College football is unpredictable and delightful, which is why we live for what happens on Saturdays. And Week 12 delivered, with previously unbeaten BYU suffering its first loss of the year and a late-night scare for the nation’s No. 1 team.
Each Sunday, I’ll publish my biggest takeaways from the college football weekend. I’ll highlight the most interesting storylines, track College Football Playoff contenders and specifically shout out individual and team performances that deserve the spotlight.
Here are my top takeaways from Week 12:
1. I have no idea how the CFP selection committee is supposed to rank the top SEC teams.
None of the SEC teams are unbeaten in conference play, so the committee will have to evaluate the merits of the wins vs. the damage of the losses. Head-to-head results will matter in some cases but have to be thrown out in others, because otherwise how are you going to handle Alabama beating Georgia, who beat Tennessee, who beat Alabama? It’s a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg situation, and I have no idea what the committee is supposed to do. Georgia also lost to Ole Miss, who lost to Kentucky and LSU — two teams that aren’t going to be ranked in the next set of CFP rankings. This is something of a nightmare situation for the committee in the first year of the 12-team Playoff. Someone or someone’s are going to be furious, no matter what the committee does. And SEC commissioner Greg Sankey will go to bat for whoever gets left out, arguing as he did this week, that the “rigor” of his teams’ schedules deserves to be considered. It’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out ... and whether that accelerates a push for a format change from the powerbrokers in the SEC and the Big Ten.
2. Georgia won a game it absolutely needed to win.
And there was a lot to be encouraged by! Quarterback Carson Beck looked like his old self, throwing for two touchdowns and rushing for another and not throwing an interception in a game for the first time since Oct. 5. He played with more confidence than he’s had in weeks. It was a huge win for a two-loss team trying to stay alive in the College Football Playoff race. The ‘Dawgs were the first team out of last week’s projected CFP bracket, so they knew they didn’t have any wiggle room. And they went out and beat No. 6 Tennessee to both boost their resume and avoid a likely bubble-bursting third loss.
3. Oregon and BYU showed us on Saturday that winning is hard.
Chaos has defined the 2024 college football season. But the unbeaten Ducks had mostly been watching the upsets and near-upsets happen everywhere else ... until Saturday night. Wisconsin led No. 1 Oregon by a touchdown heading into the fourth quarter at Camp Randall Stadium. But with his back against the wall, Dillon Gabriel threw a sensational pass on fourth down to keep alive the drive that resulted in Oregon’s game-tying touchdown. The Ducks ultimately pulled ahead with a field goal and got just enough stops late to hang on for the win, but it was far from pretty. And it wasn’t what we expected to see from the one team in the country that had been fairly consistent while everyone else had their ups and downs. Oregon is the last team from the preseason Top 25 to be unbeaten this year, and what we saw on Saturday against a Wisconsin team fighting to get bowl-eligible is a reminder of how hard it is to stay that way. But, as always, the key to college football is surviving your clunkers, and that’s what Oregon did.
Meanwhile, BYU suffered its first loss of the year — to 4-6 Kansas, which has played its two best games of the year in the past two weeks. (I had put BYU on upset watch heading into the weekend because of this age-old adage: Never count out Lance Leipold and co.) The Cougs had flirted with disaster a few times before (including a week ago, against Utah), but they couldn’t survive the Jayhawks this week. Now, BYU has to be careful. There’s still a clear path to the CFP through the Big 12 title game, but there’s very little margin for error. And a red-hot Arizona State awaits next weekend.
4. Travis Hunter has taken control of the Heisman race.
Prior to this weekend, I’d felt like there really hadn’t been much separation among the Heisman Trophy contenders. For most of the season, we’ve had a four-man race featuring Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty, Colorado two-way star Travis Hunter, Miami quarterback Cam Ward and Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel. But after Hunter helped the Buffs to their eighth win of the season and a step closer to playing for a Big 12 title (and automatic spot in the CFP), it feels like it’s time to say it might be Hunter’s trophy to lose. We’ve never seen a player impact games like this on both sides of the ball with this kind of weekly workload. Against Utah on Saturday, Hunter scored a touchdown and nabbed an interception — the third time (!) he’s done both in a single game this season. I don’t mean to take anything away from Jeanty, by the way. He’s terrific, and he’ll be a Heisman finalist. But Hunter is having his Heisman moment(s) at the right time with the nation watching.
