Week 3 college football awards: So THAT'S why we play rivalry games

Conference realignment has changed some rivalries, but it can never ruin something as beautiful as hate. Plus, an iconic MAC > SEC win, a 40-game losing streak snapped, & a loophole to destroy Cal

Hey, sorry for announcing I’d do weekly college football recaps and then immediately going AWOL for two weeks.

See, what happened was: My wife and I went to Italy for her cousin’s wedding. Then my wife badly injured her foot and knee and we had to skip the wedding and go to the Italian hospital and change our travel plans. I was like “okay, bummer, but we’re still in a beautiful place and we can still eat delicious food and I can do some blogging instead of going to museums.” And then I got the worst stomach bug of my life and threw up so aggressively that I got a hernia. So I kinda lost the desire to eat delicious food or do blogging. Not an ideal vacation, TBH.

I wouldn’t blame you for unsubscribing, but I promise I’m here now! My wife has started walking very slowly and I recently thought about the concept of ravioli without feeling instantly nauseous. You’ll be getting these recaps every week and I have two more posts planned for this week.

Week 3 MVP: Rivalry Games

Week 3 didn’t have the flashy stuff. Saturday had exactly one top-25 matchup, and it was between Missouri and Boston College. And the 14 ranked teams which took on unranked opponents went 14-0, although Kentucky did nearly beat No. 1 Georgia.

But a couple of games with no ranked teams and no playoff implications served as spectacular reminders of what’s great about college football. Week 3 shouldn’t be much of a rivalry week, but a handful of matchups were dumped into September by conference realignment—and two of them delivered in spectacular fashion.

The two remaining Pac-12 schools played their in-state rivals Saturday—contentious-yet-hopeful matchups after Oregon and Washington chased big B1G money and mega-dumped Oregon State and Washington State into conference oblivion. The Beavers were no match for the Ducks—but Wazzu won the Apple Cup with a goal line stand in the closing seconds:

(I’m trying to talk about conference realignment stuff here, but: with the game on the line, Washington called a short-side speed option with Will Rogers, a fifth year QB with negative 350 career rushing yards. LMAO.)

I went to last year’s Apple Cup, which Washington won on a last-second field goal. I have been around fans who have lost games before, and Wazzu fans have lost plenty over the years. But the betrayal and hurt caused by Washington sending Wazzu went beyond sports feelings and into something deeper. You expect your rival to beat you; you don’t expect them to leave you for dead. Saturday wasn’t just a win for Wazzu; it was catharsis, a sign there’s always going to be something to play for after the rug was pulled from under them.

A few minutes later, Pitt completed a stunning comeback against West Virginia in the Backyard Brawl. Trailing 34-24 with five minutes to go, Alabama transfer Eli Holstein—THE THROWING BOVINE!—led the Panthers on back-to-back 75-yard TD drives, including a 40-yard TD pass on 2nd-and-30.

I also went to last year’s Backyard Brawl. (What can I say, I had a great year! The rivalry took almost a decade off after the football Big East fell apart—but the hate between those two schools never died. It fermented like moonshine in a forgotten still, turning into industrial-grade hooch-hate that could strip paint off a door. (I don’t actually know if this is how the fermentation process works.) Absence makes the hate grow hotter, and the Brawl still feels like a Rust Belt Super Bowl.

These games should be played right around Thanksgiving, a perfect time for uneasy family gatherings. They should make or break team’s seasons—last year, Washington secured a spot in the last Pac-12 championship game with an Apple Cup win, and Pitt famously ruined the best West Virginia season in history with a 13-9 win in the 2007 Brawl.

We’ve lost something.

But we’ve still got something.

I get weepy-preachy about conference realignment, but Saturday showed there’s a future: Play rivalry games. Play them in September or November; play them on campuses or in NFL stadiums. Play them in conference or not. Damn the details and play them. Saturday showed that even in a world where these games mean less than they used to, they still mean more than just about anything.

Win of the Week: Toledo

It’s comical that the SEC and the MAC are technically considered to be in the same competitive tier of the sport. One league plays in 100,000-seat stadiums in games that entire states base their whole weekend around. The other hopes a few thousand people can spare a few hours of their Tuesday to sit on some cold bleachers. It’s palaces vs. pigpens.

But Saturday, Toledo won the most emphatic victory in the modern history of this massive mismatch. The Rockets thumped Mississippi State in a 41-17 win that wasn’t even that close—the score was 35-3 at one point, and Toledo’s backup running back lost a goal-line fumble going for a garbage time TD in the fourth quarter. (Yes, Toledo’s backup running back had a chance to score a garbage time TD against an SEC team. A beautiful sentence.)

