NCAA Football 2025

Does anyone else think playing a qb who's surgically repaired throwing hand is bleeding through his stitches and onto his pants, is hesitant to run, and has picked up a sudden case of throwing deep floaters for easy picks, is a bit weird?

In addition to the epic trolling of the backup, SCar's Oline is so overmatched by OK's Dline, I'm thinking this has a realistic chance to be a game with more sacks than points. I only regret kickoff is too early to make a drinking game of it.

Notably I do not expect 45 sacks, so no need to let that stop you from taking the under.

Only book I have access to already moved the o/u line to 43. Took the under anyway. And I'll take healthy quaff of Coors Light every time there is a sack in your honor.

Indeed four of the games are > 95%. Weird stuff happens in college football though. Last year's ND team that made the finals lost to Northern Illinois at home.

At Pitt is only 80% though. Since losing at WV, pitt's last 3 games:

Beat FSU on the road, outgaining them 6.7 to 6.6, 476-415

Annihilated BC at home 48-7, outgaining them 5.7 to 40.0, 503-216

Lost to Louisville by 7 despite outgaining them 6.2 to 4.6

This team could easily be 6-0 right now

Yeah, it's a huge game for basically every playoff contender. There are 7 at large spots available, and they'd much rather have ND out of the picture and take their chances with USC rather than vice versa.

Will also make a huge difference in the aforementioned potential 10-2 logjam in the B1G. Illinois, Nebraska, Michigan, Oregon are all hoping USC loses. That way, another B1G loss would likely get USC out of the picture, which is especially helpful for Michigan who lost h2h and Nebraska/Oregon who might lose h2h to USC then finish 10-2.

Conversely, Miami and (I think) ATM are rooting FOR ND. Miami is all but locked in to the playoff, but ND finishing in the top-10 would be a huge boost to their chances of getting a bye even if they lose a game. ATM could easily finish 9-3 and be in the mix for the last playoff spot. I *think* they'd rather have 10-2 Notre Dame because they will win the h2h tiebreak. If it comes down to like 10-2 Illinois, 9-3 ATM and 10-2 ND the committee will say "well we can't send 10-2 Ill over 10-2 ND, but we can't send 10-2 ND over 9-3 ATM who beat them H2H, so it's ATM" whereas if it was just 10-2 ill and 9-3 ATM the committee might (stupidly) say "2 < 3, hurr durr sort by losses, it's Illinois"

Also, I assume Pitt is rooting for ND, as they want to be the ones to hand ND their 3rd loss, and want them to finish as good as possible... and also want them to land a huge blow against a fellow bubble team.

I think people are underestimating the amount of carnage that is about to pile up in the SEC

There are TEN contenders:
Ole Miss
Texas A&M
Alabama
Georgia
Oklahoma
Missouri
Tennessee
LSU
Texas
Vanderbilt

Those teams have only played SIX games against each other so far, and have SIXTEEN more

Bama and Oklahoma play the most contenders at SIX each

Bama is already 3-0 (UGA, Mizzou, Vandy) and has three games at home (OU, Tenn, LSU)

OU is 0-1 and faces a gauntlet (v Ole Miss, @ Bama, v Mizzou, @ Tennessee, v LSU)

Ole Miss and ATM only face three contenders each, although ATM's are all road games (@ Mizzou, @ LSU, @ Texas). Ole Miss already beat LSU and faces only UGA and OU, though again, both are road games.

I think you’re totally right about the bloodbath. Plus all those out of the race, except Kentucky, are actually dangerous too. Together they have 9 home games alone against contenders plus the cocktail party. Very losable.

I’m not even sure I’d call it a “grind of mediums” since most of the sides would be within 1 score on a neutral. Forget 9-3, I wonder what the odds are of having no more than two or three teams better than 8-4.

Gotta admit the Big10 is pretty smart having 8 teams who’d be competitive for 3rd place in the Sunbelt. Rack up those wins and spend freely fellas!

Yeah, Auburn and Florida and to a lesser extent Arkansas, Mississippi State and South Carolina, are good teams.

I'd actually have Auburn or Florida as the #2 team in the ACC or Big-12.

I've said it for years, but having really shitty teams is an integral part of having your conference do well. The B1G and ACC have mastered this. The Pac-12 and Big-12 have been stuck for years because their 3rd or 4th worst teams would always knock off one of their playoff contenders.

SEC used to reliably have ~2 doormats every year and then play an extra directional FCS team, so they were close enough to ACC/B1G level, and then their reputation would do a lot of heavy lifting as well.

But now that they imported Texas and Oklahoma, and Vandy is actually good, they're going to absolutely cook themselves.

it does help that they all play 2-4 absolute cupcakes though (Except for UF). No Mountain West or AAC teams to spoil the reputation of their middle class

So... Indiana was 0 and 46 on the road against top 5 ranked teams going into Oregon last week. And held the high flying Ducks to just 41 yards of total offense in the 2nd half.

Glad others got on them to playoff at decent odds. I'm a little late to the party. 😡

At first I thought it was cool my cat was pointing to one of the teams on each of two screens,

Then I realized he was just picking the Panthers and the Jaguars!

But now I'm starting to think he knew Butch Jones was going to punt from midfield on 4th and 2 and 4th and 1 on consecutive drives. Not sure what he has against Todd Helton, but it could easily just be the Clay Helton relation...

IU's defense, in particular their LB corps, Kamara, and Ponds are outstanding. They held ORE to 0 pts in the 2nd half and forced 2 TOs. Not sure they can stop tOSU's WRs, but i hope they get the chance to try

I shall go back and watch this game. The best part of having unlimited DVR on YouTubeTV. As soon as I finish watching Patriots @ Saints for some odd reason. Hockey and baseball are clogging up my other 2. GO Stars. Eff the Dodgers.

