Clay Travis' Starting 11: Thriller Edition
I still can't believe what we all just saw at the end of Ohio State-Notre Dame.
I had a Tweet drafted and ready to push send on, it said: "Wake up the echoes! Congrats to Notre Dame fans. You guys physically dominated Ohio State in the second half and gutted out a huge win. This is the win you've been waiting decades for."
I deleted it on the final play of the game as Ohio State delivered one of the most crushing defeats to a home stadium crowd I have seen in the 21st century.
Heck, ever.
This isn't second guessing anything, but with my nine year old sitting beside me -- I pretty much watch all big college football games now with my three boys close by, which is absolutely awesome -- I lost it when Notre Dame attempted the screen pass on second down on the Fighting Irish's final drive. I get it, you have Sam Hartman and you think that's a relatively safe play. But you were gouging Notre Dame with the power run game. Then you get cute and your first down play gets blown up. That's fine. Don't overreact, JUST RUN THE FOOTBALL ON SECOND AND THIRD DOWNS!
If you do that then Ohio State has to use its final two timeouts and you are punting to them in pretty much the same scenario you ended up punting to them anyway.
The screen pass was a risky play call that was almost intercepted, but stopped the clock when it was batted down. It also didn't appear likely to work very well even if it was completed. At the time it seemed relatively minor, but Ohio State would have run out of time without the timeout they saved that they used to avoid the ten second runoff on the intentional grounding.
Granted you don't know that the plays would have been called the same, but you know Ohio State would have had many fewer plays they could run.
It was a big error to attempt a pass there, it just was.
(I also don't like only rushing three players on 3rd and 19 either. That gave Ohio State the time to throw the ball down the field and put themselves in a position to potentially score.)
Regardless, credit to the Buckeyes, they found a way to win a game they had no business winning and as a result the Big Ten is still in very good position given the strength of Penn State and Michigan -- and the weakness of the SEC -- to potentially get two teams into the four team playoff.
Ohio State Buckeyes scored on their final play to beat Notre Dame on the road. (Photo by Joseph Weiser/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images).
As for Notre Dame, Marcus Freeman is recruiting very well, they appear to have good young talent, and you would like to think that at some point they will win a game like this.
But for now, the echoes are still not woken.
And that Tweet is forever deleted.
1) What About The Playoff Impact?
As I watched the big games all day today, I wondered: how will a 12 team playoff affect the sport going forward?
Imagine if this is the first year of the 12 team playoff.
The Ohio State-Notre Dame game doesn't have the brutal sting, the lasting bitterness.
Sure, it hurts for Notre Dame fans and Ohio State fans exult, but both teams would probably shake hands after the game and expect to see each other later in the season. Kind of like we see in the NFL now when a big regular season game is played.
I'm a pro-expanded playoff guy in general because the brutality of a sport where if you lose two games you have no chance, pretty much, to win a championship is without parallel in all of American sports. And we've learned that giving fans a reason to believe their team can win a title for as long as possible is generally good for the health of all sports, that's why the playoffs keep expanding everywhere.
But I do wonder whether the intensity of September games like these will be somewhat lost in favor of a more frenzied December.
I mean, do you care that much what happens in regular season college basketball?
Not unless you're a true diehard.
I think college football will ultimately emerge stronger with a 12 team playoff -- after all the NFL regular season is still massive -- but I do wonder how next year will feel.
It's just something to think about, because two and three loss teams in the 12 team playoff, I think, will become very common. That's good if your team loses early, but I think it strips away from the intensity of early season match ups.
Because Notre Dame fans wouldn't feel anywhere near as gutted right now if there was still a 12 team playoff, they'd feel like they had a great chance of still getting in. Now, they're in a really tough spot. The Irish need to win out, which won't be easy, and they need Ohio State to win the Big Ten too.
2) Florida State beat Clemson and it felt like they were very fortunate to do so.
Look, I picked FSU to win the ACC and go to the college football playoff before the season started. And so far the Seminoles have managed to beat LSU and win at Clemson. The rest of the schedule doesn't feature any games as hard as these two so the Seminoles are in incredible shape to make a playoff run this year. (Duke, Miami and at Florida are probably the three toughest games they have left now.)
But, and I stress but, it feels like Clemson gave this game away. The Tigers outgained FSU by over a hundred yards, had nine more first downs, outrushed FSU 146 yards to 22 yards and were equal in the passing game too.
Yes, FSU won in an incredibly difficult road environment in overtime, but I didn't think FSU played that well, just like they didn't play that well in the late stages of the game against Boston College.
Will that catch up with them against a lesser opponent or two? Maybe.
But I feel pretty good about my FSU to the playoff prediction as we near the end of September.
Florida State got a big win despite playing less than their best game. (Photo by John Byrum/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
As for Clemson, they played very well. Up seven and driving for a score to go up, potentially, double digits, FSU made the defensive play of the year on a Cade Klubnik hit -- shouldn't he have seen the blitzer though? -- and the resulting scoop and score.