Toledo straight-up looked like the better team. The last thing you’d expect in a game like this would be a dominant offensive line performance from the underdog—but Toledo killed Mississippi State in the trenches. The Bulldogs recorded zero sacks or QB pressures, and only averaged 2.4 yards per carry running the ball.

Surely, this tells us something about the young tenure of new Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby, who clearly has not assembled a functional football team in his first head coaching gig. But even in the context of a new coach for a non-elite SEC program, this is a stunner. Since 2010, MAC teams were 1-55 against the SEC, with the last win coming nine years ago—also Toledo, who beat Arkansas 16-12 in 2015. Toledo’s margin of victory (24) was larger than the combined margin of victory in every previous MAC over SEC wins in the 21st century combined (22).

Times have been bleaker than usual for the MAC. The transfer portal combined with the skyrocketing revenues of leagues like the SEC have made life nearly untenable for MAC programs, who simply don’t have the funds to hang onto quality players or coaches. As you read on, you’ll get to a game that’s a bit more representative of the gap between these leagues.

But the MAC is fighting back. Between Northern Illinois’ win over Notre Dame and Toledo beating the breaks off the Bulldogs, there’s a legitimate chance that a strong MAC champion makes the College Football Playoff. Hopefully, we’ll get some Tuesday nights in November where it feels like everything is at stake. (Besides, you know. That one Tuesday night in November that we don’t want to talk about.)

Play of the Week: Kansas vs. the bouncing ball

I’m a big fan of UNLV quarterback Matthew “Crazy Legs” Sluka, an All-American transfer from Holy Cross. (“Crazy Legs” is what I end up calling any QB over 6-2 who drops back to pass, just kinda pretends to be interested in throwing the ball, then takes off downfield like an emu sprinting to kick an Australian soldier in the head.) But against Kansas, Sluka fumbled the ball in arguably the worst possible place: He was scrambling—Crazy Legs Sluka is always scrambling—and had just crossed the line of scrimmage. His offensive line was behind him and his receivers were miles ahead. The ball skittered free into an area entirely inhabited by Kansas defenders.

A posse of a half-dozen Jayhawks assembled to corral the tiny bouncing ball. They were organized, determined, resolute, and entirely unbothered by UNLV players. As you can see from the following screenshots, the tiny bouncing ball totally kicked their asses.

They look like images from a kids’ movie where, like, a cartoon mouse raids a giant cheese factory and dozens of security guards show up to chase after the mouse and one yells GET HIIIMMMMMM!!!! but they end up tripping and diving crashing into giant cheese wheels and falling into the elaborate cheese machines.

After taking the scenic route through Kansas’ entire defense, the ball bounced directly to UNLV running back Kylin James, who was standing off to the side while Kansas had their whole squad chasing the ball. Sluka and UNLV then went on one of the silliest game-winning drives of the year: They burned eight of the remaining 10 minutes going 44 yards to the end zone and punched in the go-ahead touchdown.

Performance of the Week: Arch Madness

Saturday, a dream burst into reality in Austin. After an injury to starting QB Quinn Ewers, Texas QB Arch Manning came into the Longhorns’ game against UTSA, vaulting the most hyped player none of us have really seen into the first real playing time of his career.

And he looked great. Sure, UTSA, whatever: He threw 12 passes for 225 yards and four touchdowns. Some passes were to wide-open players, but there’s a 30-ish yard pass on the run to a covered receiver and a 67-yard rushing TD where he sprints away from UTSA defensive backs. (Remember, his dad, Cooper Manning, is the one who played wide receiver before a spine injury—he might be a bit more mobile than Peyton or Eli.)

The same thing which has made Arch such a highly anticipated prospect—his relation to the most storied QB family in the sport—has also allowed him to have an atypical career for a 5-star QB in 2024. While players whose careers and financial futures depend on securing early playing time and boosting their NIL brands, Arch has been fine riding the pine and barely posting to his hundreds of thousands of IG followers. (This trait is not necessarily shared by every current QB prospect related to a legendary NFL superstar.) Arch only threw five passes as a freshman third-stringer and didn’t transfer even though he knew he’d be a backup this year.