TRAVIS HUNTER HITS THE HEISMAN 🏆👀@CUBuffsFootball pic.twitter.com/6tMg6K2evx
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 16, 2024
5. Tyler Warren should also be invited to New York City.
The Penn State tight end does everything for the Nittany Lions. In addition to his regular play at tight end, he’s taken 26 snaps at quarterback, 46 snaps at running back, one at center, one at right guard and two at right tackle, per PFF. He is the best offensive player on the field for Penn State at any given moment, and I personally believe the school should have started a Heisman campaign for him much earlier in the season. (Like, after the USC game in which he caught 17 passes for 224 yards and a touchdown … for example.) It’s not too late for Warren to get enough attention to earn him a trip to New York City as a Heisman finalist, though. And his coach agrees. “I think Tyler Warren should be a part of all the conversations that deal with the best football player in college football,” Penn State coach James Franklin said. “That’s all those types of awards, including the Heisman.”
6. South Carolina is the best team in the country that is not in the CFP picture.
The Gamecocks came back to beat Missouri on Saturday, a thrilling victory in the final minute for a team that’s been one of the most exciting in the country for much of the season. South Carolina has now won four consecutive SEC games for the first time in more than a decade. It’s a huge credit to quarterback LaNorris Sellers, running back Rocket Sanders and the rest of this roster. The Gamecocks are likely on the wrong side of the bubble when it comes to the CFP with three losses on their resume. What’s most frustrating about that 7-3 record is how close South Carolina is to being 9-1 and easily in the bracket. The Gamecocks led LSU 17-0 at home before losing late. They led Alabama going into the fourth quarter before losing late. Ah, what could have been …
7. The American Athletic Conference championship matchup has been set.
I have spent so much time over the past week trying to figure out the various tiebreakers for these megaconference races. But, thankfully, we don’t need to break out the calculators in the AAC. The championship matchup has officially been set; it’ll be Tulane vs. Army, which should be a great game. We do not know where the game will be played, though, because the league uses a fun little wrinkle to determine who gets to host the game as the AAC’s top seed: If there’s no head-to-head result to go off of, whatever team is ranked higher than the other in the the latest available CFP rankings and doesn’t lose in the final weekend of the conference regular season, will be declared the host.
8. Nebraska might actually be cursed.
I’m not sure how else to explain the recent history of this program. I’m truly at a loss. After a painful defeat at the hands of fellow underachiever USC on Saturday, the Huskers have now lost nine consecutive games with a chance to become bowl-eligible, with eight of those losses coming in one-score games. They reached the five-win plateau way back on Oct. 5. Bringing in new offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen didn’t fix what ails the Husker offense, either, failing to total 325 yards or more on offense for the fifth straight game (with freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola throwing a pair of interceptions.) The Huskers are now 9-34 in one-possession games since 2018; that .214 win percentage in those games is easily the worst in FBS over that span. I am sorry, Nebraska fans.
9. Indiana and Colorado have been great turnaround stories. But so has Arizona State.
The Sun Devils went 3-9 a year ago, a lost season of sorts for a program trying to crawl out from under inherited NCAA sanctions. Kenny Dillingham had to fix a mess, and nobody really thought it could be cleaned up in just one year. Arizona State was picked to finish dead-last in the Big 12 in the league’s preseason poll, and here the Sun Devils are, third in the conference standings with just two games to play (against BYU and Arizona). Quarterback Sam Leavitt threw for 275 yards and three touchdowns in the Sun Devils’ win over No. 16 Kansas State on Saturday. Running back Cam Skattebo returned from injury and contributed 73 rushing yards — he’s over 1,000 on the season — in the win. You could see afterward how much this one meant to Dillingham. He is just 34 years old and has been considered a rising star in the profession for years. Sure seems like he’s arrived now.
Kenny Dillingham on if ASU's ahead of schedule in its rebuild:
— Blake Niemann (@Blakes_Take2) November 17, 2024
"Yeah. I would be lying if I said no, right? We were a three-win team twice. We were under NCAA sanctions. Most head coaches, to be brutally honest, get fired if they take a job under sanctions. You don't survive.… pic.twitter.com/A01UeUDKKw
10. The Brian Kelly era at LSU is not going according to plan.
When Kelly left Notre Dame to go to LSU, he said he believed he was going to a place where he could win national championships. It’s Year 3, and it seems like the Tigers are regressing. They won 10 games in each of Kelly’s first two seasons in Baton Rouge, which is kind of astonishing considering how bad the defense was last year. LSU spent big money to bring in a new defensive coordinator, but that hasn’t fixed the problem ... and doesn’t explain all of the offensive issues, either. I’m still not quite over the no-show against Alabama for a night game, and now I’ve got to make sense of a loss to 5-5 Florida — which just got trounced by Texas a week ago (admittedly without quarterback DJ Lagway ... but still.) The Gators have not had a great season by any means, winning just enough to keep Billy Napier’s job safe but very little to write home about. And LSU lost, definitively, to yet another rival. Oh, and the main images of the loss were of Brian Kelly screaming at a player and being screamed at by another. Not good. Not good at all.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame has won eight straight games and is two wins away from securing a berth in the CFP — and likely hosting a first-round game in South Bend. Interesting!
