College Football Morning: Texas and NIU, Just Like We Thought – Where Week 2 Took the Season

The three best teams, where NIU goes next, and plenty on the playoff picture.

It should be easier to stop the pitfall you see coming. It should be harder to get tripped up. I wonder, though, how commonly the opposite effect plays out. Nobody was surprised by Texas in Ann Arbor. Notre Dame already learned their NIU lesson by losing to Marshall two years ago. Alabama struggled against USF last September. Oregon had never beaten Boise State before last night. To varying degrees, all four home teams failed to deal with the challenge in front of them. To the same degree, all four should have seen it coming.

Is Texas the Best Team in the Country?

Every college football team offers reasons for belief and reasons to doubt. Texas’s reasons for doubt might be the most nebulous of them all. There’s a recent history of football teams in Austin who fail to capture opportunity when it enters their grasp. There’s speculation about players getting too comfortable and too cocky once things go well, their egos floating on a sea of endless local praise. It’s a fair theory—this is college football, we don’t need to be scientifically rigorous—but it’s pretty ethereal, which has led us to go back and forth on it over the years. Even if it is true, it’s the kind of thing one effective coach could stop. That’s what effective coaches do: They eliminate the outside noise, or they channel it in support of their purpose.

Texas annihilated Michigan. Texas dominated Michigan. The defensive side of this elicits more of a shrug—Michigan’s offense might just be really bad—but the offensive side is a big deal. Michigan’s defense might not be the best in the country, but those were some good defensive linemen Texas pushed around. Quinn Ewers looks like he’s gotten better, and while the running back injuries are tough, running back might be the position group teams like Texas can most afford to see decimated.

Speaking of teams like Texas, we seem to have three possible best teams in the country right now: Texas, Georgia, and Ohio State. Georgia is probably the one. They’ve held that title or been close to that title for so long now that they’re the default assumption. Ohio State’s got a lot of talent, even by Ohio State standards. But we wrote on Thursday about how Texas’s rise, if it’s happening, is following a path we’re used to seeing. That path is a lot like Georgia’s, or like Alabama’s in the early Saban years: A capable coach harnesses the resources at his disposal to methodically convert championship-level talent into a championship-level team. With the exception of LSU in 2019, all our recent best–college–football–teams have gotten there through a big, long build. There’s never been any doubt about the resources at Texas, one of the few programs in the country about whom we can say that. Steve Sarkisian might be the guy getting it done.

When Will Michigan Be Back?

Eventually, Michigan will be good at football again. They care too much about it to ever fall apart forever. The question for Michigan is how far they’ve fallen, how far they’re going to fall, and when they’ll return to the top echelon of the sport. Basically: Has Michigan stabilized, or are worse things on their way?

It’s possible Michigan is still a top-ten team. If Texas really is one of the best teams in the country, yesterday’s beatdown might not mean all that much. It’s likely Michigan is still a top-25 team, at least right now. I doubt any Big Ten coaches are taking the defending champs lightly. But the offense is disastrously bad, and this year is already a letdown from last year, and plenty the talented team has spiraled in college football after a bad start to the season. Michigan wouldn’t be the first to go from winning the championship to effective elimination before the end of October.

How Bad Is It for Notre Dame?

There was a lot of “they can still make the playoff” for Notre Dame yesterday after losing to NIU, and that’s true, Notre Dame can still make the playoff. Our model has them around 2-in-5 likely to do it, although Movelor’s more skeptical of USC than some of its counterparts. Even if Notre Dame makes the playoff, though, they still lost to NIU, and the game was devastatingly familiar after similar losses in 2022 to Marshall and Stanford. Notre Dame can become as good a football team as any in the country. If they can’t execute consistently enough to win games like yesterday’s, they’ll still always come up short.

It's a fixable problem. But they need to fix it. And right now, it’s unclear if Marcus Freeman has figured out the answer. Regardless, their hopes of a backdoor national title are out the window. Even if they do make the playoff, the chance of getting a sweetheart draw plummeted with the elimination of a path to 12–0.

