Rivalry week brought us many entertaining moments as brawls broke out, flags were planted and teams were eliminated from title races.
No. 2 Ohio State lost to Michigan for the fourth consecutive time. As Ohio State was favored by three touchdowns going into the matchup against the unranked Wolverines, where do the Buckeyes go from here?
With the final College Football Playoff rankings less than a week away, we know the top four seeds will be from among the highest-ranked Power 4 conference title winners and the winner of UNLV-Boise State. With some debate on who could land the final CFP spot, could it be Ole Miss? South Carolina?
Our college football experts break down key storylines and takeaways from Week 14.
The 12-team College Football Playoff is already making a case for further expansion
Someone is always going to be left out, but when the final bracket is revealed on Selection Day, odds are there will be one or two three-loss SEC teams (maybe Alabama, Ole Miss and/or South Carolina), that are excluded but are talented enough to make a run at it -- if there were room. The question is how much angst SEC commissioner Greg Sankey will have over it, and whether it's enough to prompt him to support a 14-team playoff in the next iteration. Before Texas beat Texas A&M on Saturday night, Sankey began his annual push for the SEC.
"I think going week-to-week to see things in person: The physical rigor, the intensity means that we should have three[-loss] teams fully under consideration and I said that at the beginning of the year," Sankey said, according to the Houston Chronicle.
And if they don't get considered? A 14-team bracket would change it. -- Heather Dinich
What now for Ryan Day, Ohio State?
Day vowed all year that he wouldn't lose to the Wolverines again. Not after three straight losses in the rivalry. Not with the program investing $20 million in name, image and likeness money to compile a super team. Not after so many key Buckeyes returned for another year just to finally defeat That Team Up North. Not against a rebuilding Michigan that had to claw its way just to reach bowl eligibility.
Ohio State closed as a 20.5-point favorite -- the second-biggest point spread in the rivalry dating back to 1978. And yet, somehow, the Buckeyes flopped again, as Michigan pulled off one of the biggest upsets this college football season with a stunning 13-10 victory at the Horseshoe.
Can the reeling Buckeyes get off the mat for the playoff to salvage a season that opened with the highest of expectations? Day's job could hinge on it on the heels of one of the worst losses in school history. -- Jake Trotter
Sanders family will leave a lasting impact at Colorado
Moments after Colorado's 52-0 stomping of Oklahoma State, which capped a 9-3 regular season Friday, Deion Sanders posed for pictures with his three sons on the field.
Shedeur, the Buffaloes' record-setting quarterback, had begun the day by winning the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm award and ended it with 438 passing yards and five touchdowns. Shilo, Colorado's starting safety, recorded four tackles as the team posted its first shutout since 2021. Deion Jr., who produces social media content for the program, captured key moments on the field and behind the scenes.
Deion Sanders, who has coached his sons throughout their careers, said the finality of Shedeur's and Shilo's final home game brought on emotions.
"Only sprinters see the finish line from the start," he said. "I'm a distance runner, so I never really see the finish line from the start, and today I saw it. So that's tumultuous, that's tremendous, that's heartfelt."
Deion Sanders sounded like a coach who is just getting started at Colorado. NFL overtures might come, but he wants to make Colorado a championship-level program in the coming years. He will no longer have Shedeur and Shilo by his side, but their contributions helped create a foundation, and they will continue to help the program.
"I'm going to donate to the [NIL] collective for sure," Shedeur Sanders said, smiling. "It's a tax write-off, so I'll make sure we have a super team next year. I'm just happy for the new guys coming in, that we paved the way for them."
Deion Sanders still has one game left with his sons, who will play in Colorado's upcoming bowl. But their time together in Boulder will always be remembered, not only by them but also by those who watched. -- Adam Rittenberg
Challenges persist off the field, but college football is still the best
Now that the regular season is over, let's all be honest. College football is still the best sport on the planet.
It doesn't matter if you love NIL or hate it, if your roster was ravaged by the transfer portal or fortified by it, or even if your school was the one that the referees, conference commissioners or (ultimately) the College Football Playoff committee "conspired" against. This was one chaotic, unpredictable and wildly entertaining season.
And in a way we're just getting started with the first 12-team playoff beginning later this month.
The "chaotic" part this season is ironic because there is chaos and uncertainty surrounding where the sport goes from here in terms of how to pay players, which schools can find the money to keep up and how it all will impact the overall athletic department picture at schools. Sadly, more court battles are coming, meaning more billable hours and more legalese, which is a hell of a lot less interesting than what we're seeing on the field each week.
Fans are watching as much or more than ever before. And why not?
- Indiana is going to the playoff. Yes, Indiana, and we're not talking hoops.
