Are we having fun yet? The College Football Playoff race is a wild, muddy glorious mess, but the list of national championship contenders is much shorter.
Texas headlines the list of college football’s elite, but Ohio State and Oregon aren’t far behind.
Georgia, Penn State and, yes, still Alabama form the next tier of national championship contenders.
Are we having fun yet?
Well, it’s no barrel of laughs at Florida, where fired-coach-in-waiting Billy Napier still doesn’t grasp that you’re only allowed 11 players for special teams.
And they’re feeling glum at Ole Miss, where all that NIL spending bought a defense that collapsed at the close of losses to Kentucky and LSU.
And they’re pulling their hair out in victory at Alabama, where fans fume over a defense that’s as casual as Kalen DeBoer’s fashion.
At Southern California, they’re questioning why they’re paying Lincoln Riley a fortune to be worse than Arkansas’ Sam Pittman in his last 13 games.
And, at Tennessee, they’re wondering about their quarterback investment, because the state’s best quarterback plays ball at Vanderbilt.
They’re all smiles at Texas, though, which made the SEC its playpen. In this wild, messy conference, Steve Sarkisian’s squad stands above the fray.
And they’re having a grin at Penn State, where James Franklin assembled a complete team that can win big games. Maybe now he can even whip up that airport renovation in State College.
“You can sleep when you die, right?” Ducks coach Dan Lanning told reporters of a memorable 24 hours in Eugene, Oregon.
That’s the mood at LSU, too, after the Tigers won a 4-hour, 16-minute game in which the only time they ever led was after the final play. LSU shot off approximately 9,749 fireworks to celebrate – OK, maybe a minor exaggeration – and fans stormed the field, while linebacker Whit Weeks traveled from one goal line to the other amid the carnival, hollering in excitement the whole way.
“It was fun, for sure,” Weeks said of LSU’s comeback victory, a comment apropos of a drama-filled Saturday of college football.
Four Top 25 teams won in overtime, and Alabama couldn’t exhale in a 27-25 escape against South Carolina until after an interception on the game’s final play.
Take a breath, because we’re only at the season’s midpoint, and still more than 30 teams have hopes and dreams of making the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff.
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MISERY INDEX: Lincoln Riley’s project at USC getting worse and worse
Here’s what I’m eyeing from the “Topp Rope,” while I come up for air before the next overtime begins:
Which teams can win the national championship?
We live in a reality in which Indiana, Pittsburgh, Army and Navy are all undefeated. Each is a playoff contender. You didn’t really think the 12-team playoff would make the regular season less interesting, did you?
Wacky and woolly and engaging though the playoff race will be, that doesn’t change that a chasm separates the hunk of teams that are playoff contenders from the smaller class of crème de la crème that are true national championship contenders.
Six teams that look like they can win it all:
1. Texas (6-0). The Longhorns are without obvious weakness. They’re tough at the lines of scrimmage, they teeming with playmaking wide receivers, and they have not one but two standout quarterbacks. Texas props up an otherwise muddy and murky SEC.
2. Ohio State (5-1). Yes, I know Oregon won the game, but a one-point road loss against a premier opponent didn’t turn me off the Buckeyes, who got burned by an offensive pass interference penalty in the final minute that pushed them out of field-goal range. Ohio State’s roster is loaded, although I’d prefer the starting quarterback from a few other teams listed here.
3. Oregon (6-0). Lanning finally prevailed in the big game, and quarterback Dillon Gabriel played up to his preseason Heisman Trophy contender billing. Like fellow Big Ten bully Ohio State, Oregon is believed to have spent big, big, big bucks on this roster. The Ducks and Buckeyes are seeing return on investment.
4. Georgia (5-1). The Bulldogs played seven consecutive quarters of sloppy football in a narrow win at Kentucky and a loss at Alabama, but in a sport where talent assembly goes a long way in determining champions, the Bulldogs remain among the handful of teams that possess enough ability to climb atop the heap – although they haven’t looked the part since early September.
5. Penn State (6-0). The Nittany Lions present as a lite-beer version of 2023 Michigan. They lack the receivers of frontrunners like Texas and Ohio State, but, on the whole, they rate as one of the nation’s most balanced teams. As cross-country road trips trip up Big Ten teams, it’s noteworthy Penn State persevered in a 33-30 overtime win at USC.
6. Alabama (5-1). I nearly bumped the Tide off this list, but I can’t ignore my standard that college football operates as a function of talent assembly, and the Alabama boasts more than most, plus a coach who won a number of too-close-for-comfort games at his last stop. Alabama’s weekly high-wire act resembles 2021 Alabama. That team needed a number of white-knuckle victories and every ounce of Bryce Young’s magic to reach the national championship game. This team will go as far as Jalen Milroe takes it.
I’m nearly ready to consider … : Miami (6-0), Clemson (5-1).
Three and out
1. Let’s revisit my previous point that Alabama’s heart-thumping victories didn’t begin after Nick Saban’s retirement. They began after NIL and transfer freedom kicked in before the 2021 season. Alabama, in 2021, beat Florida by two points; LSU by six points; Arkansas by seven points, and Auburn by two points; and lost to Texas A&M by three points. None of those five teams I rattled off finished better than 9-4. This win-at-the-finish act is what Alabama has become. That predates DeBoer, although losing to Vanderbilt with a coaching wearing a T-shirt started with DeBoer.
2. After the Longhorns snacked on the Sooners in a 34-3 rout, Sarkisian entered the postgame news conference chowing down on a corn dog. “It’s amazing,” the Texas coach said of his deep-fried treat. Sooners coach Brent Venables had pledged before the game to eat a corn dog if OU won, but he worried his body “might shut down” if he had to follow through with it. No worries, coach, you never came close to having to eat that dog.
3. The latest ‘Topp Rope’ 12-team playoff projections: Texas (SEC), Ohio State (Big Ten), Kansas State (Big 12), Miami (ACC), Boise State (Group of Five), plus at-large selections Georgia, Alabama, Texas A&M, Penn State, Oregon, Clemson and Notre Dame. Next up: Iowa State, Brigham Young, Tennessee, LSU.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.
The ‘Topp Rope’ is his football column published throughout the USA TODAY Network.
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