Texas vs. Oklahoma thriller
It was a wild week of college football. Seven ranked teams lost, including five top-20 teams.
The day’s great slate of games started at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas. For almost 90 years, Texas and Oklahoma have met in Dallas to settle their hatred for each other.
What’s cool about the ‘Red River Rivalry,’ as they call it down south, is that the fans split the Cotton Bowl evenly, exactly down the middle. One side of the stadium is where Texas fans — all dressed in burnt orange — sit, and the Oklahoma fans — dressed in Crimson red — occupy the other side of the bowl-shaped stadium.
As it does every year, the rivalry brought out some famous people, including actor Matthew McConaughey, a known Texas alum, and current NFL quarterback Baker Mayfield, who led the Oklahoma Sooner offense from 2014-17.
Last year’s game wasn’t much to write home about — Texas curb stomped Oklahoma 49-0 — but Saturday’s game was a thriller between two top-15 teams.
The game featured more than 1,000 yards of total offense, a blocked punt that was recovered in the end zone for a touchdown and a last-minute, game-winning touchdown.
No team led by double digits until the third quarter when Oklahoma took a 27-17 lead, but Texas scored 13 unanswered points and took a 30-27 lead with 1:17 to play in the game.
Oklahoma quarterback Dillon Gabriel was calm, cool and collected, though, as he led the Sooners down the field. Gabriel threw the game-winning touchdown with 15 seconds left to send Texas back home to Austin with its first loss of the year.
The Sooners are now the lone unbeaten team in the Big 12, and their schedule is favorable as we reach the halfway point in the regular season.
Brent Venables has Oklahoma in a decent position to make it to the College Football Playoff, while Texas will need to run the table in order to reach the four-team field.
Mario Cristobal makes the dumbest coaching move in history
Mario Cristobal might just be the dumbest person on the planet.
Seriously, what he did on Saturday was one of the worst coaching decisions in the history of American football, and he’ll never forgive himself for it.
Leading 20-17 with less than 35 seconds remaining in the game, Miami had the ball, 3rd and 10 in Georgia Tech territory. All Miami had to do was take a knee, and the game would’ve been over. It would’ve been 4th and 10, but the play clock would’ve reset to 40 seconds, and the Hurricanes wouldn’t have had to run another play.
The key word in that last paragraph: would.
Cristobal elected to run the ball with his running back, you know, just for the fun of it, instead of taking the knee and ending the game.
But the running back fumbled. And Georgia Tech recovered.
It was a dumb move by Cristobal, but surely the Miami defense would stop Georgia Tech and close out the game, right?
Key word again: would.
GT drove 74 yards in four plays and scored a touchdown with one second left, handing Miami its first loss of the season.
After the game, Cristobal admitted his team should have taken a knee.
“We should have taken a knee.” — Mario Cristobal
Wow, you don’t say, coach! It’s called “victory formation” for a reason.
Clear top two in CFB?
Throw away all the crazy rivalry endings and baffling coaching decisions. Those moments are what make college football great, but do any of the aforementioned teams have a shot at winning the national title?
Certainly not Georgia Tech — it already has three losses.
Miami is out — it already has a loss, and with a tough schedule looming, how can a coach who can’t tell his quarterback to take a knee lead his team against three upcoming ranked opponents?
Texas — they’d have to win out, but even then, do they have enough talent to compete with the big boys? Probably not.
Oklahoma might have the best shot of the four aforementioned teams — it’s 6-0 and has a relatively easy schedule the rest of the way — but are they a national contender in year two under Venables? Some would argue no.
Of course, there are plenty of other really good teams in college football, but week by week, it’s becoming increasingly clear that there are two teams in a tier of their own: Georgia and Michigan.
The Bulldogs and Wolverines accounted for 61 of the 63 first-place votes in this week’s AP Poll, with Georgia, the two-time defending national champions, receiving 50, while Michigan, the two-time defending Big Ten champions, received 11.
Georgia has won 23 games in a row dating back to 2021. No team in college football has been better, and apart from a touchdown game at Auburn two weeks ago, the Bulldogs have looked every bit like a top-ranked team in the country.
Meanwhile, Michigan has steamrolled every team it’s played so far, which isn’t saying much because the Wolverines’ competition has been… well, not good at all.
But Michigan has taken care of business, winning all six of its games by at least 24 points.
There just aren’t two better teams in college football right now than Georgia and Michigan.
Ohio State lacks a playmaker at quarterback, USC lacks any resemblance of a defense and the same is true of Washington to a degree.
Penn State and Florida State look solid, but they haven’t been nearly as consistently dominant as the nation’s top two teams this season, and they lack experience in big games at the quarterback position.
This isn’t to say Georgia and Michigan are locks to play one another in the national title game, but it’s hard to find another team in the country executing at the level of the Bulldogs and Wolverines right now.