Should Alabama Be Worried?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer:

Alabama pulled it together yesterday and did enough at the end that for someone just checking final scores (to some extent, this is what the committee does come November), theirs was a fine showing against USF. But just like Michigan, Notre Dame, and Texas, Alabama is not a program that’s trying to make the playoff. Alabama is trying to win a national championship. Their offense was sloppy and their defense has some serious vulnerabilities over the top.

USF has what’s probably its best team since Charlie Strong’s first or second season, a team that can contend in the respectable AAC. Alabama struggled against a worse USF team last year and turned out fine. Alabama is really, really athletic and talented.

But there are a lot of teams on Alabama’s schedule who won’t let the Tide get away with what they got away with last night. Grasps on college football power are tenuous. It’s easier to lose the crown than to regain it. Alabama and Michigan both faced a lot of transition-related questions coming into this season. So far, the answers aren’t good.

What’s Up With Oregon?

I’ve said this a half-dozen times in various places, so forgive me for belaboring the point.

But.

Why does everyone think Boise State is so good?

I know the team finished strong last year after Spencer Danielson took over. I know they can beat up on Mountain West teams. I know Ashton Jeanty is a bad, bad man (with a good, good line, like so many bad, bad men before him). But the idea that Boise State has a good path to the playoff has turned into the implication that Boise State is some echo of what they were 15 or 20 years ago. Maybe they are. They sure came ready to play last night. But until Boise State really proves itself, I’m not sure Oregon’s struggle should be treated all that differently from Alabama’s. The Ducks didn’t lose—they didn’t do what Notre Dame did—but for the second straight week, they messed around. Last year’s Ducks were good, but they weren’t good enough to mess around and still compete nationally. There’s no reason to think this year’s team can pull it off.

Dan Lanning’s team goes to Corvallis on Saturday. If they survive that, they get a week off to tighten up. They should be good enough for that tightening to leave them competitive at the top of the Big Ten. But it’s hard to see them as a national title threat.

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What to Make of the SEC’s Second Tier

Georgia was already separate from the rest of the SEC thanks to Alabama’s post-Saban turnover (and thanks to Georgia probably being a better team than Alabama last year, one who lost to a better coach in the game that counted). Texas has now also earned their way across that particular moat. Behind them, Alabama is clearly in the next pack. But is Alabama’s a pack of one, or are some/all of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Missouri in that mix?

Tennessee smoked NC State last night, but take away the preseason ranking and that might not register nationally. Mississippi’s put up big points, but they haven’t been tested. Missouri might have the best wide receiver in the country, and its defense has yet to let another team score, but while that’s meaningful and impressive, it’s not the kind of thing that immediately equates a team with the Crimson Tide.

In short: We don’t know. But the fact we’re asking if there’s a gap at all behind Alabama is noteworthy.

Below the top six, it was a bad day for a lot of SEC teams. Oklahoma really struggled against Houston, the same Houston who lost handily last weekend to UNLV. LSU took a long time to get going against Nicholls State. Auburn and Kentucky had miserable days, and for all the promise Arkansas flashed, it burned its own big win to the ground, leaving it 1–1 and aimed at a 5–7 finish in our average simulation. The big winner among the bottom pack was South Carolina, the team who made Kentucky so sad. But the best thing the Gamecocks can hope they are after two weeks is a team with a top-25 ceiling and a 4–8 floor.

The Big Ten Might Need USC

Say Ohio State isn’t good, or that the Buckeyes are good right now but fall apart a little bit. Say the Buckeyes are vulnerable, susceptible to getting smashmouthed at the wrong time even if Michigan’s no longer the team to do it. We know the SEC’s going to put a lot of teams in the playoff and a lot of teams into the playoff’s New Year’s Day quarterfinals. If the Big Ten’s going to keep this a “Power 2” conversation, does it need USC to be for real?

