College football is unpredictable and delightful, which is why we live for what happens on Saturdays. And the final weekend of the 2024 regular season absolutely delivered, from a shocking upset (and an ugly postgame moment) in Columbus to an eight-overtime thriller in Athens and so much in between.
Each Sunday, I publish my biggest takeaways from the college football weekend. I highlight the most interesting storylines, track College Football Playoff contenders and specifically shout out individual and team performances that deserve the spotlight.
Here are my top takeaways from Week 14:
1. Ohio State should move on from Ryan Day.
I don’t know if the Buckeye administration will pull the plug now ahead of the College Football Playoff or it will wait to see if Ohio State can win a national championship to make up for its fourth straight loss to Michigan. But anything short of a national title coupled with Saturday’s embarrassing three-point loss to a deeply flawed Wolverine squad should lead to Day’s dismissal. Your job as the head football coach of Ohio State is to beat Michigan, whether That Team Up North is great, good or not-so-good. And Day can’t beat any of those versions of Michigan. The Buckeyes lost to a five-loss Michigan team led by a quarterback who threw just 62 yards in the game and tossed two interceptions.
Ohio State’s defense was terrific, but its offensive game plan was horrendous. The Buckeyes kept trying to run the ball up the middle, even when they couldn’t, and they didn’t throw the ball to their otherworldly receivers nearly enough. Freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith had a wide-open touchdown catch late in the second quarter … and then was only targeted twice in the entire second half. He was not targeted at any point in the final 25 minutes of a one-possession game against a hated rival. That is coaching malpractice. As was the late fourth-quarter penalty for illegal substitution on third-and-two that gave Michigan a fresh set of downs ahead of the eventual game-winning field goal. And the lasting image of the game, Day standing on the field alone as his players fought Wolverines over a Block M flag planted on the field, Day doing nothing to intervene.
There’s not much left to say about Day’s tenure at Ohio State at this point. He’s lost 10 total games over six seasons, and four of them have come against Michigan. His Buckeyes are far more talented than the Wolverines this season — and his donors spent $20 million to retain and attract said talent — and were 20.5-point favorites heading into Saturday’s edition of The Game for a reason. This is a loss that will never be forgotten or excused, and it feels like it has to be the final nail in the coffin for a coach who wins a lot of games but not the big ones.
2. Sherrone Moore’s Year 1 will be defined by Michigan’s upset of Ohio State.
Highlights: Michigan pulls off upset of Ohio State
Michigan managed one of the most surprising victories in the history of “The Game,” walking out of Ohio Stadium with a victory that led to a post-game skirmish.
Forget about the quarterback merry-go-round or the lopsided losses to Texas and Oregon. Moore’s first season as the full-time head coach of the Wolverines will be remembered for Michigan pulling off the biggest upset in the history of its rivalry with Ohio State. The Wolverines were 21.5-point underdogs on the road against their hated rival, and they not only played the exact game they wanted and needed to in order to have a shot at winning, they actually went out and won the game despite an anemic passing game and multiple turnovers. Moore is now 2-0 against Ohio State, and as we know because of how hot Day’s seat has gotten because he can’t beat Michigan, beating Ohio State goes a long way for the head coach in Ann Arbor. Plus, he’s bringing in the No. 1 overall recruit in the country in quarterback Bryce Underwood. How the tables can turn in just a few weeks!
3. Miami might very well miss the College Football Playoff.
The Hurricanes have always been a deeply flawed team despite having a sensational quarterback in Cam Ward. The defense was always leaky, which meant this was a team that could lose to any team with a great offense. And Syracuse quarterback Kyle McCord has had a heck of a season, leading the nation in passing yardage and leading the Orange to an impressive 9-3 record. So of course he’d be the quarterback to pick apart Miami’s defense to the tune of 380 yards and three touchdowns. It seems likely that No. 6 Miami could fall out of the CFP race after losing to an unranked opponent, because this particular selection committee has treated teams like this before (BYU — after its first loss). Not only are both of Miami’s losses to unranked opponents, both have come in the past three games. Never say never, but it’d be hard to defend including this team in the final bracket.
4. Travis Hunter may have wrapped up the Heisman Trophy this weekend.
Has Hunter locked up Heisman after Week 14 win?
The Big Ten College Countdown crew takes a closer look at the Heisman Trophy race in Week 14, debating whether Colorado two-way star Travis Hunter or Miami QB Cam Ward is more deserving of the award.
Hunter scored three touchdowns and grabbed an interception against Oklahoma State on Friday, a highlight-reel performance worthy of college football’s greatest individual honor. He was already the odds-on favorite heading into the final weekend of the regular season, and nothing he did in Colorado’s final win at home did anything to damage that. Ashton Jeanty is an unbelievable running back who is chasing Barry Sanders’ records, but it seems like voters have already decided what he’s done against mostly Group of 5 opponents isn’t enough to overcome Hunter’s two-way workload. Hunter is both a top-10 receiver in the country and one of the best cornerbacks in the nation. We’ve never seen someone do what Hunter has done, and it doesn’t seem like anyone can catch him at this point. Cam Ward won’t be playing during conference championship week, and he was probably the only player who could dazzle enough to make up the necessary ground to make this a race.
