The college football season, as whole this year, has given me flashbacks.
No, I’ve never done LSD … although if I have to watch any more of OU’s offense flopping, floundering and flailing about impotently, I might appreciate a “trip” away somewhere, anywhere.
Instead, I simply refer to the infamous, glorious, awesome, chaotic season of 2007 — a time to which I feel I’ve traveled aboard the Doctor’s TARDIS and returned.
Let’s look back at that 2007 college football season:
- A top-25 team lost to a lower-ranked or unranked opponent 62 times.
- Top 10 teams lost 29 times.
- A No. 1 team lost four times.
- A No. 2 team lost seven times, with all taking place within the final nine weeks of the season.
- The No. 1 and No. 2 teams lost in the same week three times, including twice in the final two weeks of the season.
- More than one top-10 team lost in the same week nine times, including FIVE losses by top-10 teams in Week 5.
- Eventual national champion LSU lost twice, both times as the No. 1 team in the country: in Week 7 to Kentucky and Week 13 to Arkansas.
Memorably, the whole shebang started in Week 1 when then-Division I-AA Appalachian State went to the Big House and upset Michigan. The chaos culminated on conference championship weekend in Week 14 when No. 1 Missouri lost for the second time that season to OU, and No. 2 West Virginia lost to a 4-7 Pittsburgh squad.
This year’s college football season appears to be mainlining the same drugs as that 2007 campaign. Already, we’ve had top-ranked Alabama — fresh off a win against then-No. 1 Georgia — lose to Vanderbilt. It snapped the Commodores’ 23-game losing streak to ‘Bama, while the 40 points Vanderbilt mustered were 27 more than the ‘Dores scored against the Crimson Tide during the entire Nick Saban coaching era.
On the same day, Arkansas — picked before the season with Vanderbilt and Mississippi State as the three worst teams in the SEC — took down No. 5 Tennessee. Also losing that same weekend were No. 10 Michigan and No. 11 USC, both to unranked teams, while No. 9 Missouri was annihilated, 41-10, by 25th-ranked Texas A&M.
Earlier in the season, we saw Northern Illinois grab its first-ever win against a top-10 team when the Huskies went to South Bend and stunned Notre Dame. In fact, in the very first game of 2024 between two major conference teams, Georgia Tech shoved aside No. 10 Florida State when the Ramblin’ Wreck entered as two-touchdown underdogs.
The polls reflect the madness. Oregon, this week, became the fourth different top-ranked team, although Texas has held the position twice. In the same poll, defending national champion Michigan was a notable absence among the Top 25 for the first time in 54 consecutive polling weeks.
It didn’t take long for this specific week to join the craziness. On Wednesday night, winless Kennesaw State (0-6) upset undefeated (5-0) Liberty, 27-24. The last time a winless team beat an undefeated team this late in the season was when Temple shocked Virginia Tech in 1998. It was also Kennesaw State’s first-ever win against an FBS-level team, and it came on a night when the Owls were 26½-point underdogs to a school that hadn’t lost a regular season game since 2022.
How else did the madness manifest itself this weekend? Let’s head over to the Hangover Highlights to find out!
- For a moment, for a half, it looked as though the Sooners would add to the unusual upsets at Ole Miss. Coming into Saturday’s game as 20-plus-point underdogs for the first time since 1998, OU actually led 14-10 at halftime.
- And OU never scored again. The game ended a disappointing 26-14 in Ole Miss’ favor, with Jacob Sexton’s injury exit from left tackle derailing whatever momentum and up-front movement the Sooners had found in the first half. To me, there were two take aways.
- The short of it: OU’s offense looked a bit better, yada, yada, but still only scored 14 points. Down two scores in the fourth quarter facing a fourth down, the coaches took a galactically stupid timeout during which they decided just to end up punting. Meanwhile, the defense remained as overrated as I believed it to be all season.
- The long of it: OU’s offense DID look better. The bar is low there, though. Only one turnover and a handful of competent-appearing drives constituted looking “better.” I can forgive the Sooners for not being explosive, as that’s what happens when a team is missing five receivers. Still, you must finish some of those drives with points … any points at all. Meanwhile, the defense had a chance to prove it is elite when it started the second half with a lead, but it spit the bit. The Rebels’ first two drives after halftime went eight plays for 65 yards and seven plays for 83 yards, both of which ended in touchdowns.
- More about that time out I mentioned: I’ve never seen a more John Blake-ian mid-game decision by an OU head coach since … well, John Blake was leading OU. Let’s recap: 4th-and-3 in your own territory, 13 minutes left in the game, trailing by 12 points. It’s not a “must” go-for-it situation, but there’s certainly a decision to be made. The OU offense dithered on the field for several seconds, unsure of what to do. Eventually, the coaches called time out to avoid a 5-yard delay-of-game penalty. At that point, every drunken spectator on the patio at Cowenstan National Stadium knew OU was going to go for it. I mean, you don’t call time out in that situation to just avoid a 5-yard penalty if you’re simply going to punt anyway. Time outs are sacrosanct at that point in the game. You only use them if you have something important brewed up.
