College Football Morning: Oregon State's Super Bowl, and the Apple Cup Rolls On (Week 3 Preview)
The Beavers and the Cougars re-take center stage.
Oregon has won 13 of its last 16 meetings with Oregon State, including last year’s, the final Civil War in the schools’ joint Pac-12 era.
Washington has won 12 of its last 14 meetings with Washington State, including last year’s, the final Apple Cup in the schools’ joint Pac-12 era.
Historically, the Oregon–Oregon State series is closer than its northern neighbor. In games that didn’t end in ties, Oregon leads 68–49. Up in Washington, that mark is 76–33 in favor of the city slickers. Those are similar numbers, though, and the similarities don’t stop there. In each rivalry, there’s a privileged school and an underdog. In each rivalry, the privileged school leads the all-time series and has especially dominated it lately. In each rivalry, the privileged school just left for the Big Ten. In each rivalry, the underdog just got left behind.
Given those departures and non-departures, there’s an unusual atmosphere surrounding this year’s games. In Washington, the event’s received a lot of support from both institutions, who agreed to play the game’s first nonconference edition in decades at Lumen Field in Seattle rather than on one of the schools’ home campuses. Of course, the University of Washington is located in Seattle, making this something of a home game for the Huskies, but it’s better than nothing. The Seahawks’ stadium gives a special air to the game, and while it might not be a perfectly neutral site, there isn’t a more neutral field in the state of Washington that’s adequately sized. More than anything, the location is a goodwill gesture. This is a new version of the Apple Cup, and the schools are celebrating their commitment to playing one another.
Despite this institutional support—despite both UW and WSU making an event of the thing—fan support has lagged. Tickets are available right now for less than fifty dollars, and it’s not hard to find fans who’ll complain to you about the altered date. (Like many rivalries, but not all, the Apple Cup used to be played Thanksgiving weekend.) It doesn’t help that the game will be streamed on Peacock rather than broadcast by a traditional network. Peacock’s made itself indispensable for a lot of college football diehards, but it does make it easier for more casual fans or team-specific fans to tune out.
Down in Oregon, ticket prices are holding up better, and the game will be broadcast nationally on FOX. It’s a bigger game in terms of its national consequence, too. In our model’s latest simulations, at least one Oregon school makes the playoff 55% of the time. For Washington and Wazzu, the number’s only 22%, despite Movelor—our model’s rating system—being more optimistic than most about both the Huskies and the Cougs.
Oregon State gets to be David hosting Goliath, enjoying the eyes of a nation turning back to Reser Stadium. Washington State’s fighting Washington in a back alley in one of those cinematic scenes where the hero’s friends have all moved on.
College football rivalries, like so many things in life, tend to find a way. If these schools love each other enough, these games will continue to happen. If these schools hate each other enough, these games will continue to matter. Saturday’s are happening, and they matter. They’re probably the two biggest games of the weekend.
Starting in Corvallis:
The Ducks were supposed to be a national title threat. Two weeks in and two wins in (one of which came over Boise State, who seems to be The People’s Group of Five Favorite), analysts are turning on Dan Lanning’s team. The offensive line looks weak. The defense is fine, but it’s nothing to write home about. There’ve been a number of concerningly complacent plays, most notably that kick return fumble Noah Whittington was very lucky his teammate picked up in the endzone. We were so ready for Bo Nix to win the Heisman last year and for Oregon to challenge for a playoff spot that we never fully grappled with what it meant that Nix and Lanning lost to Michael Penix Jr. and the Washington Huskies twice. What did it mean? Well, given how Washington went on to play against Michigan, it probably meant Oregon wasn’t quite ready for national championship talk.
One of the easiest mistakes we can make, those of us who prognosticate about college football, is assuming long-term trends will continue at their previous pace. The Ducks have gotten better under Lanning. The Ducks have gotten a lot better under Lanning. But Florida State had gotten a lot better under Mike Norvell until the getting better stopped. I’m not trying at all to equate Oregon with FSU. My point is that just because Oregon finished last year as a top-five team didn’t guarantee them to be a serious national title threat this fall. From the looks of it, they’ve gotten a bit worse. They’ve got at least ten more games to prove people like me wrong.
