David HaleOct 4, 2025, 11:55 PM ETCloseCollege football reporter.Joined ESPN in 2012.Graduate of the University of Delaware.Follow on X
play0:29Mason Heintschel airs it out for 18-yard touchdown passMason Heintschel airs it out for 18-yard touchdown pass
play0:18Koron Hayward gets a pick-six for Western KentuckyKoron Hayward gets a pick-six for Western Kentucky
UCLA seals upset with a fourth-down stop (0:34)Scooter Jackson makes a pivotal tackle to help secure a victory for UCLA 42-37. (0:34)
Mason Heintschel airs it out for 18-yard touchdown passMason Heintschel airs it out for 18-yard touchdown pass
Koron Hayward gets a pick-six for Western KentuckyKoron Hayward gets a pick-six for Western Kentucky
It might seem hard to believe, but a quarter century ago, there was no more fearsome program in college football than Miami.
Those were strange days. Most people’s phones were tethered to a wall, the internet was strictly for arguing over “Star Trek,” and Bill Belichick was considered a wildly disappointing head coach.
Only one of those things is true today. And yet, for all that has changed over these past decades, for all the misery Miami has endured, Saturday marked an inflection point.
Let’s look at the résumé. Miami opened the season with a win over Notre Dame, and the Irish now look like a true contender again, after beating Boise State in emphatic fashion, 28-7 on Saturday. Miami dominated USF, one of the Group of 6’s best teams. Miami thumped Florida, which showed signs of life in Week 6 by stunning Texas. And in Tallahassee on Saturday, Miami made a statement in dismantling Florida State, 28-19.
And while Miami soared, No. 7 Penn State and No. 9 Texas endured mosaics of laughter and cocktails of tears in Week 6. Oh, sorry, we’re being told that’s actually the Mad Libs description Taylor Swift used for her new album. But it’s still fitting.
Six weeks into the season, it’s probably worth taking a step back and recalibrating, reevaluating and, frankly, regretting so much of what we thought to be true before the 2025 campaign kicked off.
We’ve seen how far preseason assumptions have gotten us. Clemson, Arizona State and Illinois were all supposed to be playoff favorites, only for September to shatter that illusion.
And in Week 6, the grim reaper came for the Nittany Lions (again) and the Longhorns, courtesy of two teams who had yet to win a Power 4 game.
Meanwhile, we may have reached even more desperate times for the preseason No. 2 team. A week after falling to Oregon in overtime, Penn State looked utterly shellshocked against UCLA. The Nittany Lions fell behind 27-7 at the half, had a chance to get back into the game, then on a crucial fourth-down play, did the football equivalent of splitting your pants while bending over to pick up a nickel.
After the game, James Franklin reeled off a litany of excuses, from travel to injuries to, of course, the hangover from the Oregon game.
“Obviously we didn’t handle last week’s loss well,” Franklin said, and that feels like the obvious answer because it means Franklin actually lost twice to a top-10 Oregon team, more befitting his reputation.
That Florida and UCLA — two of the most frustratingly awful teams of the first month of the season — could open October by knocking off the teams ranked first and second to open the season speaks volumes. This season has no prewritten script. There is no favorite, no dominant team, no safe bet for the playoffs.
The Canes do not have a clear weakness. They have a QB who is playing angry, an offensive and defensive line that are mean, big and powerful, and skill guys who not only make plays but offer the type of swagger that had once been Miami’s calling card.
Anyone who has watched Miami over the past 20 years is still plenty scared of buying the hype this time around.
And yet, here we are, nearly midway through a year in which nothing seems certain, and somehow the biggest surprise of all is that the safest bet in the sport might be the Canes.
The game started well enough for UNC, with the Heels down 28-3 after the first quarter. Unfortunately, Belichick wasn’t coaching against the Atlanta Falcons in this one.
If losses to TCU and UCF were embarrassing for UNC, Saturday’s first half was something altogether different — like a septuagenarian posing for a 20-something’s Halloween photos on Instagram.
Each week, the biggest games, biggest plays and biggest wins help shape the course of the season. Beneath the surface, however, dozens of smaller shifts can have an even more profound effect. We try to capture those here.
Alabama’s resurgence continued in Week 6, as the Tide got a little revenge against Vanderbilt after last year’s shocker in Nashville.
On one hand, we have to wonder why the security guard and lead vocalist for Tuscaloosa’s finest ZZ Top cover band (He’s Got Bangs) didn’t intervene. Regardless, it’s a shame to see fans like this yelling at Pavia. They should know it’s not polite to talk that way to their elders.
Satterfield has the Bearcats at 4-1 after Saturday’s 38-30 win over No. 14 Iowa State, with a ground game that ran for 260 yards and another stellar performance from QB Brendan Sorsby.
