- Indiana and Ohio State appear to be on a collision course for the Big Ten championship game.
- Oregon’s path to the playoff became more difficult after a loss to Indiana and their best win losing value.
- Ole Miss faces a crucial two-game road stretch that will define its season and playoff chances.
Half of the college football season is behind us, and while we’ve learned a lot, there’s still much yet to be determined in the quest for championships.
The results in Week 7 certainly left us with plenty to ponder here at Overreaction HQ. They apparently caused a lot of other people to react as well, as the coaching carousel made a couple more stops on Sunday.
Since those decisions are final, we will leave others to consider the fallout and focus on overreactions at other locales throughout the land. We’ll begin with the possible aftermath of the most notable game of the week.
The Big Ten title game is already a done deal
While Indiana made the biggest splash with its triumph at Oregon, Ohio State went about its business with another ranked win on the road at Illinois. Given the seemingly few hurdles left on their respective schedules, those two are on a collision course to meet in the conference finale.
Is it too soon for such a pronouncement? Maybe. The Buckeyes and Ryan Day still need to slay the Michigan monster at the end of this book, and the Hoosiers and Ohio State both have dates with a suddenly feisty UCLA. However, the games against Penn State that seemed difficult got much easier in the span of two weeks. As matters have unfolded around the rest of the league, their toughest tests would appear to be behind them. See you in Indianapolis.
Oregon is fine
On the surface, a single loss by the Ducks to a top-five team won’t be all that damaging in the long term. But Oregon’s own game was not the one that did the most harm to its resume over the weekend. We refer of course to the Penn State implosion that stripped the Ducks’ best win of nearly all its value.
Oregon can still present a viable at-large case to the committee by getting to 11-1, but a second loss could make things dicey. The Ducks have just two more trips outside the Pacific time zone to Rutgers and Iowa, neither of which will be cakewalks. They must also hope November opponents Southern California and Washington keep winning to help their overall schedule strength. So yes, they’re probably fine, but neither can they afford to get complacent.
Ole Miss fans should be worried
The Rebels can perhaps be forgiven for letting Washington State hang around much, much longer than they should have, but that didn’t help the fans in Vaught Hemingway Stadium breathe any easier. Ole Miss’s narrow escape cost it a position in the US LBM Coaches Poll, but all will be forgiven if the Rebels survive their next two assignments on the road.
The good news for the Rebs is a split of their trips to Georgia and Oklahoma would leave them in excellent shape heading into November, where a stretch drive that is comparatively easier than that faced by their fellow league contenders awaits. Even if Ole Miss drops its next two, a 10-2 finish would present a strong at-large case. Of course, such a losing streak on the heels of this recent close call might not bode well for the team’s psyche the rest of the way, which could lead to a third loss that would be considerably more damaging. There shouldn’t be panic yet, as the folks in Athens and Norman have their own worries, but the next two weeks in Oxford will be quite interesting.
The ACC race goes through – Duke?
Miami fans are all too aware of their team’s November history in the Mario Cristobal era, so they’d probably prefer that we not pencil the Hurricanes into the ACC championship game just yet. But they’re undeniably the league’s most accomplished first-half team, and they figure to be installed as favorites in the rest of their games.
It’s fair to speculate then who might be joining the Hurricanes in Charlotte, North Carolina. The most obvious candidates are No. 12 Georgia Tech and No. 19 Virginia, the only other ACC members currently in the Top 25 – both of whom still have clean conference records.* As the scheduling fates would have it, the Yellow Jackets and Cavaliers do not play each other, nor is either of them slated to meet Miami in the regular season. Both do, however, have to travel to Duke, which is also still unscathed in conference play. There’s likely to be plenty of chaos involving those contenders as well, but next Saturday’s contest between Georgia Tech and Duke, will shape the title hunt more than most observers envisioned at the start of the campaign.
*For those unaware, the Week 2 game between Virginia and North Carolina State was scheduled as a non-conference game, so the Cavaliers’ loss did not count in the league standings.
Lone Star reckoning
What if we told you – that at the midpoint of the season there would be two teams from Texas in the top 10, and the Longhorns wouldn’t be one of them?
Naturally, as football is rather important in the state, devotees of No. 4 Texas A&M and No. 8 Texas Tech can’t help engaging in, uh, friendly banter about whose team is more worthy of its lofty ranking. Unfortunately, with the Southwest Conference is a thing of the past, the Aggies and Red Raiders won’t be able to settle the matter on the field.
Ah, but in the playoff? That’s a different story. Regular readers of this weekly feature might recall we were able to wish a Hoosier State showdown between Notre Dame and Indiana into being last year. Never mind that the game itself didn’t really live up to its billing. The point is it happened, so it’s time to start beating the drums for another in-state playoff showdown that has a lot more history to it. Sure, the Raiders and Aggies themselves have a lot of work to do first, but wouldn’t we love to see it?