The Beavers? They were the real heartbreaker when the Pac-12’s ashes settled. After a terrible fall-off under Gary Andersen, Jonathan Smith had rehabilitated the program into a nationally competitive group, one who tormented Caleb Williams in 2022 and nearly took down Penix and Washington last November. Washington State lost its now Heisman-contending quarterback, Cam Ward, but Oregon State lost something much more vital to its long-term success: The Beavers lost their head coach. Smith is at Michigan State now, where his team’s already notched one hard-nosed upset win.
Washington State came out of the breakup with continuity. Jake Dickert’s still there, and the program might still be making progress. For Oregon State, the rebuild is on. Defensive coordinator Trent Bray’s been elevated to head coach, but offensive coordinator Brian Lindgren went with Smith to East Lansing, and by Bill Connelly’s calculations, Oregon State brought back the third-least production of any FBS team this year.
It hasn’t been a bad two weeks for the Beavers. They’re 2–0, and they’re playing at a level which, if sustained, will win them seven or eight games. But they don’t do anything all that special. They don’t have an offensive line like Boise State’s or a running back like Ashton Jeanty making that line look great. They shouldn’t be much worse than the Broncos, if they’re worse at all, but their path to an upset probably relies more on stealing a few possessions from Dillon Gabriel than keeping up with the Ducks in a track meet.
For Oregon, it’s close to a must-win game. Per our model, the Ducks make the playoff 56% of the time when they win and 22% of the time when they lose. This is what should happen. Oregon should win this game, and without too much trouble. But it’s a rivalry game, and Reser Stadium is tricky, and Oregon State has a whole lot less to worry about than Oregon after this week, especially if the Beavers lose. There is no downside here for Oregon State. A loss would be sad, and a blowout might be demoralizing, but a blowout is the expectation. For Oregon State, this is a chance to put themselves on the map.
If the Beavers win, the immediate takeaway will be that Oregon isn’t what it was supposed to be. That might be true, but it will mean something else as well: It will mean Oregon State was good enough to beat Oregon. A top ten team? No. But the path to 11–1 or 12–0 will open up for the Beavers if they pull this off. They still have to go to Boise and to Berkeley, and they still have to host Purdue and Washington State plus a spate of mostly competitive Mountain West schools. But the upside of those games is that Oregon State’s schedule isn’t going to sink their ship. It’s not a Power Four schedule, but there’s meat on the bone.
If the upset happens, the narrative will center on Oregon’s failings. But don’t be surprised if that tone softens as the season goes on, and if eyes start to shift towards the Beavers. Even if Oregon’s underwhelming, they’re likely to win nine games. That could put them on the fringe of the playoff themselves, a tide lifting Oregon State. In simulations where the Beavers shock the world, they go on to make the playoff a quarter of the time. That’s not a bad probability coming out of Week 3.
In Seattle:
It’s hard to know what to make of this Washington team. They lost their best talent to the NFL and failed to grab Jedd Fisch’s best weapons from Arizona when he made the move. Fisch pulled off a pretty amazing turnaround in Tucson, though, and so far this year, Washington hasn’t struggled much. Their schedule’s tough from a travel perspective—they fly to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Indiana—but they get USC at home and they don’t have to play Ohio State. Washington is unlikely to be a great team, but they’re probably pretty well-coached, and they have a path which makes it possible to hang around.
Washington State is more a known quantity. Ben Arbuckle’s offense, the same one which got Ward to Miami, is trying to make a star out of redshirt sophomore John Mateer, who ran for nearly 200 yards last week in the Cougs’ blowout of an underwhelming Texas Tech. The WSU defense? We’ll see. The sad thing for Washington State fans, if they do miss this game both in person and on TV, is that they might be missing a classic.