5. Alabama was the biggest indirect winner of the weekend.
The Crimson Tide took care of business by beating Auburn to win the Iron Bowl, but that’s almost a footnote to the day considering all that happened elsewhere. Clemson losing to South Carolina knocked the Tigers out of the Playoff as an at-large candidate (though they’ll have a shot at making the field by winning the ACC’s auto-bid in the league championship game). And Miami losing to unranked Syracuse will likely drop the ‘Canes out of the CFP bracket. So, Alabama is likely going to be the last team into the projected bracket this coming week. It seems fitting for a chaos-filled season that a team that needed quite a bit of help to get back into the bracket … did get that help! And still has a head-to-head win over South Carolina, a fellow bubble team.
6. Notre Dame should rise in the rankings.
Where does Notre Dame stand after topping USC?
The Big Ten College Countdown crew discusses the impact of Notre Dame’s dominant win over USC on the College Football Playoff rankings.
Ultimately, it might not matter much if the Fighting Irish are No. 4 or No. 5 in the next set of CFP rankings, because as long as they’re in the range to host a first-round game, all will be well. But now that Notre Dame has beaten USC soundly — a team that Penn State eked past in overtime — it’s time for the CFP selection committee to put the Irish above the Nittany Lions (whose loss to Ohio State depreciated a bit on Saturday). I understand that Notre Dame has the worst loss of any CFP contender, but the selection committee has already decided it is not a Playoff eliminator and that the Irish have more than made up for it in the two-plus months since. So, at this point, I’m evaluating the Notre Dame resume the way the committee is — and it seems like the committee might bump up the nation’s most dominant team (over the past two months) ahead of a Penn State team whose best “win” on its resume is a close loss to Ohio State … which just picked up its second loss.
7. We’ve got some fascinating conference championship game matchups.
Highlights: Oregon stays perfect, tops Washington
Dillon Gabriel throws for two touchdowns and runs for one more to lead No. 1 Oregon to a dominating 49-21 win vs. rival Washington, closing out an undefeated regular season.
There are a ton of first-year conference members playing for league titles (and potential automatic bids!) next weekend. Oregon in the Big Ten, Texas in the SEC, SMU in the ACC and Arizona State in the Big 12 are all great examples of first-year members making a big splash in their new leagues. Of the group, only Oregon and Texas were the obvious picks back in the preseason. SMU doing this in Year 1 of a league it had to essentially buy its way into is pretty remarkable. So is Arizona State! The Sun Devils won three games a season ago while dealing with NCAA sanctions and were picked to finish dead-last in the 16-team Big 12 back in the preseason. I’d argue that one of the best side effects of the new expanded CFP is the increased attention it’s brought to the individual Power 4 conference races. It’s highlighted what Arizona State, Colorado, SMU and others have done this season in a way I’m not sure it would have if the four-team field was locked in like it usually is by this point in the season.
8. Texas gets another shot at the only team it lost to — Georgia.
The Longhorns made the most interesting game of the weekend boring by easily dispatching rival Texas A&M on Saturday night. But that’s what Texas wanted to do, setting up a rematch against the Bulldogs in Atlanta. It’ll be interesting to see how different both teams are — and will be — from what they were in the first matchup in next weekend’s game. Georgia has been so inconsistent all season, and so much will depend on whether the ‘Dawgs can replicate the defensive effort (and effectiveness) from the first game. Can Carson Beck be accurate? Efficient? Effective? Or will Quinn Ewers (and maybe Arch Manning, occasionally?) get their revenge with a first-round CFP bye on the line?
9. Does South Carolina have a real shot at the Playoff?
The Gamecocks are one of the hottest teams in the country, with six straight wins including Saturday’s victory over No. 12 Clemson. Quarterback LaNorris Sellers was and is spectacular; he should be one of the biggest names in the sport heading into next season for sure. But the question heading into Tuesday’s rankings is whether South Carolina has done enough by picking up a top-15 win at Clemson to surpass two of the teams that beat it (Alabama and Ole Miss). So far, the committee has largely adhered to head-to-head results when evaluating two or three teams with similar resumes. But could the Gamecocks do enough to offset that and give themselves a real shot at sneaking into the 12-team field as the final at-large team?
10. College football’s gimmicky two-point conversion overtime format must go.
I understand why the sport’s leaders felt that they need to change the overtime format after the grueling seven-OT LSU-Texas A&M game in 2018. They were worried about the wear and tear of all of those additional plays. But now, six years later, I’m convinced that it was an unnecessary overreaction to an extremely rare event. There’s no good reason for teams to alternate two-point plays beginning with the third overtime … except to end the game in the flukiest possible way, based on whoever can execute their seventh-best two-point play best? There are other — better — ways to structure overtime that allow the game to be decided by normal football plays. Copy the NFL! Or keep the format that college football uses for the first two overtimes and move the line of scrimmage up to the 15- or 10-yard line for later overtime periods, so there would be fewer possible first downs (and subsequent additional plays). I just want the game to end with a real possession and a concerted strategy, not random two-point plays run after players walk back and forth across the field. It’s anticlimactic. It’s awkward. And I’d honestly rather a game end in a tie than with this crazy format deciding a meaningful regular season contest.