College football Week 12 buzz: The best players and teams by conference

With three weeks left in the regular season, all 18 spots in the FBS conference championship games are still open. The SEC is probably the most contested race remaining, as eight teams enter Week 12 with one or two conference losses. The three teams with one SEC loss -- Tennessee, Texas and Texas A&M -- need to win out to make it to Atlanta.

Everyone else needs to keep winning and get some help.

"It's on to the next," Georgia coach Kirby Smart said after losing to Ole Miss. "I mean, welcome to the SEC, baby. I said when the season started that it was going to be the toughest schedule we've ever had in the SEC with the addition of the Texas game on top of all the others we had to play.

"It's tough, but you know what, our future's in front of us," he said. "We've got a big game next week. We've got to go out, and we've got to find a way to execute at a higher level."

So who is the best team in the SEC?

College football insiders Heather Dinich and Adam Rittenberg have been talking to sources to find out who the best teams really are in each power conference. With two-loss Colorado still in the Big 12 mix, and two-loss Clemson hanging by a thread in the ACC, everyone is in must-win mode. Here's a look at top teams, players, and other storylines to watch heading into Week 12:

Jump to a section:
What is the best team in each conference?
Who are the nation's best players?
Who have been the best and worst new coaches?
Emptying the notebook

Who's the best team in each Power 4 conference, according to coaches in that conference?

Dinich: Right now the debate in the SEC is between Texas and Tennessee, but one SEC coach told me Tennessee has the edge because it is better up front than the Longhorns.

"When Georgia went in there and beat Texas, they beat them at the line of scrimmage," the coach said. "That caused me to question whether their line of scrimmage is going to be good enough to win this league. And they haven't really been tested since then. When they play Texas A&M we'll find out."

Georgia was able to beat Texas up front, but couldn't handle Alabama or Ole Miss. One SEC assistant coach told me the biggest difference between Alabama and Georgia is how the quarterbacks play -- and even that has changed on a weekly basis. "You saw how [Jalen Milroe] played against LSU, and LSU didn't stand a chance," the assistant coach said. "You saw Carson Beck had the game of his life in the second half of the Alabama game." The assistant coach said the biggest difference with Georgia this year is on its offensive line, which isn't as talented as it has been, but also that Beck is "trying to make some throws that might not necessarily be his strong suit." The picture will get at least a little bit clearer this week after the Georgia-Tennessee game.

Rittenberg: Beck's regression has certainly changed the outlook on Georgia. The other team that coaches mentioned to me is Ole Miss, which showcased its talent, especially on defense, in the win over Georgia. "The D-line is legit," an SEC offensive coordinator told me. "I thought Ole Miss was more talented than Bama and LSU." Another SEC coach added of Ole Miss: "Their defense is the difference in this year's team. [Lane Kiffin has] got as good of a defense as anybody in the league." The debate in the Big Ten comes down to Oregon, Ohio State and, yes, Indiana. "Oregon and Ohio State are a push," a Big Ten coach said. "I actually think Ohio State wins a rematch." If the Ducks and Buckeyes win out, they will meet again for the Big Ten title Dec. 7 in Indianapolis. "Oregon is the best team, with Ohio State as a close second," a Big Ten defensive coordinator said. Despite Oregon's 32-31 win over Ohio State on Oct. 12, a Big Ten coach went with the Buckeyes, saying, "The weapons that they have on the defensive side of the ball and at the skill positions on offense, it's pretty scary."

Another coordinator who has faced or studied the contenders had an interesting take ahead of the Nov. 23 clash between Indiana and Ohio State in Columbus. "The best football team is Indiana," he said. "Now, they're not the most talented team, and they'll lose to Ohio State because Ohio State's more talented than them, but if you want to talk about the team that executes the best and plays complementary football the best, that's the team." Another Big Ten coach wasn't as high on the Hoosiers, noting they have a very good team but are propped up by a softer schedule.