We mentioned that Movelor’s higher on both these teams than the consensus, but Movelor can only be so wrong. Is this a top-25 matchup, like it thinks? Probably not. But the level of play should be close. In the playoff picture, that 22% chance one of the two makes the field isn’t nothing. Oddly enough, Washington State has the better probability right now, owing to its lighter path. Win this game, and the Cougs, like the Beavers if they win, become a 1-in-4 playoff candidate.
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Big Games
Other big ones:
Arizona at Kansas State
Boston College at Missouri
West Virginia at Pitt
We’ll have more on Arizona and K-State on Friday morning, but the short version is that we should finally get some answers about the Wildcats, a 2–0 team that’s played terribly twice but did it a lot differently the second time.
On BC and Mizzou, the ostensible “top 25” matchup:
Maybe Boston College really is one of the 25 best teams in the country. We’ve said before that you shouldn’t discount shutouts of FCS opponents, so the 56–0 victory over Duquesne doesn’t say nothing about the Eagles. Similarly, they really took it to Florida State in Tallahassee. The odd timing of Jeff Hafley’s departure coupled with BC’s lowly status to give Bill O’Brien a fairly intact roster in his debut season in Chestnut Hill. BC also wasn’t all that bad last year. They were pretty bad, sure, but they did go 7–6.
Boston College is intriguing, and this game means a lot to the program. It’s a chance to thoroughly upend the prevalent narrative that these guys are, in the long run, doomed. (We recently wrote about how close the program is to mid-majordom). When BC beat Florida State, the game was about Florida State. If BC beats Mizzou, it’ll be about BC.
But for as interesting as Boston College is, Missouri is the main story here. Beloved kicker Harrison Mevis may have moved on, but Luther Burden III—thought by many to be the best receiver in the country—is back from last year’s Cotton Bowl-winning team. His assistant, quarterback Brady Cook, returns as well. The expectation entering the year was that behind Burden, the Mizzou offense would be very good, and that while its defense might not always be “hold Ohio State to three points” good, it would be solid. So far? All indications are positive out of Columbia. The Tigers shut out Murray State, a very bad FCS team, and then shut out Buffalo, a pretty darn bad FBS team. We thought they were getting a rather bad Power Four team with this one, but some sort of test has arrived instead. This is the weekend we all get to know Mizzou.
With a win, Missouri’s up to 43% playoff-likely, independent of this weekend’s other results. With a loss, they’re down to 12%. Boston College has a chance to wreck another season here.
For the Eagles’ part, the playoff is a possibility. But Missouri’s weekend floor is their guests’ weekend ceiling. Even with a victory, our model only has BC 12% likely to make the playoff field. We’d probably quarrel with that output—if BC beats Mizzou, Movelor’s been seriously underestimating them—and that number does come from a small sample,* since Missouri’s such a big favorite. But our model’s best guess is 12%, even with a BC win.
*The way we handle these conditional probabilities is to isolate the simulations where Team X, in this case Boston College, wins or loses the game. Since Boston College only wins this game in roughly 240 of our model’s 10,000 simulations, that makes our sample 240 instead of 10,000, which increases the uncertainty around our estimate of the hypothetical probability post-game.
The last big one this week? “Big” is subjective, but we’re calling West Virginia’s trip to Pitt a big deal. This isn’t about the playoff—neither team has a very good chance right now at that—but about head coach job security and the direction each program is headed. Pat Narduzzi’s coming off his worst season at Pitt. Neal Brown’s coming off a startlingly successful year in Morgantown. Neither is exactly on the hot seat, but both schools are at least taking a look at the buyout numbers. Narduzzi needs to right the ship. Brown needs to prove last year wasn’t a fluke. The Backyard Brawl always has big stakes. This time, those stakes are a little more panicky.
Playoff Hopefuls
In groups:
Georgia at Kentucky
UTSA at Texas
Ohio State’s idle this weekend, so only two of the three national championship favorites will see the field of play. For Texas, this game looks a lot less dangerous than it did a couple years ago, or even one week ago. UTSA is coming off a 39-point beatdown against Texas State, something which would have been unthinkable two seasons back, when the Roadrunners were enjoying their second straight year of double-digit wins while the Bobcats limped to their eighth losing season in a row. For Texas, this is a take–care–of–business game.
