David HaleNov 16, 2025, 12:11 AM ETCloseCollege football reporter.Joined ESPN in 2012.Graduate of the University of Delaware.Follow on X
play0:46Jeremiyah Love hits a nasty spin on his way to a 56-yard TDJeremiyah Love spins past a defender, then breaks free for a 56-yard touchdown for Notre Dame.
OU takes it 87 yards for pick-six vs. Bama (1:09)Eli Bowen picks off Ty Simpson’s pass and goes 87 yards to the house for an Oklahoma pick-six vs. Alabama. (1:09)
Jeremiyah Love hits a nasty spin on his way to a 56-yard TDJeremiyah Love spins past a defender, then breaks free for a 56-yard touchdown for Notre Dame.
play0:15Reece Vander Zee connects for 5-yard TD passReece Vander Zee connects for 5-yard TD pass
But the 2025 season appears different. Nearly half the league’s games have been decided by a touchdown or less. The balance of power seems to sway like an LSU fan after a 12-hour tailgate, as teams’ fortunes rise and wane, sometimes from quarter to quarter, and Week 12’s action was the perfect showcase for this heart-pounding reality.
Texas A&M was left for dead at halftime against a struggling South Carolina, but emerged like an Auburn booster after a loss to Kentucky, ready to dish out whatever’s needed to change its fate.
Oklahoma, its playoff hopes on the brink, rode into Tuscaloosa and exposed the flaws in Alabama’s seemingly impenetrable armor with a relentless defense that tormented Ty Simpson and nabbed a trio of takeaways.
Florida, having shed the weight of a coach forever on the hot seat, went to Oxford with sights set on an upset, pushing Ole Miss well into the fourth quarter.
And Georgia, welcoming Texas to Sanford Stadium for the first time, took its share of body blows, but delivered the knockout punch with a third-quarter drive that included a pair of gutsy fourth-down calls, before rolling to a 35-10 win that might have ended the Longhorns’ postseason dreams.
Like scaling mountains or waiting tables at Waffle House after midnight, life in the SEC is not for the faint of heart.
Saturday delivered one of the most epic comebacks in recent SEC history, as Texas A&M erased a 30-3 halftime deficit thanks to Marcel Reed’s dynamic second half, in which he completed 16 of 20 passes for 298 yards and 3 touchdowns, and the Aggies did the impossible — beating a 3-7 team by a point.
Reed’s three first-half turnovers put A&M in the hole, and though he certainly earned savior status in the second half, the Aggies’ fortunes largely turned after a police officer bumped shoulders and exchanged words with South Carolina players following a touchdown.
Officials confirmed the state trooper was immediately relieved of his gameday duties, and after the Aggies followed the altercation with a 28-3 run, he was quickly reassigned to Johnny Manziel’s entourage.
The Tide’s lack of a consistent run game has been a concern all season, and the reliance on Simpson’s arm to burnish the entire offense seemed to be flirting with disaster, like wearing a white shirt to Dreamland.
Still, it was the Tide that managed to move the football at times. Oklahoma managed just 212 yards — nearly half Alabama’s tally. But three takeaways led to 17 Sooners points, and a missed field goal proved the difference in a 23-21 Oklahoma win.
With losses to Texas and Ole Miss already, the Sooners’ path to the playoff was limited, but Saturday’s win was a massive step forward.
If Saturday was the chance for Oklahoma to prove its playoff bona fides, however, it may have been a death blow for rival Texas.
Add in Florida’s flirtation with an upset in Oxford, taking a 24-20 lead into the fourth quarter, and even LSU’s 23-22 win over Arkansas that was definitely just to spite Brian Kelly, and it was as rollicking an SEC Saturday as we’ve gotten in a while.
“It just means more” is as often a punchline as it is a tagline, but in Week 12, it was impossible to argue. In the SEC, nearly every snap came with a dose of drama and intensity that felt like playoff football. That a sizable number of these teams will soon be part of the real playoff now seems beyond a doubt.
Each week, a few top-25 matchups reframe the playoff picture. But beneath the headlines, dozens of small twists can add up to even bigger impact. We collect those here.
Reece Vander Zee connects for 5-yard TD passReece Vander Zee connects for 5-yard TD pass
But, in keeping with state law, Iowa’s offense hit 21 points and then called it a day, with its final four drives ending with two punts, an interception and a turnover on downs, allowing the Trojans to storm back for a 26-21 win.
Makai Lemon keyed the win for the Trojans with 10 catches for 153 yards and a touchdown. But the turning point in the final dagger for Iowa may have come on an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on an assistant coach who had stepped onto the field of play that kept a drive alive and allowed USC to run out the clock. Afterward, the assistant was severely punished when he wasn’t allowed to get In-N-Out burger with the rest of the team.