The kicker Clemson added to the team last week missed a kick a kicker can't miss that would have won the game and now Clemson is essentially eliminated from ACC title competition four weeks into the season.
Where do the Tigers go from here?
I don't know. We haven't seen a Dabo team eliminated from title contention this early in several years.
But I do know that Cade Klubnik's decision to throw wide on third and a yard in overtime will linger for a while. That's not a decision your quarterback can make in this situation. (And based on the reaction from Dabo it seems like a decision he made entirely on his own.)
3) Alabama outlasted Ole Miss in Tuscaloosa.
But this is not a very good Alabama football team.
Bama still has good defensive talent, but the wide receivers are weak given the standard set by prior Tide teams, the offensive line is probably the worst Saban has had in 15 years, and the quarterback play is going to be erratic all season long.
It feels to me like Alabama needs to play like they did back in the early Saban days, by relying on a suffocating defense and a game manager quarterback. Yes, I know, the college football game has changed a great deal since then, but I don't think this Alabama team has the offensive firepower to beat good teams in shootouts. I think they have to drag them down into the mud and shorten games again, just like they did back in the early Saban era.
Having said that, who looks that good in the SEC?
LSU and Tennessee, the two teams the Tide lost to last year, both come to Tuscaloosa.
Honestly, the game at Texas A&M in two weeks feels like it could decide the SEC West this year. And even if Bama lost that one, I still feel like the Tide might find a way to Atlanta because no one in the SEC West looks that great right now.
4) I know the South has already lost one Civil War to the North, but I feel like drastic measures are necessary to reclaim the SEC on CBS theme music.
This is flat out unacceptable cultural appropriation.
First, they pull Gary Danielson and Brad Nessler off the primetime SEC game and ship them to the Big Ten to call their games -- I actually liked the Jason McCourty, Ross Tucker and Tom McCarthy pairing -- but it feels disrespectful to take your lead team off the CBS SEC game in the final season of the partnership. If you won't give your top announcing team the SEC game of the week, why not go ahead and sell the SEC rights a year early to ABC/ESPN? It feels super petty by CBS, which had every advantage imaginable to sign the SEC for a generation when they added Texas A&M and Missouri and instead stupidly decided not to renegotiate and extend their contract.
The result?
CBS has lost the SEC and wildly overpaid for a mediocre package of Big Ten games.
CBS made, and I'm not exaggerating here, the dumbest decision in the history of college sports television to let the SEC leave.
They've gone from the first round draft pick in the SEC pretty much every week to games like Iowa-Penn State for the rest of their channel's existence.
(By the way, full disclosure, we tried to hire Ross Tucker to do a daily show for OutKick, but he wanted to keep calling games. Good for him, now he's got the SEC game of the week. I think he's got a great future in sports media, he's super interesting, funny, and has unique takes. So I'm not knocking these guys for their opportunity to call the SEC games, it's just crazy that this is happening.)
CBS needs the SEC theme music back for SEC-only games, quickly. (Photo by Todd Kirkland/Icon Sportswire/Corbis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images).
But in all seriousness, CBS keeping the SEC theme music and using it for the Big Ten is like your ex-wife keeping the dog she hates because she knows you like it and wanted to keep it yourself.
CBS blew it with the SEC, if they were anything other than being stupidly petty, they would have given the theme music to ABC and picked a new theme themselves for the Big Ten.
5) Colorado was a really fun story for the first three weeks of college football.
They won as a big underdog in week one against TCU, beat down Nebraska and then survived in double overtime against Colorado State. But on Saturday they lined up against Oregon and were beaten as soundly as it's possible to be beaten in college football.
At one point Oregon had 475 total yards to Colorado's 34 total yards.
I think many college football coaches resented the amount of media attention Deion got in year one. Is that jealousy? Maybe. After all, most coaches beg for positive media attention in their first year at a new program and, no joke, Deion probably has gotten more positive media attention in year one at Colorado than I've ever seen any first year head coach in college football get anywhere.
Colorado Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders and his son Shedeur Sanders were blown out by Oregon. (Photo by Andy Cross/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images).
And the tough thing about talking a big game is you don't just motivate your own team, you also motivate your opponents. Deion could talk big on the field because he was the best corner of his generation. But is he also the best coach of his generation? That seems unlikely.
With USC on deck next week, Colorado will likely be 3-2 at the end of September and then be lucky to finish with a winning record.
But year one for Deion Sanders will have already been a success because even a 6-6 or 7-5 season is a massive improvement over 1-11 last year. This offseason the big question will be: just how many transfer players will line up to play for Deion in Boulder? And secondly: how many of those players might take less NIL money to play for him? Because, here's the deal, Colorado can't compete with the top NILs in the country. They just can't. So will Deion be such a draw that his cachet and popularity increases the quality of player he can put on the field? Or will Colorado be forced to build a program the way most teams build programs, by stringing together three to four top 25 classes and developing players?
