It's not always neat, but college football has a way of building a beachhead on wherever popular culture is squinting at a given moment. The 1920s belonged to Hollywood; USC won 10 games three times. Washington won the national title the year and came out; Stanford won 12 games the year came out.
Into the Nashville Decade swaggers Vanderbilt—7-1 after beating Missouri 17–10 Saturday and now knocking on the door of a College Football Playoff appearance. The Commodores embody the dual nature of their oft-memed home city in the 2020s—eager to entertain outsiders yet skeptical of their industry's artifice. Together with Memphis and Tennessee, they are leading a watershed year for college football in the state.
Here's hoping your team heard the sweet music of victory Saturday as the calendar prepares to turn to November. Welcome to Week 9's winners and losers.
Winner: The Great State of Tennessee
On Saturday the Volunteers, ranked No. 17, blew out Kentucky 56–34 on the road—and it's plausible that their accomplishment was the most significant storyline of the day in their state. Vanderbilt hosted in the morning and showcased its growing legitimacy by grinding out a win over Missouri, while Memphis rallied to beat South Florida and seems likely to return to the top 25 on Sunday. Both are College Football Playoff contenders, as is Tennessee, whose most difficult remaining game is a Nov. 29 clash with… the Commodores. Before 2024, there had never been a season where Memphis, the Volunteers and Vanderbilt had all spent time in the Top 25.
Loser: Brian Kelly
The nature of Kelly's fly-by-night exit from Notre Dame in 2021—with its accompanying seriocomic message to his team and faux-Southern accent—meant that, for the sake of the coach's on-field legacy, his voyage to LSU to work. It appeared that it would for a time—LSU finished No. 12 as recently as 2023—but only in college football can two years ago feel like ancient history. No. 3 Texas A&M and coach Mike Elko, an ex-Kelly employee, buried Kelly's high-priced squad 49–25 Saturday; one of modern college football's boldest career moves is now looking like one of its most reckless. Next up for LSU: Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Winner: Alabama and Texas—escape artists
Speaking of the Crimson Tide, they had a fight on their hands Saturday from South Carolina, continuing a strange Kalen DeBoer-era trait: a clinical efficiency against ranked teams balanced by wild mood swings against unranked ones. Alabama trailed deep into the fourth quarter in a game where it was outgained by eight yards, but pulled out a 29–22 win on a late score by wide receiver Germie Bernard. Texas, meanwhile, wiped out a 17–point deficit to beat Mississippi State in overtime in a game in which it lost quarterback Arch Manning to injury. Both teams could make the CFP; both teams have consistently left their fans wanting in '25.
Loser: Oklahoma
Has Oklahoma been a suspect team all along? Or is it a good team battling a debilitating case of SEC exposure? For the prosecution: the Sooners' two banner wins (Michigan and Auburn) are depreciating, and the team's first loss came against a merely good Longhorns team. For the defense: Oklahoma forced Ole Miss, a near-CFP lock, into a cat-and-mouse game the Sooners easily could've pulled out (the prosecution counters that Georgia also did this and was good enough to finish the job). Both sides can agree that Oklahoma has looked different—and not good-different—since quarterback John Mateer's return from hand surgery; the ex-Heisman candidate barely cracked a 50% completion percentage for the second time in three weeks.
Winner: BYU and Indiana—history makers
It is astonishing that BYU—conservatively one of the 20 best programs of the last quarter of the 20th century—entered Saturday never having started 8-0 in back-to-back seasons. Cougars coach Kalani Sitake has long been feted as one of college football's Good Guys, but people are (somehow just now) beginning to wise to the fact that he can coach. After rallying to beat Iowa State, BYU will rest up and head to Lubbock for the Big 12's game of the year against Texas Tech Nov. 8. You already knew Indiana boss Curt Cignetti could coach, but he proved it again Saturday in a 56–6 dismantling of UCLA 500 miles east of Ames, Iowa. The Hoosiers, too, are 8-0 for the second straight season in a program first.
Loser: Minnesota
The Big Ten West is gone, but its anarchic ethic remains, and no team has embodied it this year quite like Minnesota. A log of Golden Gopher adventures and misadventures in '25 includes: a) the team's largest win since 1926 (a 66–0 decision over Northwestern State) on Sept. 6, b) a 27–14 loss to a Cal team that immediately turned around and lost by 34 to San Diego State, c) a 24–6 beatdown of a Nebraska team people agreed was starting to get its stuff together, and d) a random 41–3 loss to an Iowa team that—don't look now!—is averaging 31.2 points per game. Ohio State and Indiana's much-discussed Big Ten championship collision course, compelling as it may be, is denying the Upper Midwest a lot of silliness.
Winner: Drew Mestemaker
A loose theory has taken hold among football's cognoscenti that the 2010s were a golden age of passing, and the adjustments of defenses everywhere has slammed the door shut on that era ever coming back. Enter North Texas quarterback Drew Mestemaker. The Mean Green signal-caller turned back the clock 10 years against Charlotte Friday with this delectable statline: 37 completions in 49 attempts, , four touchdowns, one interception. Mestemaker is the 22nd quarterback in FBS history to throw for 600 yards in a game and only the third to do so in the 2020s. Navy visits 7-1 North Texas Saturday in both a potential CFP elimination game and college football's stylistic contrast contest of the year.
Loser: Colorado
Not unfairly, Colorado is still riding the goodwill from a breakthrough '24 in which it produced a pair of superstars—that's why the Buffaloes' loss Saturday night, in a rivalry game, was so shocking. Utah went up 43–0 on Colorado at the half and outgained the Buffaloes 587–140, stirring unpleasant memories of 2022 among the faithful. What happened to coach Deion Sanders's squad in the wake of a nice win over the Cyclones on Oct. 11? He doesn't seem to know, calling himself "dumbfounded" via ESPN and the AP. From a public-image perspective, the parity of the Big 12 works against Colorado here—a league as chaotic as this should not lend itself to 46-point losses. A bowl game is still possible; the Buffaloes need three of four from Arizona, an abysmal West Virginia team, Arizona State and Kansas State.
Winner: Delaware and Missouri State
FBS has a pair of FCS transitioners this year, and the deck has been stacked against them from the get-go. Not only do Delaware and Missouri State enter a lawless arena in terms of general financial guidance, but they have to contend with the long shadows of the past decade's more successful climbers—chief among them Coastal Carolina, James Madison and Liberty. Somehow, the Blue Hens and the Bears are over .500 after beating established FBS programs Wednesday: Delaware downed Middle Tennessee 31–28 and Missouri State won 24–17 at New Mexico State. Both are long shots to play in bowl games for clerical reasons, so the world will have to wait a year to learn about the Blue Hens' past success in the Refrigerator Bowl.
Loser: SMU—finally
In the 1990s, much was made of the fact that Florida State did not lose an ACC game until its fourth year in the conference (to Virginia in the Cavaliers' greatest-ever win in 1995). With markedly less fanfare, SMU opened its conference tenure on a similar streak. In '24, the Mustangs went 8-0 in league play before losing to Clemson in the ACC championship. In '25, SMU won its first three conference games—before everything went up in smoke Saturday. Wake Forest pulled out an unsightly 13–12 home win over the Mustangs to move to 5-2 in year one under coach Jake Dickert. Miami, scheduled to visit SMU Saturday, will face a Mustangs team with extra motivation as former Hurricanes offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee seeks to right the ship.
