede that the Hurricanes at this moment have the best resume. Their conquest of the Sunshine State along with the opening-week triumph against Notre Dame has more collective value than the results for the teams ranked ahead of them in the US LBM Coaches Poll, as Ohio State and Oregon saw their best wins depreciate in value over the weekend (more on those teams below).
The Hurricanes need the teams they’ve beaten thus far to keep winning, however, as the rest of their schedule offers few opportunities for what might qualify as quality victories, while the Big Ten squads they’re pursuing and the SEC clubs chasing them have many chances to move the proverbial needle ahead of them.
But again, the polls are not considered by the playoff committee, and we’re still a month away from getting a glimpse into their process with the release of their initial rankings. In short, talking about who should be No. 1 is always fodder for debate, but it doesn’t mean much with over half the season to go.
Penn State is cooked
From what constitutes a good win, we now consider the opposite question of how damaging a bad loss is. In this space a week ago we laid out the path to recovery for the Nittany Lions after their much more forgivable loss to Oregon. But the UCLA result will be a constant anchor on their overall body of work, much in the way of a basketball bubble team with a Quad 4 loss on the eve of March Madness.
Trouble is, in football there are fewer datapoints available to overcome a stain on the resume. Mathematically speaking, Penn State can run the table and get to 10-2. That would require wins at Ohio State and home against Indiana, a tall order given the team’s well-documented track record against top-10 teams under James Franklin. There’s also the always treacherous trip to Iowa, and even a late home date with Nebraska could be iffy after what we saw from the Lions in the first half at the Rose Bowl. Just one more loss the rest of the way would put Penn State in a pool of other 9-3 at-large candidates, and it’s unlikely its resume would stack up well against those others with the UCLA defeat and a lack of notable out-of-conference achievements to bolster it. So yes, it’s probably not an overreaction to say that one was a season-killer.
Texas is cooked
The Longhorns would appear to be in similarly dire straits after their loss to Florida, in which Arch Manning had few answers and even the usually reliable defense couldn’t shut down the struggling Gators.
But Texas fans might have more reason for hope than Nittany Lions’ faithful. For one thing, it’s possible that Florida might have more wins in it going forward, which would mitigate the damage to the Longhorns’ body of work. We’ve also seen narratives turn on a dime in this sport from one week to the next. Should Texas find a way to topple Red River foe Oklahoma next week, the entire conversation changes.
With that said, however, the ‘Horns can probably afford no more than one more loss the rest of the way, and this team will need to show something we haven’t seen yet to convince us a strong enough finish is in the cards. . The remaining slate includes a trip to Georgia and a home finisher against Texas A&M, as well as a tricky date with Vanderbilt.
Top Ten Texas Tech?
With Iowa State falling from the ranks of the unbeaten at Cincinnati, Texas Tech now carries the banner as the highest-ranked squad from the Big 12, and as such the de facto league favorite. But are the Red Raiders actually a top-10 team? At this early juncture in the league campaign, about the only answer we have for that question is, maybe.
We’ll allow this much – at least the Red Raiders have looked the part. Texas Tech’s preconference schedule was about as tissue-soft as it could have been. But the Red Raiders handled their first two league assignments against then-undefeated opponents, both on the road, with similar start-to-finish dominance. Houston’s resume was also inflated, but Utah had begun the season by rolling UCLA, a result that is now not so easy to dismiss. In the end, we suppose, every poll position is earned, so Red Raider fans should enjoy the ride.
Finally ranked, Memphis is the American favorite
With the season near the midpoint, the likelihood is high that the fifth automatic playoff qualifier will come from the American Conference. But the race to determine that league’s champion is barely underway.
Memphis, the defending conference champ, is at present the lone league member in the Top 25. But the Tigers have plenty of company. Navy and North Texas also have unblemished records thus far, and South Florida and Tulane also picked up valuable wins against the so-called Power Four conferences in the first month. A true favorite in what should bea compelling race in the American is hard to identify until we start getting more head-to-head results, so stay tuned.