David HaleSep 28, 2025, 01:07 AM ETCloseCollege football reporter.Joined ESPN in 2012.Graduate of the University of Delaware.Follow on X
play0:33Ty Simpson throws pass to 6-foot-7, 366-pound tackle Kayden ProctorTy Simpson throws it out to Kayden Proctor, who barrels over everyone to set up first-and-goal.
play0:35Terion Stewart rips an 85-yard rushTerion Stewart puts Virginia Tech in scoring position with an 85-yard run.
Ty Simpson converts on 3rd-and-5 to seal Alabama’s win (0:31)Ty Simpson rolls out and hits Jam Miller to seal Alabama’s win over Georgia. (0:31)
Ty Simpson throws pass to 6-foot-7, 366-pound tackle Kayden ProctorTy Simpson throws it out to Kayden Proctor, who barrels over everyone to set up first-and-goal.
Terion Stewart rips an 85-yard rushTerion Stewart puts Virginia Tech in scoring position with an 85-yard run.
The beauty of college football, the thing that keeps us coming back week after week in spite of the exasperating morass of everything that happens off the field, is that the sport keeps surprising us.
This shouldn’t be possible. Once you’ve seen the band on the field, the kick-six and a player mimic a urinating dog after a touchdown, we should be immune to such astonishment. And yet, here were are, in Week 5, awash in shock and awe once more.
Who would’ve thought that Alabama, reeling in the aftermath of a Week 1 loss to Florida State, would waltz into Athens and swat down Georgia 24-21 behind a brilliant performance from QB Ty Simpson? Kalen DeBoer has gone from the hot seat to the SEC’s throne in the span of a month.
And so, we’ve reached September’s end, and so much of what seemed certain has come undone. No. 3 Penn State, No. 4 LSU, No. 5 Georgia and No. 8 Florida State all went down in a raucous Week 5 that reshuffled expectations for October and offered a reminder of just how little we know so early in a season.
In Week 1, we got our first true stunner of the new season, as Tommy Castellanos and the Seminoles upended Alabama. After Saturday, it seems impossible to believe that just five weeks have passed since then.
Ty Simpson throws pass to 6-foot-7, 366-pound tackle Kayden Proctor
Ty Simpson throws it out to Kayden Proctor, who barrels over everyone to set up first-and-goal.
Georgia had its chances, but came up small is so many big moments, including a misplayed fourth-down call near the goal line. Gunner Stockton was held to just 130 yards through the air.
It was 17 years ago, in Nick Saban’s second season as Alabama’s head coach, that the Tide arrived in Athens for a “blackout” and stomped Matthew Stafford, A.J. Green and a star-studded Georgia team in a game that announced the new coach’s arrival as the conference’s standard. Whether DeBoer’s win will prove as significant depends entirely on where Alabama goes from here, but after a year of questions and criticism, the possibility no longer feels so far fetched.
And then, just as suddenly, it all shifted. Drew Allar remembered he can throw the ball forward, Kaytron Allen delivered body blows in the run game befitting a heavyweight boxer, and offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki announced, “OK, OK, I’m ready to call some real plays now.”
And all of that was but the grand finale to a weekend that saw so much of the conventional wisdom upended.
Mississippi State’s dream season nearly reached a new crescendo, but for a failed fourth-down try in overtime against Tennessee.
Kiffin’s own daughter revealed on social media earlier this week that she was dating LSU star linebacker Whit Weeks, which might’ve been enough to rattle a lesser father. Not Kiffin though. His Rebels ran roughshod over LSU, as backup QB Trinidad Chambliss continued his unlikely ascent, accounting for 385 yards in a 24-19 win, even if it didn’t cover the total, as Kiffin had promised.
It’s hard to blame Kiffin for the low total. LSU has now failed to crack 24 points in any of its four games against FBS competition this year.
Is Alabama back? Is Penn State a contender? Is Oregon the Big Ten’s best? Is Florida State cooked? Will Brian Kelly’s head explode like a piñata if LSU doesn’t figure out how to run the ball?
Each week, big games help dictate the playoff landscape, but a lot of smaller shifts in the college football ecosystem can go unnoticed. We try to keep tabs on those here.
USC was off to a 4-0 start and had climbed back into the AP Top 25. Illinois was coming off of a loss to Indiana so horrendous that a lesser coach than Bret Bielema would have faked his own death and started a new life in South America under the name Bert Gunderson.
In any case, USC is now 13-12 in its past 25 games, dating back to 2023. As a general rule, if Trojans are that ineffective, there’s either a coaching change or the theft of a monarch’s wife by a rival nation-state. What this means for Lincoln Riley is complicated, as firing him would be extremely expensive and also result in so much exuberant laughter in Oklahoma that the wind created would risk another dust bowl situation.