“Does [insert conference] need [insert achievement]?” is a hard conversation. We’d rather talk about teams than their leagues. But the power struggle between conferences is real and impactful, and while it’s loser behavior to cheer for your rival just because it helps your school’s long-term security within the sport…sometimes your rival winning helps your school’s long-term security within the sport.

On a day when Penn State had a tough time with Bowling Green, Michigan did what Michigan did, and Maryland popped its own balloon by losing at home to Michigan State, USC shined in a little-watched nightcap. Utah State didn’t have its starting quarterback (Spencer Petras, that’s where he ended up), and Utah State’s worse than a lot of FCS teams, but a shutout’s a shutout, and Lincoln Riley’s offense once again looked like Lincoln Riley’s offense, even coming off a short week.

I haven’t seen SP+ yet this morning, but FPI has the Trojans eighth in the country, and even Movelor—slow to react to significant offseason changes—has USC a field goal away from twelfth. There are depth concerns with this team behind the top-line talent, but the top-line talent is very good, and in something that would shock my ten-year-old self, I enjoyed seeing the Coliseum rocking a little. The Miller Time body paint in honor of Miller Moss was something you see at football schools. College football’s a lot more fun when USC’s a football school.

Should Penn State be worried? Yes, of course. But unlike Notre Dame, Penn State won its wakeup call. The schedule’s still favorable and the win in Morgantown still happened. Expectations are lower, but little real-world damage was done.

In addition to Michigan State looking a bit ahead of schedule, Nebraska and Illinois both got big emotional wins. Illinois beat a ranked Kansas team. Nebraska pounded Colorado in the first half and may have let up a bit after halftime. Neither of those teams should think it can win the Big Ten this year or anything like that, but I don’t get the sense either does. They want progress, and they’re getting it.

More on Cy-Hawk below (and tomorrow, and probably for the next twelve months if I’m being honest with myself), but I don’t think Iowa should be particularly concerned because of the loss. Angry? Yes. Concerned? No. Again, that’s just based on the loss. They lost to a team that’s probably a little bit better than they are.

The issue for Iowa is that they might miss a bowl game. That’s what Iowa should be concerned about. They host Troy next week, but that might be their easiest game the rest of the season. It’s a weird road ahead, one filled with tossup games. Maybe they find a convenient way to bench Cade McNamara, but Brendan Sullivan isn’t guaranteed to fix the offense, and the defense may have taken an understandable step towards being merely really good. Looking at the Hawkeyes’ schedule, you can see 10–2 and you can see 4–8. I’m not sure expectations are properly calibrated within that spectrum.

Three Big 12 Contenders?

We opened the year with the cautious framework that Kansas State and Utah were contenders in the Big 12. After last week, we added Oklahoma State to that mix. Should we make any changes?

The Pokes won through some sort of devil magic, while K-State exorcised demons of its own in the voodoo capital of America. Utah had a more normal Saturday, but they might be the one in the most actual trouble, with Cam Rising’s hand injured to an unspecified extent. Utah’s saying it isn’t serious, but they also made it sound like he might play last year after he tore multiple ligaments and his meniscus in the prior season’s Rose Bowl. He did not play last year.

Overall, we aren’t concerned about Rising yet, and so we aren’t concerned about Utah.

Further down the list, Iowa State got a big, big win in Iowa City. It was impressive football, but it was also a bit of a psychological feat, especially after the Cyclones opened the game looking as rattled as rattled can be. The defense held, the offense pulled it together, and Kyle Konrardy drilled a long, rushed field goal to bring the Cy-Hawk Trophy back to Ames. Matt Campbell, you are 2–0 at Iowa State for the second time.

I think the easiest way to conceptualize this result and Kansas’s is to flip the teams in the pecking order. Iowa State’s now a contender in waiting. The Jayhawks have a few more concerns after even a healthy Jalon Daniels wasn’t enough to beat Illinois.