Two weeks ago, Memphis was poised for a playoff spot, with the committee noting that the Tigers were its No. 1 team out of the Group of 5, despite not being ranked in the top 25.
Since then, Memphis has lost to Tulane and, on Saturday, 31-27 to East Carolina, and then again when the Pirates’ social media team delivered some salt to the wound — and sent it UPS.
After spending much of the past month running an offensive scheme best described as “what if we gave a chimpanzee the keys to a 1993 Honda Accord,” Miami finally seemed to rekindle its early-season magic in an emphatic 41-7 win over NC State.
Carson Beck threw for 291 yards and three touchdowns, the ground game ran for 214 yards despite missing starting tailback Mark Fletcher Jr., and at no point did Mario Cristobal have to threaten to revoke offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson’s access to the good cappuccino machine, forcing him to instead use the travel coffee machine that Al Golden left in the office in 2015.
There’s a rule in sales that you should underpromise and overdeliver, so kudos to Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi, who suggested this week that the Panthers could give up 100 points to Notre Dame and still be good. Well, Pitt allowed a meager 37 points — 63 fewer than we might’ve expected. That, folks, is a massive success.
Oh, sure, Pitt still lost 37-15, as the Irish tormented freshman QB Mason Heintschel (four sacks and a pick-six) all game, and Jeremiyah Love ran for 147 yards, but that’s beside the point. It’s a little like watching any Nicholas Cage movie since 1992. Once you realize he wasn’t trying all that hard, it’s kind of impressive how entertaining “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” turned out to be.
And, to Narduzzi’s larger point, Pitt remains well-positioned to make a run at an ACC championship, assuming the ACC doesn’t take the simpler path and pivot to a Savannah Bananas traveling sports comedy act by December.
Michigan entered the fourth quarter at Wrigley Field on Saturday leading Northwestern by 12, thanks to stellar performances by tailback Jordan Marshall (142 yards, two scores) and receiver Andrew Marsh (12 catches, 189 yards), but things quickly fell apart.
The Wolverines turned the ball over on three straight drives, allowing Northwestern to take the lead 22-21 with just over two minutes to go.
But in a nod to Cubs fans, who had gone more than a month without seeing the bullpen blow a late lead, Northwestern was happy to fill that void. Michigan drove 50 yards on 11 plays, converting a trio of third downs, before Dominic Zvada drilled a 31-yarder to win it 24-22.
On the upside for Northwestern, at halftime, Tony Petitti sold the naming rights to every fourth-quarter Big Ten collapse to fast-food giant Arby’s — “When it’s the fourth quarter and your stomach is in knots, think Arby’s!” — and that blown lead just nabbed the Wildcats an extra $146.50 in revenue.
UCF traveled to Lubbock, hoping to pull an upset against Texas Tech, but Jacob Rodriguez and the Red Raiders’ defense weren’t having it.
Rodriguez racked up nine tackles, Texas Tech had four sacks and eight tackles for loss and the Red Raiders had two takeaways while holding the Knights to just 230 yards of offense in a 48-9 win.
Texas Tech looks increasingly like the one team outside the Big Ten and SEC capable of making a deep playoff run after winning its past four games by a combined 126 points — each by at least 23 — while its defense can make a case as the country’s best.
On Saturday, Baylor QB Sawyer Robertson threw for 430 yards against Utah. Utes QB Devon Dampier threw for 80 yards. And the Utes won 55-28.
Instead, the Utes relied on the ground game, rushing for 380 yards and five touchdowns, led by Byrd Ficklin, who had 166 yards and two scores, in spite of his name clearly being a pseudonym Adam Levine uses when checking into hotels.
It was the type of old-school, blue-collar, hard-nosed performance that Kyle Whittingham said reminded him of his own goatee, and keeps the Utes’ playoff hopes alive with just two games remaining.
In the ACC’s ongoing quest to see how bleak things can get before its games require a parental warning, the league entered Week 12 facing a small but real possibility that it could miss the College Football Playoff.
For that to happen, Duke would need to win out, claim the league’s title with four losses, then be passed in the rankings by two Group of 5 champions.
Was it likely? No. Would it have been the final straw before Jim Phillips flipped over his desk, lit his special ACC commissioner card that gets him 20% off at Bojangles on fire and moved into the woods to live a life of quiet solitude alongside Paul Johnson? Yes. Yes, it would.
Fortunately for the ACC, however, it sidestepped at least one banana peel on its way to inevitably tumbling off a cliff, as Virginia thrashed the Blue Devils 34-17, thanks to 133 yards and a pair of touchdowns from tailback J’Mari Taylor.
With Duke’s title hopes thwarted, the ACC can now safely turn its attention to embarrassing itself in basketball season.