Expect Week 6 craziness to continue in college football
BY STEVE GREENBERG Staff Reporter
Utah linebacker Gionni Paul (13) stops UCLA quarterback Brett Hundley (17) at the line of scrimmage during the second half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014, in Pasadena, Calif. Utah won the game 30-28. (AP Photo/Alex Gallardo) ORG XMIT: OTKAG
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So that happened. Still trying to wrap the ol' brain around it. Eleven - by God, 11 - teams ranked in the Associated Press' Top 25 lost in Week 6, nine of them Saturday.
For the first time, five of the top eight - No. 2 Oregon, No. 3 Alabama, No. 4 Oklahoma, No. 6 Texas A&M and No. 8 UCLA - went down in the same week. It was wild. It was crazy. It was - sniff - beautiful.
It also was - and try to stay with me here - a tad on the meaningless side. And that's because every big-league team that now has one defeat is still in the hunt for the four-team College Football Playoff.
Chaos is what we got in Week 6, and chaos is what we'll continue to get. It's what makes the regular season in college football unlike any other.
Oregon and UCLA meet in Pasadena, California, in a Week 7 playoff-elimination game. Surging Mississippi and Mississippi State face Texas A&M and Auburn, respectively. Unbeaten Baylor gets white-hot TCU, which is coming off a victory against an Oklahoma team I picked to win it all.
But the Sooners, like every one-loss team from the Power Five conferences, still can get where everyone wants to go. They just can't lose again, which is a tall order amid the nonstop chaos.
The final four
Goodness gracious, how to make sense of this? Defending national champion Florida State (5-0) kept its No. 1 AP ranking and seems to be coasting toward the playoff, even though it has played underwhelmingly. Auburn (5-0), the team FSU beat for the title last season, is golden, too - for now.
After that, geez. Unbeaten Baylor moves up from No. 7, but who can forget the Bears' pair of ugly losses (to Oklahoma State and Central Florida) down the stretch last season? Notre Dame likewise moves up from No. 9 after its clutch victory against Stanford, but its visit Oct. 18 to Florida State looms large and scary.
What we know is that it scarcely matters who's in the top four right now. If you don't mind, we'll keep obsessing about it anyway.
Three Heisman hiccups
1. Oregon's Marcus Mariota is the best quarterback out there, but it's hard to see his candidacy bouncing all the way back after the Ducks' loss to Arizona. The biggest problem for Mariota is the awful offensive line that'll get him knocked around the rest of the way.
2. Nebraska running back Ameer Abdullah scored two touchdowns in a loss at Michigan State, but he rushed for only 45 yards on 24 carries. Certainly not a deal-breaker, but the Cornhuskers just don't win big games, and that leaves a stain - fairly or not - on Abdullah.
3. Texas A&M quarterback Kenny Hill had better-than-Manziel numbers through five games, but his three interceptions in a loss at Mississippi State likely dealt a death blow to his Heisman chances.
One more thing
Illinois is 3-3. Six games into a make-or-break season for coach Tim Beckman, the Illini have played poorly six times. Beckman is a defensive coach by trade, and his 2014 defense is even worse statistically than the 2013 unit that brought embarrassment to the program and put its leader squarely on the hot seat. A 38-27 home loss to Purdue? Let's be real: This ''era'' is all but over.
Email: sgreenberg@suntimes.com
Twitter: @slgreenberg
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