Amazing how fast you can watch a game when you fast forward thru commercials, replays and halftime. You're right, dominant performance by IU defense in the 2nd half along with some questionable play calling by Oregon late 4th quarter.

If you have the Big Ten Network, they do 60 minute cuts of (AFAIK) all the games. It's a great way to watch. I think I've seen them on other conference networks (SEC? ACC?) but I haven't recorded any so not 100% sure.

there's also people who condense the games down removing all the **** between plays like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6zEo6IB...

just search youtube for the teams and "condensed"

Good stuff. I'll take 20% equity all day in that game. Always good to have hope!

Sadly Sunbelt games rarely get the same treatment. ESPN's app and regular replays are a much better interface than Youtube TVs, but it still sucks and seems to strive to constantly become worse. I swear to god I used to be able to change the ffd-tap duration to match a team's usual pace. Army 35 seconds, Oregon 7 and such. Also our DVDs used to have chapters we could jump to at will instead of watching a 16x ffd gradually get there. And another thing, cloud...

Troy at Texas State is a fun rewatch; quickly down 21-0 and 28-7 first quarter, no baller "Goose", and completely unable to run the ball at all, Troy makes the bold decision to put the game on the previously terrible backup qb's arm by taking the "R" out of their RPOs for good. I'd thought it was weird the last two years when the prolific Goose passing attack turned into absolute runcentric garbage every time he suffered some gruesome injury (I don't think he's brittle. I think he's cursed) and turned it over to the backups. Now I understand; Goose always read "pass", and these other guys always read "run"!

So this Kilcrease Poindexter went off; 30 of 39 (I counted 6 oob throwaways under pressure) for 415 yards with 5 tds. With 5 sacks and 9 other "runs", basically any time this guy got a second he was on point. Sick. But he wasn't even Troy's biggest difference maker.

That'd be their kicker. He dead-centered 47 and 53 yd fgs, each by a good 10 yards, and he onsided an absolute cannon-shot directly at a TxSt guy and it ricocheted on a rope right into the arms of a Troy guy before anyone had even taken a damn step. It was like something a supersayan would do! At least a couple of the refs were confused about what happened and why Troy never even moved to cover the return, but TxSt had no idea what had happened. Well, except the one guy, and he seemed more interested in disappearing than explaining it to anyone. Bet that's gonna' leave a mark.

Troy won every quarter after the first, including OT. Apparently lost 4 of their starting Olinemen, but have now shown a ton more WIM than anyone else in the Sun Belt!

I think you can argue a 10-2 USC team with losses to Illinois and Oregon on the road would have a chance at a home game as the 8 seed. Their schedule is deceptively difficult.

In comparison, people are already saying Notre Dame is a lock at 10-2. If USC had their schedule and were the ones hosting Saturday everyone would say SC would go 10-2 also.

The difference is USC actually plays 5 or 6 teams with a pulse and ND doesn't.

USC is going to beat ND Saturday and things will get a lot more interesting.

I kind of think ND schedule is together than it looks at a glance. @pitt @ ark home Boise home usc home ncstate are all decent enough plus the games at the beginning.

Arkansas power rating is bad because nd thrashed them. Does that hurt a team's strength of record?

I agree it'll look bad if best win is unranked usc.

Not saying ND shouldn't get in if they win out but I think SC has a legit argument at an 8 seed depending on how things fall if they went 10-2 and lost a close game to Oregon.

Thanks for the tip Holliday. That was fun.

If USC goes 10-2 with wins over @ Notre Dame, Michigan and @ Nebraska, they are ahead of most 9-3 SEC teams I would think.

Not sure what happens if Illinois also wins out to go 10-2 and Oregon loses @ Iowa then wins out to go 10-2 and Indiana and Ohio State take care of business and go 12-0 or 11-1.

10-2 Nebraska ( loses to USC in this scenario) is dead here for sure. Washington (would lose to Oregon and Illinois) is also dead

Michigan, hilariously, can also go 10-2 if they beat OSU (who could turn around and beat IU in the B1GCG)

no idea how they resolve that logjam.

Reputation (at this point) is Oregon > USC >>>> Illinois

Biggest OOC win is USC >>>> Illinois >>> Oregon

H2h is Oregon & Illinois > USC

Ranked wins are probably Illinois 1 (Duke), USC 2 (Michigan, Notre Dame), Oregon 1 (USC). In this scenario Washingotn prob unranked.

Bad losses are Illinois 1 (losing by 53 to Indiana is a bad loss even if Indiana is a good team), USC 0, Oregon 1 or 0 depending on how Iowa finishes.

If Oregon instead beats Iowa and finishes 11-1 then they're obviously in as the 3rd team, but a Michigan / Illinois / USC logjam is equally perplexing.

Record 18-22. Superlocks: 3-4

Here's the LOCKS of the week:

Louisville +14.5 (-128)
Vandy ml (-112)
Ole Miss +7.5 (-110)
Iowa -2.5 (-115)
UCLA -2.5 (-138)
USC +10.5 (-130)
Missouri ml (-120)

$20 to win $1,346.37

Super lock: It's gotta be Iowa -2.5 vs Penn State. Penn State is basically Hiroshima the day after. Their program has imploded and now they have no QB. At Iowa is a very tough place to play too. Iowa almost--arguably should have--beat Indiana there. Iowa should win this game comfortably by double digits.

IU gives Cig a new deal:

8yrs/$93M

Now the 3rd highest paying coach in college football behind Kirby and Day

Look, I know Iowa scored 37 points last week, but that was against Wisconsin. They're still Iowa.