Dinich: Coaches throughout the country share that doubt. A head coach in another Power 4 conference told me it's impossible to tell yet if the Hoosiers are "really, really good, or just have a favorable schedule." In the ACC, Miami, SMU -- and Clemson -- can still make it to the conference title game, and one coach told me that "when Clemson is on, I think they're the most complete team." Miami and SMU would follow, he said, but unless they play each other, they're hard to sort out. If the coach had to pick, though: "SMU might be the more complete team."

Rittenberg: Clemson's surprising shakiness on defense has most ACC coaches I've talked to choosing between Miami and SMU. "Miami's the most talented team we've played against," one coach said. "Their offense is probably by far better than anything else we've seen." The view in the Big 12 seems a bit clearer, namely because Colorado has Heisman Trophy candidates Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders on its roster. "It's Colorado," a Big 12 coach told me. "You have the two best players in the league on the same team. That usually leads to winning. And their D-line's solid. Now you take those two off the team, it's a whole different team."

Who's the best player in each Power 4 conference?

Rittenberg: Let's start with the quarterbacks and then examine everyone else. Big Ten coaches mostly chose between Oregon's Dillon Gabriel and Indiana's Kurtis Rourke. Gabriel delivered the best individual performance, going right at Ohio State's secondary with 341 passing yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. He is also more mobile than Rourke. "He gets rid of the ball really fast," a coach said. "Gabriel is a good system quarterback for Oregon, and their OC has figured out how to maximize him." But a defensive coordinator said of Rourke, who has completed 71.8% of his passes with 21 touchdowns and four interceptions, "He makes really smart decisions, puts the ball where he needs to. There's no run element to him, but it's close [with Gabriel]." A Big Ten coach added of Rourke: "When that dude is on, that was the only time this year where I felt like we didn't have answers."

Things appear more clear-cut in the Big 12, where Colorado's Shedeur Sanders is leading his team toward a once-unthinkable spot in the conference title game. Sanders is completing 72.9% of his passes, a career best, and this week probably will eclipse 3,000 passing yards for the third straight season. "He's the best quarterback in college football," a Big 12 coach said.

Dinich: One SEC coach told me Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart is the best quarterback in the conference, but another said Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe is the best player.

Me: The best quarterback?

Coach: The best player.

Milroe is exceptional on the ground, and that was on full display in the win against LSU, when he racked up 185 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns -- to go along with 109 passing yards and only six incomplete passes.

Defensively, one coach said "you'd be hard-pressed not to say [South Carolina edge rusher] Kyle Kennard."

In the ACC, there's no doubt the best quarterback is Miami's Cam Ward, who has completed 66.8% of his passes for 3,494 yards, 32 touchdowns and 6 interceptions. Though his Heisman stock dropped after the loss to Georgia Tech, nobody wants to play against him.

"When Miami's quarterback is on," one coach said, "they can score 50 points."

Rittenberg: The QB discussion in the SEC between Milroe and Dart is interesting. "[Dart's] confidence, ability to check plays, he does some of that himself," an SEC coach said. "And he's very, very accurate. He can make any throw. The thing with him is he's a dangerous runner, too.

Anyway, enough with the QBs. Who else has stood out to coaches? An SEC coach mentioned Tennessee running back Dylan Sampson, who has 1,129 rushing yards and 20 touchdowns, as well as LSU offensive tackles Will Campbell and Emery Jones Jr. "They're good players, they're as-advertised players," the coach said. Ole Miss defenders Walter Nolen and Suntarine Perkins also drew praise, as did LSU wide receiver Kyren Lacy.

In the Big 12, the lean is toward Hunter, who continues to break his own team records for number of plays, logging 161 in last week's win against Texas Tech. He is on a different level than every other cornerback in the nation, and his continued production at wide receiver -- he has nine receptions in each of the past two games for 252 receiving yards and three touchdowns -- keeps him in the spotlight. The other intriguing non-quarterback in the Big 12 is Arizona wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, who, despite a miserable season for his team, continues to produce with 63 receptions for 1,066 yards and six touchdowns. "He's the best we've played against, a stud," a Big 12 coach said. "He'll be a top-10 or 15 [NFL draft] pick."