Now, the mystery box is open, and there’s something there. As it turns out, the universally top-rated QB prospect in his class, born into a family which owns and operates a mythical camp for elite quarterback prospects, is good. He’s got an arm, and he’s got speed. I feel confident in assessing that whenever Manning does get to start for a full season, there will be a year-long standing First Take segment about whether he should be the top pick in the draft. There will be YouTube views.

I can’t predict Arch’s future after a few passes against UTSA. But I know how we’re going to react to it.

Comeback Player of the Week: Pertussis

As a computer game-playing child, I learned that traveling to Oregon could result in a variety of diseases nobody gets anymore: On my pixellated journeys across the west, I lost many family members to dysentery and cholera. The Northwest is apparently still overrun with illnesses of yore, as Portland State needed to cancel Saturday’s game against South Dakota due to a teamwide whooping cough outbreak.

You probably know whooping cough as a disease which can be deadly for Victorian-era babies. Luckily, the disease isn’t particularly dangerous for healthy adults, and most of the players on Portland State’s roster were born after 1907. Pertussis has been extremely rare in America for about 100 years due to the highly effective vaccine discovered in the 1930s, although it still kills tens of thousands in less-developed parts of the world with less access to vaccines. But there has been a whooping cough resurgence this year, perhaps due to vaccine skepticism.

All the players on Portland State will be fine. But whooping cough is highly transmissible, annoying as hell, and persistent: It’s often referred to as “the 100-day cough” because people with the disease will keep coughing for months at a time. It’s possible Portland State might end up losing more than one game to the illness.

Tradition of the Week: Cal’s Cards

Back before the invention of newfangled moving pictures and, later, Jumbotrons, the most riveting thing somebody could see at a sporting event was a bunch of people flashing cards to make different images. Stadium card stunts were invented in 1910 by Cal students lucky enough to survive childhood bouts of whooping cough, and although they have since been perfected by the North Korean fans eagerly and voluntarily celebrating their glorious and prosperous nation, Cal keeps the tradition alive. Cal students design a new card show every game, and although they’re not always legible, it’s elite dork fandom for a beautiful dork fanbase.

Saturday, however, the fans rebelled against their roots. After halftime, students started tossing their cards onto the field, picking up two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. That led head coach Justin Wilcox to take the referees’s microphone and urge fans to stop costing his team 15 yards at a time.

Cal received no further penalties, so the request must have worked. (Either that or the kids ran out of cards to throw.) The penalties didn’t cost Cal—one came after a touchdown, the other came on a drive that ended in an San Diego State punt—but revealed a critical weakness.

With Cal sitting at 3-0, fans of their opponents have a clear mission: Head into that stadium and start chucking cards onto the field ahead of critical downs. The refs will penalize Cal no matter who’s throwing them. It’s a loophole that might decide this year’s ACC championship.

Masochists of the Week: Kent State

A standard football game is 60 minutes long, but don’t force it! Coaches can mutually agree to a shortened game at any point, a clause typically activated in case of severe blowouts. For example: With South Alabama up 80-10 after three quarters on FCS opponent Northwestern State Thursday night, the coaches agreed to play a six-minute fourth quarter. The NCAA’s rulebook lays out a scenario where this might take place: “At halftime, the score is 56-0.”

On Saturday, the score was Tennessee 65, Kent State 0. The Vols are Playoff contenders. The Golden Flashes are probably going to go 0-12. Last year they went 1-11 with a win over a weak FCS opponent, Central Connecticut State. This year, the Golden Flashes lost their matchup with a weak FCS opponent, falling 23-17 to St. Francis (PA) last week. They are almost definitely the worst team in the top tier of college football.

So the Vols offered some mercy… and Kent State declined, option, opting to play the full-length game. Look, buddy, you paid us $1.35 million for an hour of football. You’re getting the whole 60 minutes.

Kent State framed the decision as a test of their resolve:

"I talked to the captains about it and they said, 'Absolutely not.' said (head coach Kenni Burns.) 'Absolutely not.' It’s just not who we are at all as a football program."

I’m sure this happens somewhat regularly without getting leaked to the public, but I can’t remember any prior instances of teams refusing to shorten a game like this. And to their credit, Kent State only allowed six points in the second half, leading to a 71-0 final score. That’s 59 points better than the first half! Sure, both teams almost exclusively ran the ball, Tennessee was playing its third-and fourth-stringers, and the Vols committed a semi-intentional turnover-on-downs on the five-yard line on their final possession, and Kent State failed to score any points of their own… but still: Big improvement.

Burns said Tennessee coach Josh Heupel credited him on his team’s fight in the second half. When you’re the worst team in the sport, you take the Ws you can get, even if they’re actually lopsided losses.

