Winners and Losers: College Football Week 5
Photo via Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports
Winner: Big Ten Ranked Teams
Penn State, Iowa, Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State all entered Week 5 ranked, and all left the week with dominant, double-digit wins.
Penn State and Ohio State both faced Big Ten East foes in Indiana at Rutgers, with the Nittany Lions posting a shutout and the Buckeyes annihilating the Scarlet Knights. Iowa did the same Friday night with a six-pick destruction of Maryland, winning 51-14.
Michigan was oddly an underdog at Wisconsin, likely due to their inability to win there. Since 2001, the Wolverines had come away empty at Camp Randall Stadium, but after five straight losses, Michigan had enough. Big Blue has yet to trail for a single snap all season.
Michigan State rounded out the ranked teams, winning easily over the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers.
While most of these teams will eventually face off later this season, Iowa-Penn State will go down in the Hawkeye State this week (although oddly not College Gameday).
Photo via @HailStateFB on Twitter
Loser: SEC Underdogs (but not dawgs)
Well. It’s only Week 5 yet we already know the SEC Championship participants.
Barring any kind of major (and I mean major) upset, it will be the Alabama Crimson Tide versus the Georgia Bulldogs for the third time ever and the second time in the last four years.
Now, we know there’s a lot of football left to be played, but the Tide only has Arkansas and Auburn left in ranked opponents and Georgia has Kentucky and also Auburn as well. Both teams are heavily favored and for good reason.
Most chances of any other contender slipped away with losses to Arkansas, Florida and Texas A&M this weekend. Even dark horses like LSU and Ole Miss fell too, making the race for the East and West all the more narrow.
Now Arkansas and Ole Miss did lose to Georgia and Alabama respectively, but LSU falling to Auburn at home for the first time since 1999 and Florida losing to Kentucky in Lexington for the first time since 1986 don’t exactly help their odds.
Texas A&M, oh they won’t get off the hook either. The Aggies are currently at the BOTTOM of the SEC West after an embarrassing 26-22 home loss to Mississippi State.
Guess we’ll catch you in Atlanta, Bulldogs and Tide fans.
Photo via Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports
Winner: Bearcat Country
The Cincinnati Bearcats return to the top 5.
After defeating No. 9 Notre Dame on the road, Cincinnati earns their top road win of the season and likely their biggest of the year.
Oh, and don’t forget this.
Desmond Ridder had a masterful performance as well, going for 19-32, 297 yards and 2 scores, no picks and only sacked once. He also scrambled for 26 yards and a score.
After their playoff snub a year ago, Cincy is out on a mission, and winning out may just do the job, as they’re heavily favored in all of their remaining games.
Who knows, there can only be one undefeated SEC and Big Ten team, so perhaps the Bearcats have a chance after all.
(we hope).
Loser: The Inevitable Random Oregon Loss
Oh, Oregon.
Every year you do this, every year it’s some team no one expects and this year, it’s the unranked Stanford Cardinal.
Stanford in 2009, USC in 2011, Stanford again in 2012, and Stanford AGAIN in 2013 (plus Arizona) plagued the Ducks in the pre-CFP era, but even since, Arizona bested them in 2014 and the 2015-2018 seasons were seen as a fall from the “Mighty Ducks” era.
The 2019 team saw a return to this magic with a 12-2 finish, yet again an unranked Arizona State killed their late-season run. Even the weird 2020 season had Oregon starting 3-0 but falling to Oregon State and Cal back to back before a strange Pac-12 Championship Game win as Washington couldn’t play due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Regardless, Oregon cannot close a season without SOME big upset.
And this year, it’s Stanford yet again.
Officiating was, however, dicey at best with a debatable roughing the passer penalty followed by a frankly terrible defensive holding call on a failed 4th-and-goal attempt by the Cardinal.
Fortunately for the Ducks, there’s a lot of season left, and the Pac-12 competition continues to look pretty light.
Photo via Tim Warner/Getty Images
Winner: Bijan Robinson
Despite TCU consistently having Texas’ number, the Longhorns exorcised plenty demons Saturday, downing the Horned Frogs behind Mr. Bijan Robinson’s beautiful performance.
And my, oh, my, he did it easily.
Robinson finished with 216 yards and 2 scores on a whopping 35 carries, effectively carrying the offense in a complete win.
The Texas lead back broke over 100 carries on the season and has logged 652 rushing yards with 7 touchdowns, making out to an average of 6.2 yards per play.
This kid is legit.
In fact, in only one game he had under 100 rushing yards or under five yards per carry, and both stats occurred in UT’s loss to Arkansas.
So the key for beating Texas is to stop him, although that’s clearly more easily said than done.
Photo via Steven Branscombe/Getty Images
Loser: All the Fun COVID-Era Big Ten Teams
Last season, we had a lot of new and fun teams break through the Blue Blood glass ceiling to make the season a lot more fun.
Sadly, those darlings have fallen off very hard.
Looking at the final AP Poll, 13 of the final 25 are not ranked as of Week 5 in 2021, and of those four top 10 teams are now unranked.
Now Clemson and Texas A&M had better seasons before, but schools like Iowa State, Northwestern, Indiana and Liberty all made headlines just a year ago.
(Of course, schools like Miami and USC were also ranked and have now fallen off, but overrated programs like them will remain overrated until anything drastic changes.)
Iowa State fell hard to an unranked Baylor team last week (who lost to Oklahoma State this week), but did bounce back against Kansas, but they’re still only 2-2 , 0-2 against anyone decent.
Indiana has played three ranked teams and is 0-3 against them, scoring six total points against Iowa and Penn State combined. Their two wins are against Idaho (FCS) and Western Kentucky by two.
Liberty has been by no means poor this season, but with weak wins like Campbell, Troy, Old Dominion and UAB plus a loss at Syracuse, the Flames and Malik Willis have a lot left to be desired. Their remaining schedule has Lousiana (another COVID-era fun team who hasn’t done much yet) and at Ole Miss, so maybe some fireworks can happen.
Lastly, Northwestern. Saving the most hilarious for last here as oh BOY this team sucks.
The Wildcats are 2-3 after losses against Michigan State, at Duke (lol) and then getting absolutely railed against Nebraska this week (56-7, yeah it was bad). Their wins against FCS Indiana State and Ohio don’t do much to help out.
Seems like a weird season with weird teams being good is indeed, weird.