- Look at what Coach Prime has done at Colorado and the way he has brought a different swag and a different gusto to college football. The Buffaloes have nine wins after seven straight losing seasons.
- Florida State finished 13-0 and won the regular season a year ago and ended this season with just two wins (only one an FBS win). In that same state, Florida's Billy Napier was ready to be run out of town after ugly home losses to Miami and Texas A&M the first two weeks of the season. But he never lost the locker room and stayed resolute, and the Gators won four of their past six games to finish 7-5. And by the way, few teams played a more difficult schedule.
- Army has 10 wins and is playing Saturday for the AAC championship at home against Tulane. Quarterback Bryson Daily, a street brawler at heart, has 25 rushing touchdowns, and his coach, Jeff Monken, is a coach we don't talk enough about in college football.
- Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty has 2,288 rushing yards and 28 touchdowns and is probably not going to win the Heisman Trophy because there's a guy at Colorado who plays on nearly every down (Travis Hunter) and has been college football's version of Superman.
- Georgia beat Georgia Tech in an eight-overtime epic. Michigan, a three-touchdown underdog, recovered from a crummy season to upset Ohio State and extend Ryan Day's misery in that rivalry. Shane Beamer became only the second South Carolina coach in the past 40 years to win nine regular-season games (Steve Spurrier was the other) thanks to a thrilling 17-14 comeback win at Clemson. Notre Dame inexplicably lost to Northern Illinois at home in Week 2 only to reel off 10 straight victories and will now play a home playoff game. Vanderbilt beat then-No. 1 Alabama for the first time in 40 years, and one of the goal posts was paraded through downtown Nashville by students and tossed into the Cumberland River.
We could go on and on. But, yep, college football is, as Tina Turner once sang, simply the best. -- Chris Low
Let's talk flag-planting
Rivalry week is one of the best parts of college football, and this season's version was particularly vivacious. In Ohio, Florida, Arizona and both Carolinas, flag-plantings prompted skirmishes between bitter rivals, perhaps none bigger than Michigan-Ohio State, where police, pepper spray and some performative outrage turned one of the biggest upsets of the season into a referendum on how to lose -- or win! -- properly.
"Some people gotta learn how to lose," Michigan running back Kalel Mullings said during his postgame TV interview. "You can't be fighting just because you lost a game."
But should you be flag-planting?
First of all, what is it about flag-planting that gets people so riled up? Of course, it's partly about pride. Who wants to see the team you just focused on trying to beat for an entire week (or in the case of the Buckeyes, four years and counting) bask in its victory while throwing what amounts to a small parade on your own field?
There's something to be said for Mullings' quote. If you can't beat your rival on the field over the course of 60 minutes, what makes you think you can stop them from celebrating, even flag-planting, afterward?
That leads us to the topic of decorum. By the time the Saturday night games came and went, coaches had already taken notes on the previous games' brawls and were actively trying to avoid a repeat situation. Steve Sarkisian, who was seen trying to keep Texas players from doing anything along those lines after a win at College Station, even went as far as to say the Longhorns wanted to beat Texas A&M with class. Mind you, this is the same Texas team that planted its flag in Michigan Stadium after beating the Wolverines earlier this year.
Not ideal.#GoBlue pic.twitter.com/FW9uhYBa35
— The Winged Helmet (@TWH_Chris) September 7, 2024
"Rivalries are great, but there's a way to win it with class; I just didn't think that's the right thing to do," Sarkisian said. "We shouldn't be on their logo; we shouldn't be planting any flags on their logo; and I'd like to, whenever that day comes, get the same respect in return."
There is no moral high ground here, and Sarkisian's comments are convenient at best. Anyone who has ever tried to claim some kind of superiority because they didn't plant a flag has likely been part of a flag-planting before. Coaches spend their entire week riling up their teams to play their best against their rivals -- how could they expect them to react in any other fashion whether they win or lose?
As an aside: Part of me also feels like some of the indignation is due to the fact that the very act of flag planting (read: stabbing the field) can be so visceral. Or in the case of Arizona State, which tried to plant the Arizona field with a Sun Devil fork, hilarious.
ASU plants the fork in Arizona Stadium 😈🔱@ASUFootball pic.twitter.com/F1sU4qJugA
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 30, 2024
Flag-planting is a feature of the sport, not a bug. It's why, although this is not a space that's advocating for fights, I think teams are allowed to be upset about said flag-plantings too. That's part of the zest that makes this sport unique.
So, to those with decision-making power in the sport, don't overreact and do something like try to legislate flag-planting out of college football. Let winners be winners -- even if they're loud. And let losers be losers -- even if they're sore. -- Paolo Uggetti
Who should get the final CFP spot?
Eleven of the 12 playoff spots are all but set, with nine teams looking entirely secure and four more playing in win-and-in conference title games.