In the Big Ten, coaches mentioned the wide receiver tandems at both Oregon (Tez Johnson, Evan Stewart) and Ohio State (Jeremiah Smith, Emeka Egbuka). A defensive coordinator said of Johnson, who leads Oregon with 64 catches and eight touchdowns, "Tez is just very dynamic and really good for college football. Especially in that offense, he's perfect for what they do." A Big Ten coach added: "He is special." Penn State tight end Tyler Warren, who is tied for 17th nationally in receptions (59) and has 30 more than any Nittany Lions player, drew strong reviews. Oregon tight end Terrance Ferguson also has stood out to coaches. On the defensive side, several coaches went with Penn State defensive end Abdul Carter, who has eight sacks, 15.5 tackles for loss and two forced fumbles after moving from linebacker.

What were the best and the most concerning first-year coaching hires this year?

Dinich: The best hire anywhere was Indiana's Curt Cignetti, who has infused life into Indiana's dormant program and led the Hoosiers to their first 10-win season. Ever. This is a Big Ten school where you'd never have trouble getting a seat at a game because tailgating was more fun than actually watching the team. Not anymore. Google him. Indiana's 7-0 start in the Big Ten is its best ever. The 10-game winning streak is the longest in program history. The seven home wins are the most ever. Indiana is in the midst of a historic season -- and Cignetti is why.

Rittenberg: Depending on how the next few weeks go for Coach Cig, we could be talking about one of the best first-year coaching jobs in college football history. Another notable first-year performance has come from Texas A&M's Mike Elko, who has the Aggies positioned for a potential CFP run, which would be the program's first. Elko and his team endured some adversity with an opening loss to Notre Dame, a quarterback injury and subsequent change, but convincing home wins over Missouri and LSU have set the Aggies up for what could be a de facto CFP play-in game against Texas. "It's amazing how they lost so many D-linemen a year ago, and you see them playing all over our league and elsewhere, and how much talent they still have," an SEC coach said. The Aggies haven't yet had a period of sustained success in the SEC, but Elko's approach toward recruiting, player development and schematics gives the program a real chance to keep its momentum going into next season.

The man who replaced Elko at Duke, Manny Diaz, has also done a really nice job in Year 1. Two other first-year coaches are standing out in the state of Louisiana: Tulane's Jon Sumrall, who has the Green Wave positioned for an AAC title run, and Louisiana-Monroe's Bryant Vincent, who started 5-1 and visits Auburn this week.

Dinich: Michigan's Sherrone Moore is at the top of the list of coaches who have struggled. The Wolverines have slid from their national championship season to a middling 5-5 team that doesn't have a dependable quarterback. Moore should get a bit of a mulligan because of the situation he inherited when Jim Harbaugh left for the NFL, but it's still mind-blowing that a program such as Michigan -- coming off its best season in decades -- has tried three different quarterbacks and ranks No. 129 in the country in passing offense. The pressure is on Moore to dip into the portal or find the next Arch Manning.

It's also fair to raise questions about the direction of Arizona under Brent Brennan, who has lost six of his past seven games. This is a program that won 10 games in 2023 under Jedd Fisch, and to add to the pain, rival Arizona State is 7-2. You know it's a problem when a fan of the rival school sends a letter to Arizona's athletic director writing a letter of support for the head school. Brennan, a former San Jose State coach, signed a five-year deal with the Wildcats.

Rittenberg: I've seen Michigan in person three times, and certainly share the concerns about Moore. The quarterback issue is one thing and, like you said, can be tied at least in part to the coaching transition and what sources have told me about Harbaugh's hesitancy to add a notable transfer last December. Still, the idea of pinning your offense to Jack Tuttle, who was coming off of surgery on his throwing elbow and was, as we found out, one concussion away from retiring from football, rather than adding a transfer in the spring portal, seemed shortsighted. The other issue that has surfaced is game management. Trailing Indiana 17-3 at halftime, Michigan ran the ball on third-and-7 from the Hoosiers' 46-yard line on its first possession of the third quarter, gaining four yards before punting. Two possessions later, Michigan ran for a yard on third-and-6 from the Indiana 39, only to attempt a long field goal rather than go for a first down. Most egregiously, Michigan allowed more than 20 seconds to elapse before calling timeout after an 8-yard Indiana run in the closing seconds. The Hoosiers ran out the clock moments later. We didn't see those game-management errors from Moore when he filled in for Harbaugh late last season. Definitely an area to clean up for 2025.