On the other sideline, Dan Lanning seemed to take great joy in delivering a beat down to Deion's team.
How good is Oregon?
Well, so far they look like one of the four or five best teams in the country. And given the way Lanning is recruiting, the Ducks look like they are going to be pretty solid for years to come.
Especially since Bo Nix evidently has 68 years of collegiate eligibility.
6) Utah is 4-0 and I feel like no one is paying attention to them.
And they've done it all without Cam Rising so far.
Granted, the Pac 12 is stacked this year -- the final year of the Pac 12 is going to be the best year of the Pac 12 in the 21st century -- but I feel like if Cam Rising can return and play at a high level, this Utes defense is stacked.
The Pac 12 is by far the most interesting conference top to bottom in college football this year.
I feel like there are four or five different teams who could win the conference and it wouldn't be a surprise at all.
Heck, we all know how wild the Pac 12 gets every year by the time we get to November. Maybe that craziness will even start early this year.
7) Why didn't Arkansas let LSU score a touchdown on the final drive?
I was screaming at my television. (And not because I had money on the game -- I'd already hit the over and my Razorbacks +17.5 ticket was a winner too.)
But basic win probability dictated that Arkansas had to let LSU score in order to get the ball back and have a chance to let KJ Jefferson and your superman freshman tight end Luke Hasz, who had 964 yards receiving against LSU and wasn't covered all night, a chance to win the game.
I'm not an expert in win probability, but hoping a kicker misses an extra point length field goal and then you go to overtime and win there is not a high percentage chance of victory.
It seemed like LSU would have been willing to score a touchdown -- rather than taking a knee at the one -- and if that happens then you have 1:30 or so left and can take your chances at trying to score, tie the game and potentially even go for two to get the win yourself.
LSU survived a scare (and questionable decision?) from Arkansas. (Photo by John Korduner/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
I just don't get the decision at all.
It feels like the Razorbacks guaranteed themselves a loss by sticking with the principle that we don't let the other team score no matter what.
Fine, I guess, but your next three games are Texas A&M, at Ole Miss and at Alabama. If you go 1-2, you'd have to be very happy, I think. That means you're going to be sitting, at best, at 3-4 before the schedule gets a bit easier down the stretch.
What are you gaining other than an almost guaranteed loss here?
I just don't get this choice at all.
8) Only three SEC teams are still undefeated: Georgia, Missouri, and Kentucky.
I feel quite confident we haven't ever reached September 23rd before in a 14 team SEC and only had three undefeated teams.
And I don't think Missouri and Kentucky are that good.
I mean, they're fine, but I think both of these teams will lose four or five games before the season is done.
Kentucky Wildcats is one of only three SEC unbeatens. (Photo by Matthew Maxey/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images).
So who is the second best team in the SEC?
I honestly don't know.
Every team has looked eminently beatable, even Georgia, for decent lengths of time so far.
You'll see my rankings below, but the SEC West feels wide open and I feel like the second best team in the SEC East may end up 8-4 this year.
9) Just in time for the 12 team playoff, college football talent appears to be geographically broadening.
Think about it, for pretty much the last 25 years, college football has been a Southern sport, with Ohio State and USC pretty much representing the rest of the country.
If this seems crazy to you, since 1998, when we began to crown only one national champion -- except for that pesky 2003 year -- the following teams have won national titles.
SEC: Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Auburn, Florida, and Tennessee
Pac 12: USC
Big Ten: Ohio State
ACC: Florida State, Clemson, Miami (technically in the Big East then)
Big 12: Oklahoma, Texas
That's it, just 13 teams have won titles in the past 25 years.
And those 13 teams have been from only ten states. (Florida has had three champs and Alabama has had two.)
Only two states from outside the South have made the list -- Ohio and California. (I'm counting Texas and Oklahoma as the South, which makes sense because both are about to join the SEC).
USC is the only team from California to win a national title in the last 25 seasons (Photo by Kevin Abele/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images).
I wrote about this some last week, but it feels like more geographic diversity of talent is emerging. It's possible this year is just an outlier, but I think there's a legit argument that NIL has taken the back room buys the southern teams have been engaging in for decades and put the rest of the country in the same game.
So far NIL and the transfer portal seem to be broadening talent more than concentrating it in the same schools.
We'll see if this continues, but this could be an overall strength for college football as a whole since the more areas of the country there are with a chance to win a title, in theory, the more people watch.
10) My OutKick top 10.
Reminder, I rank teams entirely based on what we've seen on the field so far. That is, I only care about the games that have actually been played, not what we expected to see before the season started.
With that in mind, here we go:
Michael Penix Jr. and the Washington Huskies have been impressive. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
11) SEC Power Rankings 1-14
As I mentioned above, there are only three undefeated SEC teams, which makes me think this year may end up being one of the wildest in SEC history. I truly think there is very little that separates any of these teams this year.