Fickell, meanwhile, couldn’t have been a worse fit in Wisconsin if he had been lactose intolerant, as the Badgers fell to Michigan 24-10. Wisconsin has failed to crack 20 points in eight of its past 10 games vs. FBS competition, and Fickell’s explanation that the offensive line just overindulged at Culver’s simply isn’t going to fly with the boosters much longer.
In the wild Big 12, Cincinnati’s win announces the Bearcats as a genuine contender in the conference, thus setting up the fine people of Cincinnati for another round of disappointment that will continue to be dished out by the sports gods until they all admit cinnamon doesn’t belong in chili.
Sonny Dykes and TCU got some long-awaited revenge on Coach Prime and Colorado with a 35-21 win Saturday, their first meeting since the Horned Frogs, fresh off a trip to the national championship game, lost to Deion Sanders in his Buffaloes debut.
Colorado led 14-0, but TCU dominated the second half, scoring twice in the final six minuets, as Josh Hoover threw four touchdown passes.
Under Sanders, Colorado is now 15-16 overall with more retired jerseys (2) than wins over ranked foes (1). On the flip side, Sanders has reasonably argued that Jacksonville isn’t going to use Travis Hunter more, then Colorado should get to have him back for the rest of the year.
Stop us if you’ve heard this story before: Maryland was off to a great start. Maryland had a sizable lead over a better team. Maryland blew that lead, then drove off a cliff.
Yes, the calendar has turned to October, which means it’s time for Terps fans to find a stool at Cornerstone and not recognize reality again until basketball season is over.
Maryland, which opened the year 4-0, had a 20-0 lead on Washington midway through the third quarter, but the Huskies scored three touchdowns in the fourth quarter and emerged with a 24-20 win.
This was entirely predictable, of course. Since 2013, Maryland is 40-10 (.800) in August and September and 28-70 (.286) after that. While those splits could be confounding to some, we can’t help but think Mike Locksley’s decision to begin using the school’s pumpkin spice helmets each October might be part of the problem.
Illinois dominated Purdue 43-27 Saturday behind 390 passing yards from Luke Altmyer, and this might seem like something of a trend for the Boilermakers.
Now, it would be easy enough to blame Ms. Swift for this coincidence, but it’s also worth remembering that Purdue is also, like all of America, winless when Creed releases a new album.
After the game, Horvath humbly congratulated Air Force on a well-played game and wished each of the Falcons the best of luck in their future career flying the Raleigh-to-Newark route for Southwest Airlines.
It has been 11 years since Frank Beamer bestowed upon the college football world one of the truly great memes in social media history as he celebrated a missed Wake Forest field goal that sent a 0-0 game to overtime.
On Saturday, the two teams renewed their rivalry, and this time, Virginia Tech managed to score a whopping 23 points despite not even having Wake’s playbook this time.
And yet, it still wasn’t enough for the Hokies, who fell 30-23 as Robbie Ashford led the way for the Deacons with 256 passing yards and a touchdown.
Mason Heintschel airs it out for 18-yard touchdown pass
Mason Heintschel airs it out for 18-yard touchdown pass
The Panthers benched starting QB Eli Holstein after back-to-back losses, turning the reins over to freshman Mason Heintschel, as Pittsburgh-sounding a name as you can get short of “Yinzy FitzCornedbeef.” It proved a stroke of genius.
Heintschel ignited the Pitt offense, which steamrolled Boston College 48-7. The freshman threw for 323 yards, four touchdowns and no picks — the first ACC freshman to hit those marks in their first career start since Deshaun Watson did it in 2014 against UNC.
After the stellar debut, Heintschel further proved his Pittsburgh bona fides by crushing a can of Rolling Rock on his forehead, donated his NIL check to the local pipe fitters union and added french fries to his salad.
Kudos to Colorado Mesa for playing good situational football, eschewing the more traditional nickel or dime defensive coverage schemes in favor of the far less utilized “all the change in your couch cushions” set to stop Colorado School of Mines’ final hook-and-lateral attempt to secure a win.
Mines was in last-gasp mode, with one lateral after another to keep the final play alive, when the entirety of the Mesa sideline spilled onto the field, and a player who hadn’t even been in the game made the final tackle.
Yes, it was a penalty, but that just forced Mines to run the play again, which Mesa snuffed out more easily the second time around.
Western Kentucky moved to 5-1 on the season after narrowly escaping Delaware, 27-24 on Friday. The Hilltoppers were down 7 at the half but battled back thanks to a pick-six and a Nick Minicucci fumble going into the end zone that produced a 14-point swing. WKU led by 3 when the Hens got the ball back at their own 5-yard line with just 54 seconds to play and no timeouts.