College Football Roundup Week 3: What It All Means. Welcome Back, Pac-12
College football Week 3 roundup with the 5 things that matter, winners and losers, overrated and underrated aspects to the weekend, and what it all means
College Football Week 3 Roundup
College Football Week 3 Roundup
CFN 1-131 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Week 3 Scoreboard | Week 4 Early Lines
What 12-Team Playoff Would Look Like
Hot Seat Coach Rankings
AP Rankings | Coaches Poll
Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak
– Pac-12 is back One Really Big Thing
– New Year’s Six & Gof5 Most Overrated Thing
– Georgia’s blowout Most Underrated Thing
– Preseason is over What It All Means, Week 3
Winners & Losers From Week 3
Winner: Kansas
It’s not like Kansas beat a bunch of Cream Puff State teams on the way to the 3-0 start. Yeah, there was Tennessee Tech, but the O got rolling in road wins against West Virginia and Houston, too. Now Kansas has its first 3-0 start since 2009.
How crazy is this? Kansas was 2-23 in its previous 26 games before this run, and it hadn’t won more than three games in a season since that same 2009 season. Making this even sweeter …
Loser: Kansas State
Just when we all started to fall for Kansas State after a dominant 40-12 win over Missouri, it fell flat in a 17-10 home loss to … Tulane? Maybe it was a lookahead game before going to Oklahoma to start Big 12 play, or maybe the Green Wave are that good. It was a rough loss no matter what.
Winner: Arizona
You’re not crazy to suggest that Arizona was the worst Power Five team in college football over the last few years. It won one game last year, and it only won the 10-3 uggo because Cal was decimated by COVID.
Arizona was 1-23 in its previous 24 games going into the season, but it was able to ruin San Diego State’s grand opening of its new stadium, battled hard in a loss to Mississippi State, and then on Saturday, as an underdog it beat a North Dakota State team that might win the FCS Championship.
Part of the losing streak that led up to the first three games was a 70-7 loss to close out the 2020 season against …
Loser: Arizona State
There hasn’t been a losing season since 2016, and blowing off the strange short-scheduled COVID year of 2020, the last 1-2 start to a season was 1999.
Athletic departments will put up with a lot – Herm Edwards would still be the head coach right now through the NCAA investigations if the team was 3-0. Instead, ASU lost at Oklahoma State two weeks ago – no shame there – and then as a 20-point favorite it wasn’t even close in a 30-21 loss to Eastern Michigan.
Winner: UNLV
The last time UNLV was good at college football was … almost never.
There was a bowl appearance in 2013 – the Rebels lost – and that was the only winning season since 2000. There have been just four winning seasons since 1986, and almost no luck turning this thing around in recent years.
On Saturday, UNLV got revenge for that 2014 Heart of Dallas Bowl loss to North Texas with a 58-27 win. Now the team is 2-1 – the only loss a good 20-14 battle with Cal – and a bowl appearance is a real possibility.
Getting to a bowl might come down to the regular season finale against …
Loser: Nevada
Nevada had four straight winning seasons under Jay Norvell. He left for Colorado State, the offense was starting over, and the results have been mixed in a 2-2 start.
The wins over New Mexico State and Texas State were expected, but the Wolf Pack lost to Incarnate Word from the FCS 55-41, and it didn’t do anything in the rain and delays against Iowa in a 27-0 loss.
Winner: Rutgers
Rutgers has done this before. It went 3-0 last year, and then lost four straight. 2012 it started 3-0 and went on to a nine-win season. Even with the success of early last year, winning a lot isn’t the norm for the program.
Boston College, Wagner, and Temple haven’t exactly set the world on fire, but 3-0 is 3-0, the Scarlet Knight defense is playing great, and it’s scoring, unlike …
Loser: Iowa’s offense
The Hawkeyes last through several big delays and the rain to get by Nevada 27-0. To put this into perspective, the point total was 39, and the two teams didn’t even get close.
A point total of 54 is normal – and slightly low – for an average college game. that’s how many total points were scored in the first three Iowa games.
Iowa is currently dead last in the nation in total offense, 124th in scoring offense, 124th in passing, and 2-1 is 2-1. Get by Rutgers, and all will be okay before hosting Michigan.