Jeff Lebby inherited a tough situation at Mississippi State, especially with the SEC expanding, but the team will need to upset Missouri or Ole Miss to avoid its first 10-loss season since 2003 and just its third in program history. The Bulldogs have been competitive in defeats against Texas A&M and Georgia, but significant improvement will be necessary in 2025.

Let's empty your notebooks. What else are you hearing this week/what's the best thing you've heard?

Rittenberg:

• DeShaun Foster grew up not far from UCLA's campus before becoming a star there, but he knows some of the school's other Hall of Fame players -- offensive lineman Jonathan Ogden (Washington D.C.), quarterback Troy Aikman (Oklahoma), safety Kenny Easley (Virginia) -- aren't from the area. Foster, in his first year as UCLA's coach, says he thinks the team's win streak over teams from the Midwest (Nebraska, Iowa) and East Coast (Rutgers) can help broaden the program's recruiting base.

  "Now I can recruit the Midwest," Foster told me. "We want to still put a fence up and keep all the California talent, but also sprinkle in a lot of guys from the Midwest, the East Coast, the South."

  UCLA spent the first month of the season traveling, to the South (LSU), the East (Penn State) and even the West (Hawai'i), with home games against Indiana and Oregon sprinkled in. The result: a 1-5 start that had many questioning the program's direction under Foster. But Foster felt the Bruins would break through if they stopped hurting themselves with untimely mistakes. He liked the team's approach and potential, especially at offensive and defensive line. After failing to eclipse 100 rushing yards in the first seven games, the Bruins had 139 against Nebraska and 211 against Iowa.

  A defensive front that helped UCLA rank No. 2 nationally against the run last season but lost several starters has once again shined. The Bruins are No. 7 against the run and have held four teams to 85 yards or fewer, including Iowa, Minnesota and Penn State. Defensive tackle Jay Toia, who nearly transferred, has consistently plugged up the middle with his 325-pound frame.

  "Jay's a great player, and he plays a selfless position," Foster said. "It's just amazing how he comes out and plays as hard as he plays each week. When you're a D-tackle, you don't really get a lot of recognition, but we know how valuable he is to our team. Last week, he was in the backfield all game. When somebody's penetrating the offensive line the way that he was, it's disruptive."

• Manny Diaz's goal at Duke is to "do a lot of things that haven't happened in a while," and he's off to a good start. After a tough two-week stretch against SMU and Miami, when Duke held leads in both games but ultimately lost, the Blue Devils beat NC State in a road game in which they never trailed. Duke has beaten NC State and North Carolina in the same season for the first time since 2013 and only the second time since 1990. Diaz's team can complete the in-state sweep when it wraps up the regular season Nov. 30 at Wake Forest.

  "With the scrapping of the divisions in the league, one thing we will do is we will play the three in-state schools every year," Diaz told ESPN. "So, in a way, that is our division. The pathway for us to compete for an ACC championship is first to win a state championship. The other thing is just winning away from home. Of all the good things that Duke has done over the last few years, winning away was really not one of them. To be able to close the way that we did in the fourth quarter Saturday will give us a lot of confidence going forward."

  Diaz's signature defense is doing its thing, ranking second nationally in tackles for loss, while recording 14 takeaways in the past four games to bring its season total to 23, also second nationally. Duke also is seeing continued strides from quarterback Maalik Murphy, who had his eighth game of multiple touchdown passes in the win over NC State, tying for the single-season team record. Murphy, a transfer from Texas, has set a team record with 12 touchdown passes of 20 yards or longer.