Elsewhere, Arizona looked bad again, but this time on the offensive side of the ball? That might be better, honestly. If you keep playing badly in the same way, that’s who you are. If you keep playing badly in different ways, you’re just inconsistent.

The Big 12 is full of sleepers, but that’s more a function of how accessible the league’s best teams are than anything else. It’s a tightly packed conference. That’s what makes it fun.

Clemson Said Something

Was it a statement win for Dabo Swinney? That might be going too far. But it was a good night for the Tigers, especially on offense. Clemson came out and asserted their will, kicking App State’s teeth in with a 35–0 first quarter which came without a single defensive or special teams score. Cade Klubnik had maybe his best college game. No one should be calling Clemson a national title contender, but even with Miami playing well against Florida A&M, the Tigers reestablished themselves as the clear ACC favorite.

In addition to Miami, Louisville rolled against a mid-major, running past Rich Rodriguez and Jacksonville State. Don’t sleep on the Cards.

Don’t sleep on Syracuse, either! Kyle McCord looked like a 5-star QB and the Orange poured cold water on Georgia Tech’s moment. Indirectly, this makes Florida State look even worse, but at this point, that’s marginal. The bigger takeaways here are that Georgia Tech didn’t capitalize on its 1–0 start and that we should maybe keep an eye on Fran Brown’s team.

We should also keep an eye on Duke, who got to 2–0 the hard way after doing some of the things themselves that made the way hard. A road win over a Big Ten team is an accomplishment, and we don’t think Northwestern’s outright bad or anything. If Mike Elko worked in Durham, we can see how Manny Diaz would also work in Durham. They’re pretty different guys, but the concepts behind their hires were the same.

Cal probably won’t sneak into the ACC title game picture, but theirs was a win sure to get “mentioned” (without being explicitly mentioned) a million times in December. How much will it mean if the ACC’s something like 6–5 against the SEC? Not a lot. But Cal did its part to keep the possibility in play for the ACC propagandists dreaming on it.

Can NIU Make the Playoff?

It’s important to remember that the fifth automatic bid isn’t necessarily going to go to the Group of Five’s best team. Theoretically, it should, but “best team” and “most deserving team” get blurred. The task at hand for NIU, Memphis, Boise State, and the rest is not to be the best Group of Five team. It’s to be one of the five highest-ranked conference champions.

NIU can certainly do it. We’ve got the probability at 1-in-40, but you could talk yourself into a higher number if you called NIU one of the MAC’s front-runners. We still have them 6.2 points worse than Miami–Ohio on a neutral field. There’s a pretty good chance Notre Dame finishes the year ranked, something which—if it happens—would make NIU’s win one of the best mid-major wins in the country. They still have to play NC State on the road, but the rest of their schedule is against the MAC and UMass. We’re saying there’s a chance.

The bigger contenders are Memphis and Liberty, Memphis because it’s probably the Group of Five’s best team (the Tigers walloped Troy yesterday) and Liberty because it’s a decent contender to go undefeated (the Flames didn’t look very good again, but they came back in Las Cruces and got the win).

Texas State? The Bobcats crushed UTSA, and I do believe Movelor’s slow to react to how good they are, but the Sun Belt is tough and so is Arizona State, who comes to San Marcos on Thursday night. I don’t know that the Sun Belt gets as much respect as it deserves relative to the AAC and Mountain West. If the committee hasn’t corrected that, 12–1 might be the bare minimum for these guys.

The model still likes James Madison in the Sun Belt, but the Dukes had a rough one against Gardner-Webb, only winning with the help of a late fourth-down stand.

In the Mountain West, Boise State hype remains high and might even be higher than it was before they went to Eugene. Again, though, losses hurt, even when they’re perfectly understandable. It’s a weird game, trying to please the committee as a Group of Five school. UNLV’s 2–0 and getting a lot of attention, but I think there’s a little bit of a lemming effect going on with them in the blogosphere, kind of like what happened with Appalachian State this offseason. We should learn more about the Rebels on Friday when they go to Kansas.

