Bill ConnellyNov 30, 2025, 06:10 PM ETCloseBill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.Follow on X
play0:33Alabama’s 4th-down gamble pays off with late TDAlabama’s 4th-down gamble pays off with late TD
Finebaum: Alabama will beat Georgia in the SEC championship (0:36)Paul Finebaum says Alabama will prevail in the SEC title game, securing its second win over Georgia this season. (0:36)
Intricate tiebreakers and the ACC’s “8-5 conference champion” destiny
Amazing jobs by Jason Eck, Mark Carney and Jerry Mack
A lot of talented teams botched their offensive line
OK, so it wasn’t the most ridiculous Rivalry Week we’ve ever seen. Thirteen of the top 14 teams in the College Football Playoff rankings won, and the one that didn’t (Texas A&M) was already guaranteed a CFP spot. Chalk has reigned over the past couple of weeks, but as with pizza among other things, Rivalry Week is great even when it’s not great.
We still got a dramatic Iron Bowl, we still got one last silly plot twist in the ACC title race (the silliest yet, perhaps), we still got all the intense environments we could possibly want — plus some snow! — and we still got an all-time comeback in the smaller-school ranks.
(We also got whatever continued to go down in Oxford, Mississippi, which wasn’t even slightly enjoyable but certainly created buzz.)
The conference title game pairings are set, and we’ll soon know how a big load of chalk might impact the CFP rankings. In the meantime, here’s what we learned during an anxious-as-ever Rivalry Week.
Elsewhere, Indiana is, at second in both SP+ and FPI, the computers’ pick for giving the Buckeyes the most to handle. And it might help the Hoosiers that they basically get a practice shot at OSU in the Big Ten championship game next week. I’m sure they want to win their first league title since 1967, but if they lose, they might learn lessons they could apply in a CFP rematch.
This isn’t a slam dunk by any means. But damn, it is hard to pick anyone but Ohio State as the clear title favorite.
The ACC had five teams tied for second place at 6-2 (Duke, Georgia Tech, Miami, Pitt and SMU). Those teams played exactly four games among each other, and they shared only one common opponent (Syracuse). Duke, with the worst overall record of the bunch, stole an ACC championship game berth because of its conference opponents’ win percentage.
The Mountain West had four teams tied for first at 6-2 (Boise State, New Mexico, San Diego State and UNLV). They almost played a complete round-robin — we were missing only SDSU-UNLV – but because it was incomplete, the conference had to break the tie with a blend of computer rankings, including SP+. That gave us the Rebels at Boise State even though UNLV was 0-2 against its 6-2 brethren.
The SEC ended up with a four-way tie for first at 7-1 among Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss and Texas A&M. They played just two games against each other — Bama over Georgia, Georgia over Ole Miss — and A&M got to the finish line without having played any of the other three. Alabama and Georgia got in because of superior conference opponent win percentages.
The MAC had three teams tied for second at 6-2, and while Miami lost to both of the others (Ohio and Toledo), the Redhawks got the MAC championship bid because, since there wasn’t a full round-robin between them, they won the next tiebreaker (record against common opponents).
Granted, divisions stunk. There’s a reason conferences got rid of them in the first place (and why I wanted them to). They were usually quite unbalanced from a quality perspective, meaning we rarely got a conference’s two best teams playing for the crown. Plus, with a divisional structure it would take forever to play all of your conference mates in these enormous conferences. (The classic example: Texas A&M has been in the SEC for 14 seasons, and Georgia still hasn’t played in College Station.)
Obviously, conferences aren’t looking to voluntarily get smaller, so is there a solution here? Is it either faulty divisions or terrible tiebreakers? If someone’s in the mood to get silly, I certainly have ideas.
The most interesting rankings, of course, will be those in the No. 8-14 range. If we just assume that any two-loss SEC or Big Ten team and any one-loss Big 12 or ACC team is in, we have more teams in than we have slots available. And this extremely chalky weekend did nothing to help with that. Recent weeks suggest an Oklahoma-Notre Dame-Alabama-BYU-Miami-Utah-Vandy hierarchy, but with Utah looking shaky again and Vandy scoring a win over Tennessee, I’m guessing the Commodores will jump the Utes.
The most interesting team, however, is Texas. Granted, the Longhorn buzz grew quieter when all the favorites won Saturday, but we’ll see if Steve Sarkisian’s campaigning after Friday night’s win over Texas A&M moves the needle. Many have pointed out that, had Texas scheduled a weak nonconference opponent instead of Ohio State, the Longhorns would quite likely be in the field of 12, and that’s fine.