  He has not surprisingly featured Jordan Moore in the passing game but also spread the ball around to Eli Pancol and others.

  "He's got really good accuracy down the field, and that allows us to stretch the field, not just horizontally but vertically," Diaz said. "His accuracy on deep balls, that's one of the things that, when we've been at our best, we've been able to hit plays down the field. That just makes people have to respect our downfield passing game."

• Carson Beck's interceptions total, which climbed to 12 last week at Ole Miss, and overall inconsistency has been one of the more confounding stories in the SEC this season. The Georgia quarterback has had two games with 439 passing yards or more, four games with better than a 69% completion rate, but also 12 interceptions since Sept. 28 and four games in which he has completed fewer than 63% of his attempts. Contrast his stretch to 2023, when he had only six interceptions all season, and never completed fewer than 65% of his attempts in a game.

  Georgia clearly misses All-American tight end Brock Bowers and wideout Ladd McConkey, an NFL second-round draft pick, but Beck's regression from an accuracy and error standpoint is jarring as the Bulldogs try to revive their CFP push. He faces one of his biggest tests Saturday at Tennessee, which ranks fifth nationally in points allowed, 15th against the pass and is tied for 29th in takeaways.

  "It seems like Beck's just been taking too many chances," an SEC defensive assistant told me. "It's almost like he knows he's got a good arm, knows he's got a strong arm, but he's doing some things he probably shouldn't do. He's not always throwing it on time."

Dinich:

• A lot of people are eagerly anticipating Notre Dame's Nov. 23 game against No. 24 Army -- a critical matchup for both teams' CFP hopes. But Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said there was no chance his team was looking past Saturday's game against Virginia.

  "No, definitely not," Freeman said. "It's been a message we've preached all season -- one game, one life. We just focus on this one. We know our upcoming schedule, but we also know if we don't put everything into our preparation for this opponent, the outcome is not going to be what we want. It's not hard when you turn on film to respect this opponent and make sure we're preparing the right way."

• No. 23 Missouri is another two-loss SEC team in the CFP's top 25 and the Tigers are stuck behind two three-loss SEC teams in the committee's latest ranking (No. 21 South Carolina and No. 22 LSU).

  Several coaches have been talking about the effects of uneven scheduling now that every power conference has eliminated its divisions and the 12-team CFP has increased the scrutiny on paths to conference title games.

  "I've been critical before of the not having divisions in college football, and that has created this issue of not having consistency among schedules," Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said. "That really is the heart of the issue. Now schedules are randomly assigned, and you really can't have equitable scheduling in those scenarios."

  Mizzou's place in the ranking could change this week if the Tigers win at South Carolina -- but now they have to do it without their starting center, Connor Tollison, who will sit out the rest of the season because of a knee injury. Drinkwitz said he was confident in Tollison's backup, senior Drake Heismeyer.

  "Everybody's had injuries, we just haven't been consistent enough this season," Drinkwitz said. "We've got two really bad losses where they weren't even contested games. We have an opportunity to redeem ourselves this week. I've told our team, everything that we want is in front of us, but we have to go take advantage of it."

• The SEC isn't the only conference with multiple teams that can still make it to the conference championship game. Though Miami and SMU are among the leaders in the ACC, Louisville and Clemson still have a shot, too -- and the No. 19 Cardinals' head-to-head win against Clemson was "the cleanest that we've played to date as a team," coach Jeff Brohm said this week. The three-loss Cardinals are the biggest long shot of the group because of their losses to SMU and Miami, but they have at least a 70% chance to win each of their remaining games, according to ESPN Analytics. The defensive improvement could at least help them to a 9-3 season one year after playing for the ACC title, starting with a win Saturday at Stanford.

  "Throughout the year on defense we've had some good moments, but for whatever reason, we've had many moments where guys are way too open and way too free," Brohm said. "And whether it's a bust, or this or that, it's just way too many big plays given up that really weren't contested. So we tried to clean that up and need to make these teams earn everything."