That leaves one spot up for grabs, and although Shane Beamer's emotional pitch for South Carolina might resonate with plenty of folks, the numbers on paper tell a different story -- one that should end with Ole Miss getting the final spot.
South Carolina might be the hottest team in the country, but six weeks of good football shouldn't erase the fact that the Gamecocks have head-to-head losses to Alabama and Ole Miss. For the committee to put the Gamecocks in over two teams with the same records that beat South Carolina on the field would be -- well, OK, nothing is quite beneath the committee, but it'd be a bad precedent, to be sure.
Then compare Ole Miss and Alabama. Both have wins over South Carolina -- but Bama's was by two, while the Rebels won by 24. Both have wins over Georgia, but Bama's came in a nearly epic collapse by seven, while Ole Miss' win came by 18.
SP+ has Ole Miss as the No. 3 team in the country. Alabama is No. 5, South Carolina is No. 13. Advanced metrics aren't a ranking of performance, per se, but it's a good indicator that the Rebels' upside is as high as that of anyone in the playoff field.
OK, you say, but what about the losses? The Rebels have L's to Florida and Kentucky. That's really bad, right?
Well, sure, but all three of the Rebels' L's -- including the one at LSU, too -- came by a touchdown or less. The loss to Florida is actually far less toxic than it might've been a month ago, as the Gators are now 7-5. And by SP+, Kentucky is actually 10 spots ahead of Vanderbilt, which beat Alabama. Plus, if bad losses are a reason to keep a team from the playoff, the line starts behind Notre Dame and Ohio State.
It's true, of course, that South Carolina has none of that baggage. Its losses are all defensible, which is the best argument for putting the Gamecocks into the playoff at this point. But to do so requires accepting the paradox that South Carolina is better than Ole Miss and Alabama because it lost to Ole Miss and Alabama instead of to someone worse.
Or the committee could do exactly what it did with a similar quagmire back in 2014 and take the easy way out. Miami is waiting there with one less loss than any of that trio of SEC teams, and losing to Syracuse isn't as embarrassing as it sounds. No, seriously. Stop laughing. -- David Hale
Get Cam Skattebo a ticket to New York
Everyone has their own rationale for why they vote the way they do for the Heisman Trophy. The most outstanding player in college football needs to have a résumé with the right blend of elite performances, statistics and moments. I think there's another important factor worth weighing, too: When you're telling the story of the season, were they a relevant and important part of it?
It sure seems as if Colorado's two-way star, Travis Hunter, already has the trophy locked up, and deservedly so. Boise State's Ashton Jeanty is right there with him. Those two leading the way right now tells you voters have been open-minded this season about honoring the absolute best players in the sport even if they don't play quarterback. I think it's time to acknowledge one more deserving underdog: Arizona State running back Cam Skattebo.
The Sun Devils' unstoppable senior back ranks third in the FBS with 1,866 yards from scrimmage and has scored 19 total TDs to power one of the most surprising teams in the sport. Kenny Dillingham's squad was picked to finish dead last in the Big 12 entering its first season in the conference and is now one win from a Big 12 title and potentially a top-four seed in the CFP.
What Arizona State has achieved is shocking, but it hasn't been miraculous. The Sun Devils have developed into a darn good team that got this far led by a little-known transfer from the FCS Sacramento State Hornets who ranks second nationally behind only Jeanty in missed tackles forced and has surpassed 100 total yards in nine of 11 games. If you ask Big 12 coaches, they'll tell you Skattebo is the toughest player they faced all year.
If Arizona State knocks off the Iowa State Cyclones to win the Big 12, Heisman voters had better be ready to put Skattebo on their ballot. He's having a program-changing impact for the Sun Devils, and he's not done yet. He deserves a trip to New York. -- Max Olson
Are we ready to start talking about a secondary tournament?
The 24-team FCS playoffs are in full swing, and several teams are still in the mix for the first 12-team FBS playoff. Yet we still have a system that gives a single playoff participation slot to the 50-plus FBS teams outside the Power 4.
If we started from scratch and decided how to structure college football, top to bottom, there is no chance this would be the format we settled on. It's completely illogical and is the product of incremental measures over several decades.
The bowl system is on life support. People watch them still for a very simple reason: Football is fun to watch. And if people are willing to watch stakes-less, soulless bowl games, who wants to bet there would be an even bigger audience for a Group of 5 tournament?
College football needs to stop pretending Group of 5 teams and Power 4 teams are the same tier for postseason tournaments. They're not. And that's fine! I'm all for allowing an opt-in system to guarantee the Group of 5 access to one spot in the top 12-team -- or eventually larger -- playoff field, but a separate playoff for the tier of football between the FCS and the Power 4 would add a lot to the sport as a whole. -- Kyle Bonagura