Lane Kiffin: ‘It was really difficult’ to leave Ole Miss for LSU
That works if you’re North Texas coach Eric Morris, agreeing to jump to a power conference gig. How in the hell was that supposed to work when jumping from one job to another within the loudest and messiest conference in the country, while potentially getting ready to poach a lot of his old players for his new job?
Plus, Delaware scored all 20 of the fourth quarter’s points to put away a 61-31 win over UTEP. That became particularly important when only 80 eligible teams ended up with six wins. There are 82 FBS bowl slots, so the Blue Hens and another Conference USA team and FBS newcomer, 7-5 Missouri State, are now eligible and get to bowl as well. Clean and easy.
The portal and the instability of rosters has its obvious drawbacks, but it has produced some pretty tantalizing turnarounds in recent seasons. We got a few in 2025, and I didn’t even mention what Eric Morris has done at North Texas, or Clark Lea at Vanderbilt, or Tony Elliott at Virginia, or Jim Mora at UConn, or Willie Fritz at Houston.
South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers, a sack-prone quarterback by nature who will probably continue to be terribly sack-prone in the pros, got zero help from his run game (107th in rushing success rate) and faced absurd amounts of instant pressure in 2025 (134th in pressure rate).
LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier watched both his trajectory and NFL draft stock plummet when trying to move the ball with no run game (119th in rushing success rate), loads of offensive line penalties and quite a few sacks (70th in sack rate).
Texas’ Arch Manning didn’t get help from his run game until basically the second half of the Longhorns’ 12th game (91st in rushing success rate) and faced constant pressure (119th in pressure rate) with lots of O-line penalties.
It hit me in recent weeks that, although we knew heading into the season that a lot of highly ranked teams were breaking in new starting quarterbacks, the biggest issue among numerous ambitious teams was a total lack of continuity up front.
Granted, plenty of teams managed to underachieve with experienced lines, and maybe one of the most interesting stories of the season — something to peck around with in the offseason — is the fact that a majority of preseason ranked teams underachieved offensively. But for all the attention that we justifiably give to the QB position, crafting a sturdy and reliable offensive line in the portal era seems as tricky as ever.
The SP+ rankings have been updated for the week. Let’s take a look at the teams that saw the biggest change in their overall ratings. (Note: We’re looking at ratings, not rankings.)
We saw plenty of “go up big on your rival and keep punching” situations Saturday — Louisville beat Kentucky by 41, Fresno State beat San José State by 27, NC State beat North Carolina by 23, Florida beat Florida State by 19 — and it provided some last-minute ratings shifts.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the teams that received the poundings referenced above fell by pretty solid amounts, too. And god bless the ACC for continuing to provide surprises and shifts right until the end — six of the 20 teams on these two lists are from that league.
I am once again awarding the Heisman every single week of the season and doling out weekly points, F1-style (in this case, 10 points for first place, 9 for second and so on). How will this Heisman race play out, and how different will the result be from the actual Heisman voting?
2. Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt (18-for-28 passing for 268 yards, 1 TD and 2 INTs, plus 168 non-sack rushing yards and a TD against Tennessee).
4. Brad Jackson, Texas State (20-for-26 passing for 280 yards and 2 touchdowns, plus 113 non-sack rushing yards and 3 TDs against South Alabama).
6. Kaytron Allen, Penn State (22 carries for 226 yards and a touchdown, plus 12 receiving yards against Rutgers).
8. Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss (23-for-34 passing for 359 yards and 4 touchdowns, plus 26 non-sack rushing yards against Mississippi State).
9. Evan Dickens, Liberty (43 carries for 267 yards and 4 touchdowns, plus 16 receiving yards against Kennesaw State).
10. Behren Morton, Texas Tech (25-for-32 passing for 310 yards and 3 touchdowns against West Virginia).
North Texas’ offense has shifted from great to video-game great in recent weeks. The clearest evidence? Drew Mestemaker threw for 366 yards on just 24 passes, and that was a clear step backward from the week before, when he threw for 469 in 19 against Rice.
And speaking of absurd, Diego Pavia just put up 436 combined rushing and passing yards in an enormous rivalry win over Tennessee, Vandy’s first in seven years. That’s a pretty good way to make a final impression to Heisman voters.
• Emmett Johnson, Nebraska (29 carries for 217 yards and a touchdown, plus 22 receiving yards against Iowa).
• Parker Kingston, BYU (six catches for 126 yards and a touchdown, plus a punt return TD against UCF).