South Florida? Tulane? Both lost, but both looked competitive, and if there’s no runaway Group of Five leader, it wouldn’t be that shocking to see the committee defer to the AAC champ, provided that team’s only lost one or two times.

Last, don’t forget Washington State and Oregon State. This is a little independent of the Group of Five conversation—WSU and OSU can’t win a conference championship—but both look like pretty good teams so far. Especially the Cougars. Both their schedules have enough meat and enough winnable games that it wouldn’t be crazy to see them make the playoff. College Gameday isn’t in Corvallis next weekend likely because Corvallis doesn’t want them there (and ESPN would rather promote two mid-SEC teams). But Oregon vs. Oregon State might be the biggest game of Week 3.

Bracketology

Our model’s latest bracket is up, and…is the 1-seed a bad draw? If we do have a top three, as we currently suspect, then one of those three teams will be the 5-seed with a 12–1 or 11–2 record. They’ll be the SEC runner-up. This is all a little deterministic—not every favorite will win between now and December—but if Georgia and Texas are as good as we think they might be, they’ll play a best-of-three series this year, and the third game might be a semifinal, not the national championship.

Other developments in bracket land:

• Tennessee moves in with Notre Dame moving out. We’ve seen 14 power conference teams occupy the top 11 spots so far. Florida State, Notre Dame, and Missouri are the three of those 14 not currently in the field. Mizzou’s knocking on the door.

• Liberty takes over the 12-seed, but they’re less than 1-in-5 likely to actually make the playoff. The Group of five is rather unknown right now.

• If Texas gets the top seed, it’ll play on the Cotton Bowl side of the bracket. If Georgia gets the top seed, it’ll play on the Orange Bowl side. Either would open in the Sugar Bowl in the quarterfinals. Little things to watch.

North Dakota Stays Feisty

In the FCS world, the big story was North Dakota’s big second half comeback to beat Montana. Trailing 24–7 at the break, the Fighting Hawks reeled off 20 points in a row to upset the Big Sky co-favorites. This is the second year in a row that UND’s dispatched a clear top-five team.

Idaho was strong again, beating Wyoming in a game where it wouldn’t have looked crazy to see the Vandals favored. Shoutout to Saint Francis, who beat the worst FBS team in the country in Kent State. Southern Utah took down UTEP, and I would like to give us credit for citing that possibility alongside Idaho back on Thursday. We are not FCS-specific analysts, but we do love the FCS.

South Dakota State took care of business against Incarnate Word, Southern Illinois pushed past Austin Peay, and Villanova kept rolling, shutting down Colgate to remain the only Eastern Time Zone team in Movelor’s FCS Top Ten. As always, Movelor’s ratings are relative to an average FBS/FCS team, and the rankings here are within the combined FBS and FCS:

• #32 South Dakota State (+21.7)

• #51 North Dakota State (+18.8)

• #85 Montana (+10.4)

• #87 Montana State (+10.0)

• #95 Idaho (+8.8)

• #97 Villanova (+8.4)

• #103 Southern Illinois (+6.5)

• #110 South Dakota (+4.3)

• #113 Weber State (+3.8)

• #119 North Dakota (+2.0)

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We’ll have Movelor’s Week 3 picks up on the site later today. We’ll have more tomorrow from Stuart on Notre Dame’s loss, from me on Iowa State’s win, and from NIT Stu on Texas’s back-ness. For an alternate look back at the Week 2 action, here’s NIT Stu’s vibe check from earlier this morning, in which he examined the ten entities with the best vibes right now (Philly Kyles, Mike Leach’s Ghost, etc.) and the ten with the worst (The Sanders Family, Kent State, and—obligatorily—Brian Kelly, to name a few). On the weirdness scale from his NASCAR posts to his Packers cheese-consumption theorizing, I would grade this a 3 out of 10.

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This post was also published at www.thebarkingcrow.com, where you can always find all of Joe Stunardi and NIT Stu’s work.