Saturday’s performance in Fayetteville might have been the point of no return for Sam Pittman at Arkansas. The Hogs lost for the third straight game, this time in horrific fashion as Notre Dame utterly shredded the D to the tune of 641 yards in a 56-13 win. Jeremiyah Love scored four times in the first half — two on receptions, two runs — and CJ Carr threw for 354 yards and four touchdowns in the win.
During the Razorbacks’ three-game losing streak, they have surrendered a whopping 129 points, which would normally make DC Travis Williams the most reviled coordinator of the Pittman era, but Dan Enos also worked there, so that honor is locked up.
Meanwhile, lurking in the shadows, Bobby Petrino’s diabolical scheme to regain power like the Empire building a second Death Star is finally coming to fruition.
Freeze is now 5-13 in SEC play since taking over at Auburn. Things are so bleak he’s already confirmed tee times for November, and Auburn boosters are texting Houston Nutt to file a FOIA for Freeze’s phone records.
Then there’s Mark Stoops, who’s hoping he can just fly under the radar until basketball season and then everyone will forget that Kentucky stinks again this year. The Wildcats were waxed 35-13 by South Carolina, and new starting QB Cutter Boley threw two costly interceptions amid another dismal offensive performance. Frankly, if a QB with as SEC a name as “Cutter Boley” can’t get the job done, there doesn’t seem to be any hope for UK to turn things around.
Kansas tight end Boden Groen went old-school after catching a touchdown pass early in the second half against Cincinnati, reintroducing the world to “The Dab,” which amazingly is now having a better year than “The Dabo.”
Unfortunately, turning back the clock to the mid-2010s isn’t a good thing for Kansas, which spent most of that decade tying its shoelaces together, then running down a hill covered with banana peels. Predictably, the Jayhawks 34-30 lead with 1:45 to play evaporated quickly as Cincinnati engineered a brilliant 10-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to secure a 37-34 win.
The Bearcats then celebrated by doing the ice bucket challenge before riding hoverboards into the locker room while blaring “Old Town Road.”
Wake had a chance to close out the game on a third-and-5 play with 1:48 to go. A Tech defender was clearly offsides, and QB Robby Ashford used the free play opportunity to throw deep. The pass was incomplete, the flag never came, and Wake had to punt — giving Tech a chance to kick a tying field goal and send the game to overtime. The Deacons failed to convert a 2-point try after a Demond Claiborne touchdown, and the Jackets held on for a 30-29 win.
Anyway, Pitt blew a 17-point lead to Louisville and lost in embarrassing fashion for the second time in as many games, 34-27.
This year, the rivalry between UL Monroe and Arkansas State was dubbed the “Rice Bowl Rivalry” with an appropriately designed trophy to go with the new moniker. The Red Wolves had won the past 15 matchups in the series, but the best they had to show for it was some crowns they stole from a Burger King. But things were different this time around. ULM erased an early 10-0 deficit behind two TD passes from Aidan Armenta to pull off a 28-16 win.
A week ago, Indiana looked as dominant as any team in the country. On Saturday, the Hoosiers faced Iowa in a far different scenario. Facing Iowa is like riding rollercoasters after a dinner at Golden Corral. It doesn’t matter how good-looking and successful you are, things are going to get gross.
And so it was that the Hoosiers staggered into the fourth quarter trailing 13-10, and after a late interception, looked to be on the verge of an upset.
Instead, Iowa did what Iowa does best: Stalled on a drive, missed a field goal, then turned the ball over on downs after an Indiana TD. The Hoosiers held on for a 20-15 win and immediately determined this game would be remembered like Season 2 of “Friday Night Lights,” a horrible misstep that no one considers canon.
Who’s the best team in the Big 12? We didn’t know a month ago, we don’t know now, and there’s at least a 12% chance we’ll only find out in December after some sort of high stakes game of rock, paper, scissors.
This, of course, is what makes the Big 12 great. Everything is possible, and it’s entirely possible that by the end of October, Rich Rodriguez will have a Golden Retriever playing QB, Deion Sanders will have Shedeur don a fake mustache and attempt to rejoin Colorado, and Texas Tech will simply just pay Arizona State to forfeit the rest of the season.
Hawai’i outlasted Air Force 44-35 in a game that featured more than 1,000 yards of total offense, 41 points scored in the fourth quarter, 457 yards and three TD passes from Hawai’i QB Micah Alejado and a remarkable performance by the Rainbow Warriors, who converted 14 of 19 third-down tries. After the conclusion, the governor of Iowa proclaimed any footage of this game as contraband unfit for viewing.
Two weeks after firing head coach Brent Pry, who’d been 1-12 in one-possession games, Virginia Tech eked out a 23-21 victory over NC State, thanks in large part to the heroics of tailback Terion Stewart, who rushed for 175 yards in the game, including this 85-yarder.