– Pac-12 is back One Really Big Thing
– New Year’s Six & Gof5 Most Overrated Thing
– Georgia’s blowout Most Underrated Thing
– Preseason is over What It All Means, Week 3
NEXT: The really big Week 3 thing was …
The Really Big Week 3 Thing Was …
Welcome back, Pac-12
All of a sudden, in case you haven’t noticed, the Pac-12 has turned into the most interesting conference in college football.
The SEC is boring (not really, but I’m riffing here). Georgia is awesome, Alabama is slightly less awesome than that, and everyone else ranges from okay to phenomenal right behind those two.
The Big Ten is boring (not really, but I’m riffing here). Michigan, Penn State, and Minnesota are all playing well, and Rutgers and Indiana are wonderful stories, but they’re all just treading water until Ohio State wins the Big Ten championship by as many points as it wants to.
The Big 12 is boring (REALLY not really, but I’m riffing here). Everyone is good from 1-to-10, they’re all going to beat each other up, and then next year a few teams will leave, and some new ones will come in. No big whoop.
The ACC is boring (really).
And then there’s the Pac-12.
The conference that was left for dead when USC and UCLA announced they were leaving for the Big Ten soon.
The conference that’s being threatened to become part of a Big 12 shopping spree.
The conference that hasn’t figured out that it needs to add San Diego State, UNLV, and some other schools NOW, just because.
The conference that got rocked by Georgia to start the season, got picked off by Florida, and stalled against Mississippi State.
The conference that just fired a head coach (Herm Edwards), and is this close to firing another (Karl Dorrell).
Yeah, that conference.
It also went into Madison, Wisconsin and came away with a Washington State win over the Badgers.
It just hosted a hot Michigan State in Seattle, and sent it away with a loss. It just hosted a hot BYU that was being talked about as a possible playoff team. Oregon made that go bye-bye.
It also has the most fun college football team on the planet in USC – there’s still time to jump on my USC Will Make The Playoff party bus – has a great story in a plucky Arizona, has five unbeaten teams, a Cal team that came within a Hail Mary of making Notre Dame freak out, and …
Yeah, Colorado is a problem and Arizona State isn’t great. However, Oregon and Washington getting their respective wins 1) totally jacked up the league’s profile, 2) cemented themselves – along with Utah coming off a dominant win over San Diego State – as star programs to rebuild around, and 3) are appointment television now.
All that, and again, USC is going to be a thing for the rest of the year.
Yeah, all of this might be making Oregon, Washington, Arizona – and even Arizona State – more attractive to the Big Ten, SEC, and Big 12 because of the media markets.
Or, the Pac-12 has something great happening at just the right time.
– Kansas, Arizona, UNLV Winners & Losers
– New Year’s Six & Gof5 Most Overrated Thing
– Georgia’s blowout Most Underrated Thing
– Preseason is over What It All Means, Week 3
NEXT: The most overrated thing was …
The Most Overrated Thing Was …
All of the hype about the Group of Five programs after the first two weeks, and that doesn’t include …
Week 2 was all about the Sun Belt, and rightly so.
Marshall shocked Notre Dame, Appalachian State beat Texas A&M, and Georgia Southern helped push Scott Frost out the door at Nebraska.
GameDay caught on and went to Boone, North Carolina, but the Appalachian State game vs Troy was on ESPN+, meaning most of the world missed what’s 1000% certain to be the best ending of the college football season.
Meanwhile, Georgia Southern got stomped by UAB, Louisiana lost to Rice, and Marshall got sad tromboned by (wah, wahhhh) Bowling Green.
The Sun Belt is about to start eating itself in conference play, Conference USA doesn’t have a team good enough to come close to being a national thing, the Mountain West is awful, the MAC isn’t very good, and the American Athletic Conference is tapping out as its top teams are waiting to move to better conferences.
Houston was supposed to be the best of the Group of Five bunch, and then it lost to Kansas this weekend. UCF already lost to Louisville, Cincinnati lost to Arkansas, and …
DOESN’T ANYONE WANT TO PLAY IN A NEW YEAR’S SIX GAME?
Forget about the College Football Playoff – there’s no Cincinnati scenario this year. There’s no one who appears to be good enough to end up in the automatic slot in the New Year’s Six – it’ll be the Cotton Bowl – but someone has to go.
