The 11 undefeated college football teams and Penn State's clever trick play against USC

Until Saturday newsletter 🏈 | That is The athlete's college football newsletter. Sign up here to receive See You Saturday straight to your inbox.

Sup, this is Jason Kirk playing Arch Manning to Jayna Bardahl's Quinn Ewers. After all, like Arch, I have several uncles.

The undefeated

Ducks throw bucks out of the ranks

We only have 11 undefeated teams left in FBS play.

A few years ago I looked some things up and found that in the average season there are about seven or eight undefeated players starting in Week 10. So as we enter Week 7, we're at about our usual pace.

But this time something is different. The 12-team College Football Playoff is no longer just about staying in the hunt for a title, but more about earning a first-round bye by remaining undefeated as a power conference team . (And for Group 5 teams, such a performance will guarantee a near-unprecedented playoff shot.)

Regardless of how the playoffs play out in any given year, there has always been something particularly romantic about being an undefeated team in college football. With that in mind, let's take a look at who made it about halfway through yesterday:

Quarterback Quinn Ewers returned to the Texas lineup Saturday and led the Longhorns to a victory over rival Oklahoma. (Kevin Jairaj/Imagn Images)

No. 1 Texas 34, No. 18 Oklahoma 3: These Longhorns haven't faced many trials, but they've overcome them all. To that list we can add a quarterback's complete absence from injury and one of the traditionally most chaotic rivalry games in the country. Ewers is back and throwing for a rusty 199 yards, but that wouldn't have mattered much against the helpless Sooners. Next comes an intermediate exam that lasts a whole night: Georgia visits Austin for the first time since 1958.

(Meanwhile, Brent Venables is 20-12 at Oklahoma. Will these flawed Sooners win one of their remaining SEC games?)

No. 3 Oregon 32, No. 2 Ohio State 31: Seven leadership changes. A record crowd in the Autzen Stadium. About a million crazy little moments. Classic. Run it back. Even though the Ducks weren't even remotely considered a Big Ten program until the realignment was announced about a year ago, they are now the Big Ten favorites. They'll likely be favored every week until they reach Indianapolis, and maybe even beyond.

No. 4 Penn State 33, USC 30: After a 45-minute comeback by the Nittany Lions and a short overtime, your new hero is Penn State tight end Tyler Warren. He entered the record books with 237 all-purpose yards on 19 touches, including perhaps the national play of the day when he snatched the ball – and then caught it in the end zone:

Double pass TD for @PennStateFball to start the second half! 🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/54lph5ddUw

— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) October 12, 2024

There are still three weeks until Penn State welcomes Ohio State. For USC, a 3-3 record (and a trip across the globe to Maryland next) puts more pressure on Lincoln Riley.

No. 6 Miami (bye): Road trips to Louisville and Georgia Tech remain, but the Canes' path is relatively clear.

No. 11 Iowa State 28, West Virginia 16 and No. 14 BYU 41, Arizona 19: As expected, the new Big 12 looks mostly like an unpredictable mess (that's a compliment). Of course, the top two teams in the conference's preseason poll were ranked sixth and 13th, respectively. The Cougars already have more wins than they did all of last season, including a blowout victory over Kansas State, while Iowa State has yet to play the Wildcats.

No. 18 Indiana (Bye): The Hoosiers, who have already surpassed their Vegas total of 5.5 wins this year, have several winnable games ahead of their trip to Columbus. #NineWindiana is real.

No. 22 Pitt 17, Cal 15: Every Pitt game in 2024 is a dramatic win, regardless of what happens in the first 59 minutes. But Cal 2024 (3-3) games are often the opposite. Therefore, despite gaining only 277 yards, converting just one third down and losing the turnover battle, the Panthers won.

Army 44, UAB 10: The country's most productive rushing offense tallied 413 yards on the ground and a passing touchdown – actually its seventh of the year. More on UAB below, but first there's something really inconvenient looming on the schedule…

Navy (bye): As we have been following for several weeks, the two teams at the top of the AAC standings are not scheduled to meet until the AAC title game. It's possible that Army and Navy will be favored in every remaining conference game (likely with the exception of Navy-Tulane). This brings us closer to one of the strangest blasphemies in CFB history: a rematch between the Army and Navy.

Liberty 31, FIU 24: Probably not a factor in the playoff race, as the Flames have had the easiest schedule in the FBS to date and one of the easiest going forward, according to FPI.

Elsewhere

Maybe this is just your life now, Bama

For about a decade, whenever Alabama lost, every college football observer feared what would happen to the Tide's next opponent. Give Nick Saban a reason to point out more of his players' mistakes? Are you trying to blow someone away?

Well, this jerk doesn't officially apply to the Kalen DeBoer era, at least not yet. Against South Carolina, a week after the Tide lost to Vanderbilt for the first time since 1984, they nearly snapped their first regular-season losing streak since 2007, Saban's first season. Without the two late falls from LaNorris Sellers, who was otherwise an absolute nuisance for Bama's defense, the Tide might have been dealing with a potential three-game losing streak heading into Knoxville week.

Fast:

• Another return from Cam Rising. Another injury to Cam Rising. This time his lower right leg as No. 16 Utah lost 27-19 to Arizona State on Friday night.
• No. 18 Kansas State held off Colorado 31-28 when a shoulder injury sidelined the Buffs' two best players, Travis Hunter and Travis Hunter.
• No. 13 LSU is back on trackdefeated No. 9 Ole Miss 29-26 in overtime. The Tigers travel to Arkansas next, while the Rebels have lost two of three games.
• Remember when Tennessee was the best team in the country against the spread? Now the loss to Arkansas is followed by an overtime win against late-season Florida.
• Lots of OT this week! How about this breakout: The over/under for Purdue-Illinois before the game was a modest 47.5 points. Each team surpassed that number with a 50-49 win for the No. 23 Illini.
• Can Ashton Jeanty be stopped? The Boise State star caught 31 carries for 217 yards and a touchdown in the Broncos' 28-7 win over Hawaii.
• FCS check: No. 3 Montana State defeated No. 8 Idaho 38-7.
• By the way, after three consecutive blowouts, UAB's Trent Dilfer is now the head coach for 5-13 years. The interim coach UAB could have hired instead, Bryant Vincent, is 5-1 in his first season at ULM, putting him within touching distance of the Warhawks' best season ever. (ULM beat UAB, ICYMI.) At the time, most of us were against hiring Dilfer, but now it looks even worse than any of us imagined.

Quick snapshots

Tylee Craft, a former wide receiver North Carolina Diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer in 2022, he died yesterday, the program said. He was 23.

After Hurricane Milton, people were displaced USF Bulls played with a heavy heart in Orlando and failed against Memphis yesterday.

State of Florida has gained some yards in his ongoing legal battle against the ACC.

What will college football look like in the future? However, the Big Ten And SEC want. Scott Dochterman reports on their recent summit.

Yes, I'm still thinking about it Vanderbilt Beat Bama. Speaking to the children who were happy to carry Vandy's goalposts to the river: “There will never be a better point in college than this.”

You can purchase tickets to every college football game here.

For streaming information on Fubo, click here.

Are you enjoying this? Sign up for our other newsletters! Scoop City 🏈 | The jump 🏀 | Full time ⚽ | Winding up ⚾ | Prime Tire 🏁 | The pulse 📣

(Top photo: Chris Pietsch / USA Today Network via Imagn Images