Georgia’s isn’t on that level, but Kentucky sure didn’t look good last week against South Carolina. Maybe the Wildcats were looking ahead. Maybe they’re lying in wait. Georgia’s a heavy favorite, and we see no reason to dispute that.
Alabama at Wisconsin
Mississippi at Wake Forest
Kent State at Tennessee
Again, these are different kinds of games. Wisconsin is probably a fine team, and Wake Forest is probably a fine ACC team, whereas Kent State might be the worst team in the entire FBS. But Mississippi and Tennessee are climbing into Alabama’s territory in that second tier behind the big three. That’s a valuable tier to occupy this season.
For Alabama: Is this a trap? They’ve looked weak two weeks in a row now, and Wisconsin has plenty of helpful tape on their guests. The game’s kicking off at 11 AM local time amidst a raucous Camp Randall. Luke Fickell’s in his second year in Madison, and while the first two weeks haven’t been pretty, there’s still reason to believe his Badgers could make a second-year leap.
We’re not expecting an 11–2 season like Cincinnati managed in Fickell’s second year in that job. But it wouldn’t be shocking to see some life in this one, and Alabama might be just vulnerable enough to make this a heck of a start to the day.
Later, when Mississippi goes to Winston-Salem, we’ll be curious to see how Jaxson Dart and Lane Kiffin’s offense performs against a tougher opponent than Furman or Middle Tennessee. We’re curious about the offense. We know it’s good, but how good is it?
We’ll probably learn more about the defense, which is the vulnerability here. If Wake moves the ball well, we should all be a little skeptical of old Mississippi. This would probably make them a more fun team to watch—liable for games in the 50’s and 60’s once SEC play goes off the rails—but it would bode poorly for their national championship dreams.
Wake’s one of the worse Power Four teams this season, not on the level of a single SEC squad in terms of size and athleticism. But, Wake’s got a shot at making a bowl game out of the ACC. This is a useful data point, even if we don’t have Kiffin on full-on upset watch.
Arkansas State at Michigan
Notre Dame at Purdue
In this group, we’ll learn more about Notre Dame than Michigan. Is the offense fully doomed, or can it compete? Is the defense good enough to slam the door instead of holding it mostly closed? This is a huge, huge game for Purdue. It’s a big one for Notre Dame as well, but in a very different way. We’ll have more about this from Stuart McGrath on Friday, over on the site.
For Michigan, the questions are similar, but they have a different scope. Are the reigning champs still good enough to roll over teams like Arkansas State? Or is this offense bad enough to let the Red Wolves keep it close to close? We’re not counting out the Wolverines, just as we’re not counting out the Irish. Both have a lot to prove on Saturday, even if ND’s the one facing more mortal risk.
Oklahoma State at Tulsa
Utah at Utah State
Ball State at Miami
Clemson’s off this weekend, and we mentioned K-State above. Among the other Big 12 and ACC favorites, all three are expected to win comfortably over a mid-major. Oklahoma State and Utah are on the road, and each has some questions right now—OK State’s questions are about how good it is, while Utah’s are about Cam Rising’s hand—but still: comfortably favored. If they get into upset territory, yes, that’ll tell us a lot, but we’re more watching to see whether they dominate or whether they look vulnerable for future, tougher foes.
Arizona State at Texas State
UNLV at Kansas
Memphis at Florida State
Tulane at Oklahoma
Toledo at Mississippi State
In the Group of Five, we’ve got a lot to watch out for. All five mid-majors in these games are underdogs, with betting market spreads ranging from 1.5 points (ASU’s trip to Texas State) up to 13.5 (Tulane’s visit to Oklahoma), but all five could spring the upset, and which ones do and don’t will do a lot of culling of the playoff short list. Playoff probabilities:
Texas State: 5% with a win, 0.6% with a loss
UNLV: 15% with a win, 4% with a loss
Memphis: 36% with a win, 13% with a loss
Tulane: 18% with a win, 4% with a loss
Toledo: 11% with a win, 2% with a loss
Yes, even though Tulane lost last week.