The Rulebook Is Literally 257 Pages Long Call of the Week: A Pick-6 That Wasn’t

South Carolina jumped out to a 17-0 lead on LSU, but Gamecocks fans aren’t mad at their squad or their coach for letting the Tigers come back and win 36-33. No, they’re rightfully mad at the referees, who called back two South Carolina pick-sixes on ticky-tack calls. (They also made one of the worst offensive pass interference calls I’ve ever seen, but I’m going to try to stick to calls I can somewhat explain.)

In the fourth quarter, LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier lobbed a ball almost directly to South Carolina’s Nick Emmanwori, who easily ran the ball back 100-plus yards for a touchdown. If the play stood as called, South Carolina would’ve gone up 40-29 with six minutes left and held on for the win. Instead, it was called back for an unnecessary roughness call on edge rusher Kyle Kennard, who popped Nussmeier as he tried to track down Emmanwori:

South Carolina still got the pick, but quickly punted and LSU scored a game-winning TD on the next possession. South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer backed Kennard, noting that he specifically instructs his players to seek out and block the opposing quarterback after an interception, since they’re often the last man back and the only person capable of making a play. (This has led to some very funny tackle attempts, and also the entire plot of the TV show Friday Night Lights.)

I think the refs screwed this up. The rulebook does specifically point out that “a quarterback any time after a change of possession” is considered a defenseless player. It’s an odd clause—most of the defenseless player definitions highlight very specific scenarios that are obviously defenseless, like a return man in the process of catching a kick, or a player whose forward progress has been stopped… and then it protects all quarterbacks at any time after a change of possession. That definition was put in place after decades of defensive players seeing it as their right—their duty, their honor, their privilege—from getting in free shots on QBs as soon as they throw picks, adding injury to insult in a rare situation when they aren’t protected by roughing the passer rules.

But the defenseless player protections only apply to targeting calls or contact to the head and neck. You’re allowed to try to bring down a defenseless player—you can, for instance, try to tackle a player catching a pass—but you can’t use their vulnerability to target their head. This play was not targeting—Kennard uses his arms, not his helmet, and doesn’t touch Nussmeier’s head or neck. (Also, the refs didn’t eject Kennard, so even they didn’t think it was targeting.) Teams returning interceptions are legally able to block opposing QBs—something LSU fans know well, as Joe Burrow famously bounced back from a crushing hit against UCF to win that game and a bunch more.

So what happened here? I think the official saw an interception, thought “ooh! I’ve gotta remember to watch the legally defenseless QB for an illegal hit during a return!” and then immediately saw the QB get decked and threw a flag. But I don’t think the hit actually rose to the definition the official was looking for.

Lower Division Heroes of the Week: Fort Lewis Skyhawks

The longest losing streak in college football ended Saturday, as Division II Fort Lewis out of Durango, Colorado snapped a 40-game skid dating back to the pre-pan days. The Skyhawks beat NAIA Arizona Christian 17-12, the school’s first win since October 5, 2019. Yes, it came against an NAIA opponent… but FLC lost to Arizona Christian 49-25 last year and 52-12 in 2022. SO THINGS ARE LOOKING UP.

Based out of Durango, Colorado, all the way in the southwest corner of the state near the New Mexico border, Fort Lewis’ athletic history is defined by a national champion mountain biking program… and the 1955 on-field player death that led to the NCAA’s legal argument that college players are “student-athletes” and therefore can’t receive workers’ comp. The Skyhawks have not been the worst team in college football—according to Bill Connelly’s SP+, they aren’t even the worst team in Division II, ranking 159th out of 164—but have the misfortune of playing against some powerhouse programs in the competitive Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. Colorado School of Mines has made the national championship game in back-to-back years, and have beaten the Skyhawks 82-0 and 80-0 along the way.

We often go out of our way to praise the work ethic and desire of the best players in the sport—but I’m equally impressed by the guys playing for the worst teams. Even at a lower level, even at a losing program, football requires a ridiculous amount of buy-in and dedication. It requires early wakeups and leaves you with painful nights. And that commitment has to be even tougher when all you get in return a string of losses and ass-kickings. None of the players at this school had ever won a game there. This is the third year for head coach Johnny Cox, a former FLC star who has spent 30 years bouncing around the coaching world. He still hadn’t won a game.

But they kept showing up. And Saturday, for a bunch of kids at a school you’ve never heard of in a place you’ll never go, the work paid off.