In the end it’s all just a glorified exhibition until the College Football Playoff expands. However, it’s still an honor, it’s still a big stage, and it’s going to be a war of attrition to see who ends up getting the spot.
– Kansas, Arizona, UNLV Winners & Losers
– Pac-12 is back One Really Big Thing
– Georgia’s blowout Most Underrated Thing
– Preseason is over What It All Means, Week 3
NEXT: The most underrated thing was …
The Most Underrated Thing Was …
Georgia dropkicked South Carolina
South Carolina has a terrific team under head coach Shane Beamer. It’s 1-2, but there’s no shame in losing at Arkansas in a shootout, and there’s really no issue with losing to the No. 1 team in college football.
The Gamecocks will pull off a few big wins this year and they’ll end going bowling – it’ll be a fight, though, in the rigors of the SEC. Before they do all of that, they had to deal with Georgia in a home game that some thought would be a test for the defending national champion.
Oh yes, they did the whole Sandstorm thing, there were pieces of cloth being swirled around, and everyone got into a tizzy, and then the South Carolina offense stalled and had to punt.
Georgia drove 82 yards in ten plays in scored, the defense picked off a Spencer Rattler pass, the offense scored again, Beamer yelled at some women to get off the field – he didn’t realize they were being honored, and later apologized – Georgia scored again, and …
48-7. It was even worse than that – South Carolina got its touchdown in final minute garbage time.
And again, South Carolina is good.
Oregon proved against BYU that its great, but it would still be getting scored on by Georgia if the people who ran the stadium didn’t make everyone leave.
So far, Georgia has beaten Oregon, Samford, and South Carolina by a combined score of 130-10, and again, the only touchdown allowed was very, very late in Columbia last week after just about everyone had went to go do something more interesting.
Last year’s Georgia team beat Clemson, UAB, and South Carolina to start the season by a combined score of 106-23. Now, the Dawgs didn’t allow a point over their next two games and only gave up more than 18 once all season, but as it turns out, the 2022 version appears to be pretty good, too.
Kent State, at Missouri, Auburn, Vanderbilt. It’s going to get a whole lot uglier before the date with Florida at the end of October.
– Kansas, Arizona, UNLV Winners & Losers
– Pac-12 is back One Really Big Thing
– New Year’s Six & Gof5 Most Overrated Thing
– Preseason is over What It All Means, Week 3
NEXT: What It All Means: Week 3
What It All Means: Week 3
And now we get going.
Oh thank the heavens.
We’re not totally done with the FBS vs FCS games, but we’re close as we finally get rid of most of the fluff.
It’s conference play time, and it couldn’t come fast enough.
It’s not like the first three weeks plus Week 0 weren’t without their charm – on the contrary, this is the most fun start to the college football season in a long, long time – but Week 3 sort of stalled.
There was the great end to Notre Dame and Cal – the Bears had a Hail Mary in their hands – and the Appalachian State catch and score in the final seconds to beat Troy was amazing.
The final few minutes of Syracuse’s wild win over Purdue was a blast, South Alabama blowing it against UCLA was fascinating, and …
Here we go. Everyone got their tune-ups in, and everyone knows what they have to work with.
College Football Week 3 Roundup
CFN 1-131 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Week 3 Scoreboard | Week 4 Early Lines
What 12-Team Playoff Would Look Like
Hot Seat Coach Rankings
AP Rankings | Coaches Poll
Again, not every matchup is brilliant – there are still seven FCS teams getting paychecks from FBS schools this weekend – but USC goes to play an unbeaten Oregon State team late on Saturday night.
Ohio State has to deal with a Wisconsin team that no one thinks has a shot to pull this off – even though it could.
Washington State could take its season up several notches if it can beat Oregon, Arkansas and Texas A&M are about to do what they do in Jerry World, Florida vs. Tennessee is more exciting than it’s been in years, and it all starts out on Saturday morning with unbeaten Maryland going to unbeaten Michigan and …
We’re up and rolling now. Welcome to Week 4.
– Kansas, Arizona, UNLV Winners & Losers
– Pac-12 is back One Really Big Thing
– New Year’s Six & Gof5 Most Overrated Thing
– Georgia’s blowout Most Underrated Thing
– Preseason is over What It All Means, Week 3