- But what brewed up in the
brainsbowels of Brent Venables WAS a punt … and, thus, one of the worst decisions I’ve seen by an OU coaching staff in a quarter-century. It made no sense. It made no sense to me, nor the announcers, nor several semi-drunk viewers next to me who are (thankfully) not paid millions of dollars to make such decisions. - The whole baffling blunder — one any number of teenagers could avoid while playing Madden — only confirmed how I have felt the past few games. The Sooners are at a decided disadvantage every week when it comes to in-game coaching management … which isn’t even counting the GENERAL coaching mismanagement that allowed OU’s offensive line issues to metastasize … or the quarterback situation to be mishandled … or the running back and tight end rooms to be generally inept.
- Don’t believe me about coaching concerns? Fast forward six minutes after the timeout debacle and OU had the ball inside Ole Miss’ red zone. On first and 10 from the 13 yard line, OU coaches dialed up a mind-numbingly “tight end pass” for Bauer Sharp, who caught the ball seven yards behind the line of scrimmage, saw the ONE receiver running a route was triple-covered, and scrambled for a loss of one. The Sooners did not score on the drive, punctuating a miserable half of football.
- Down in Texas, another Oklahoma team continued its own disastrous season Saturday. I would say Baylor ran through Oklahoma State’s defense during its 38-28 win in ways I’ve never seen before, but that would be a lie. I HAVE seen it before, all this season, from OSU. The Cowboys came into the game 129th out of 133 teams in rushing defense, and that ranking will not improve after the Baylor game.
- The Cowboys gave up an absolute staggering 343 rushing yards, 142 of which came from Baylor running back Dawson Pendergrass on just six carries — an astounding average of 23.7 yards per trot. It wasn’t as if the running game caught OSU by surprise. Time after time, I’d see an OSU defense load up to stop the run, only to watch Pendergrass or another back bounce off ridiculously bad tackling efforts for a big gain.
- I’ll say it again: OSU fans are too caught up in their ire for offensive coordinator Kasey Dunn to realize he is not the real problem. Maybe he is not a solution to the team’s overall ills, but he’s not to blame for an OSU defense that makes every opponent look like the 1974 version of an Oklahoma Sooners wishbone attack.
- Oklahoma State quarterback Alan Bowman was competent, wide receiver Brennan Presley was electric, running back Ollie Gordon II was productive. The offense did enough, but the defense didn’t. OSU fans should stop worrying so much about Dunn, the quarterback situation or why Gordon still isn’t given the ball enough, and instead focus fury on the other side of the ball, which, quite frankly, is an embarrassment at the same level of their cross-state rivals’ offense.
- Elsewhere in college football, Alabama easily cruised past Missouri 34-0. The Tigers played without starting quarterback Brady Cook for most of the game because of injuries, but it likely didn’t make much difference. Missouri has looked very MIDzouri most of the season, and it culminated in Saturday’s butt-whooping. It’ll be interesting to see which disappointed team will still has a competitive spark in two weeks when OU visits Columbia … for a rematch of that 2007 Big 12 championship game that featured current OU offensive coordinator Joe Jon Finley at tight end and — gasp — OU’s quarterback taking snaps under center!
- When Texas A&M finally pulled the plug on the Conner Weigman era, it must have been a breath of fresh air for the Aggie faithful. Weigman has been pedestrian at quarterback — when he was able to avoid injuries and actually take the field — for the past two-plus years. After managing just 64 passing yards by completing six of 18 attempts, he was benched midway through the third quarter against LSU for Marcel Reed. Reed immediately provided a spark, mostly by rushing for 62 yards in just under a half. The Aggies came back from a 17-7 halftime deficit for a resounding 38-23 win to put themselves squarely in the driver’s seat for an SEC Championship Game berth.
- BYU pulled another “upset,” this time 37-24 over UCF, to remain undefeated. Las Vegas evidently despises the Cougars — how else to explain why they were a 3½-point underdog against the 3-4 Knights, or barely favored at home against Oklahoma State and Arizona the last two weeks, or not favored at all against Baylor last month? Point-spread shenanigans aside, BYU’s win keeps it and Iowa State as the only undefeated teams in the Big 12.
- Hot on their heels is Kansas State (7-1 overall, 4-1 conference), after an entertaining Sunflower State showdown victory over Kansas. Perhaps most surprisingly, Colorado (6-2, 4-1) also remains on a roll. The Prime Time Buffaloes thrust themselves into the middle of the Big 12 race thanks to a 34-23 win over Cincinnati on Saturday.
- In what might have been the most important game between a pair of non-power conference teams in the history of college football, Boise State outlasted UNLV 29-24. The significance stemmed from the impending inclusion of the country’s best mid-major within the college football playoffs this year. Boise State, with the road win, would seem to have the inside track to the berth. Teams to watch among the mid-majors, though, include Army, Tulane, Louisiana and Louisiana-Monroe.
- One mid-major to NOT watch anymore, as far as playoffs go, is Navy. The Midshipmen put their perfect record on the line at Notre Dame and left with bruised behinds. The Fighting Irish crushed the Middies, 51-14, sinking any hope they might have had of being the mid-major representative in the playoffs.
