College Football’s Three Up and Three Down

Week five of the college football season brought some upsets, some nail-biters, some field storming, lots of free football, and, of course, some movement in the polls and the big picture. Let’s take our weekly look at three up and three down from last Saturday.

College Football’s Three Up and Three Down

Three Who Went Up

Virginia

Ok, so last Friday night now seems like weeks ago. But the Cavaliers upset then-#7 Florida State in double overtime, Charlottesville, 46-38. The win served multiple purposes. It was a blow to a Florida State team that opened the season with a huge win over Alabama and looked like they might be returning to 2023 form and putting the 2024 debacle behind them.

But it also gave a signature win to Virginia head coach Tony Elliott. The former Clemson offensive coordinator was 11-23 in three years running Virginia football. He has been holding the program together with MacGyver-like skills in the face of tragic deaths and lingering emotional fallout. The school’s administration has been abundantly patient with him, and Friday night it paid off with a huge win before a national audience. Virginia is now 4-1 on the season, and every dime of the ACC fine for the field storming was likely worth it.

Oregon

Yes, the Ducks were ranked higher than Penn State in a few polls going into the game. But the matchup was in Happy Valley. At night. During a whiteout. And Oregon was bringing quarterback Dante Moore into his first big start on the road against Penn State’s seasoned veteran Drew Allar.

The result was a 30-24 Oregon win in double overtime. Moore, just a redshirt sophomore who transferred to Oregon before last season and then behind Dillon Gabriel most of the year, was 29 of 39 for 248 yards passing with three touchdowns.  Allar, the senior, had only 157 yards passing with two touchdowns and an interception that ended the game.

Dan Lanning’s Ducks are a championship contender.

Alabama

We just as easily could have made this about Kalen DeBoer. After the season-opening loss to Florida State, certain SEC television hosts were opining that DeBoer was not likely to make it all the way through his second season at Alabama. But the Tide did what the Tide does. They went down to Athens and beat Georgia yet again. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart is 1-7 against Alabama all-time, so we could have seen this coming. But the Tide fans have spent too much time seeing Crimson over their head coach.

Alabama still needs to fix its run game, among other things, but they are a top-10 team this week at 3-1, and DeBoer can breathe easily for a couple more days.

Three Who Went Down

LSU

The Tigers had just 257 yards of offense in a loss at Ole Miss. Now, yes, we are convinced that Ole Miss is for real, as is quarterback Trinidad Chambliss. But LSU has a quarterback who was an alleged Heisman contender when the season started. Garrett Nussmeier is now 31st in QBR in the nation. He threw for 197 yards, a touchdown, and a sack in the loss on Saturday.

The Tigers may be 4-1 overall still, but they are 1-1 in conference play and behind a pretty sizeable 8-ball. Watch people start to poke fun at head coach Brian Kelly again for being a fish out of water. It happens after losses.

Penn State

We chronicled the Nittany Lions at home to Oregon Saturday night (with the Ducks going up). Penn State came into the season with two running backs who each ran for 1,000+ yards last season and a quarterback who threw for more than 3,000 yards. But the offense is stagnant. It will get to run up stats this week against a moribund UCLA team, but that does not make it better when it is needed most.

And yes, we are going to bring up the James Franklin numbers. He is now 4-21 at Penn State against Big 10 teams ranked in the AP Top 10. It used to just be Ohio State and Michigan that haunted him. But now he has bad duck dreams also.

Florida State

We were just starting to become believers again. They looked like they had exorcized the demons of last season. Transfer quarterback Tommy Castellanos was brash but usually able to back it up.

But the Seminoles were down 14-0 in the first quarter against Virginia and needed a huge late surge to get it into overtime. We aren’t sure who the Seminoles are on this Monday, so for the letdown they gave us, we move them down.

Bonus Moving Down

Notre Dame’s Strength of Schedule

With two losses, the Irish need to run the table to have a shot at an at-large bid for the College Football Playoff. But they may need some outside help on the style points. Future 2025 Notre Dame opponents North Carolina State, USC, Boston College, Syracuse, and Pitt all lost last weekend. Stanford and Navy wins are likely not enough to help the Irish feel better right now.