A lot of people are high on a lot of Group of Five teams. The only one where we’re concerned Movelor might be really off is Texas State. Even there, though…it’s got the Bobcats favored, and betting markets don’t.
More on these five (and a bunch more) tomorrow morning. Yes, in the morning. Goodness, today’s post was late.
UTEP at Liberty
Finally, Liberty. We’ve got them as the current likeliest Group of Five team to make the field. We only have that probability at 19%, though.
Generating Interest
More fun ones:
LSU at South Carolina
Texas A&M at Florida
It is good to be in the SEC, but it’s not always a lot of fun. This middle tier—you could add Oklahoma to it as well—is thick and full of potential misery. Questions this week include:
Is LSU flawed or fine?
Is South Carolina for real? Inconsistent? Was Kentucky awful?
Is Texas A&M going to be ok or is Notre Dame’s NIU loss a terrible sign?
Who’s Florida’s quarterback and is Billy Napier going to keep his job and why is this program not better than it is considering all the factors working strongly in its favor?
UCF at TCU
The winner here is going to be some sort of Big 12 contender and therefore some sort of playoff contender. If they win big, we might even add them to that K-State/Oklahoma State/Utah mix. (Arizona gets into that mix if they win in Manhattan.)
Troy at Iowa
Troy’s undergone a lot of turnover and is not looking good at all. It’s possible Iowa will do just fine against the Trojans and still end up reeking a little. On the other side, though, if Iowa struggles, that’s really going to be a red flag. The thing about these early season rivalry games is that they define the rest of each team’s season. That’s especially true for the loser.
Cincinnati at Miami (OH)
Miami won the MAC last year but lost their opener at Northwestern. This isn’t a last stand for their MAC title shot, but it’s a last stand for having any shred of playoff hope if they do win the conference again. For Cincinnati, a lot of people will be wondering how the Bearcats bounce back from last week’s meltdown. Somebody has to be the worst team in the Big 12.
Colorado at Colorado State
Speaking of possible worst teams in the Big 12, the Buffaloes will try to get back on the right track in Fort Collins. There will be less coverage of this game than there was last year.
Indiana at UCLA
Maryland at Virginia
I said these games were interesting.
The Biggest Littler Guys
In the FCS:
Albany at Idaho
Mercer at Chattanooga
Incarnate Word at Southern Illinois
UC Davis at Southern Utah
All of these are at least close to Movelor FCS Top 25 matchups.
For Idaho and SIU, the hope here is to establish themselves as legitimate FCS title contenders, close to South Dakota State, North Dakota State, and the Montanas. Incarnate Word is trying to hang on to FCS national power status in the post-GJ Kinne years. Albany is looking to put its name up there as one of the best FCS teams in the Eastern Time Zone.
UC Davis and Southern Utah aren’t conference foes anymore, but they’re both potential playoff bubble teams, with UC Davis facing a harsh Big Sky after this and SUU trying to make it out of a less forgiveness-generating UAC.
Mercer and Chattanooga are both SoCon contenders. Key early-season matchup for both.
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A tentative schedule of things to come…
On both Substack and the site:
Tomorrow morning: Group of Five playoff contenders, plus ASU vs. Texas State
Friday: KU and K-State, and why they’re so different
Saturday: Washington State and Oregon State’s realignment future
Only at www.thebarkingcrow.com:
Tomorrow: This week’s college football futures bets
Tomorrow: Cyclone State, our Iowa State post
Friday: Good Things Shrewing, Stuart McGrath’s Notre Dame post
Friday: BFN, NIT Stu’s Texas post
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More resources:
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This post was also published at www.thebarkingcrow.com, where you can always find all of Joe Stunardi, Stuart McGrath, and NIT Stu’s work.
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