Texas kept its season on life support Saturday, and the Big 12 took a pair of body blows that may end up defining the week.
That was the theme across a chaotic Week 8: a top-10 road win in Austin, a stack of ranked teams stumbling after big emotional victories, and a conference race that suddenly looks a lot less crowded at the top. College football did what it always does - punish anyone who assumes momentum lasts more than seven days.
No. 19 Texas left the afternoon with the kind of result that keeps playoff dreams breathing.
The Longhorns beat No. 7 Ole Miss 34-27, and while the final margin was tidy, the path there was anything but.
Texas built a three-touchdown lead, then watched it shrink as Trinidad Chambliss settled in after halftime. Still, the Longhorns held together when it would have been easy to crack.
Arch Manning’s line was messy, with two second-half turnovers and three total, and he remains a concern. But Steve Sarkisian found a way to steady the game through the ground attack, which produced 207 rushing yards. In the second half alone, Texas piled up 120 yards on 23 carries, a 5.2-yard average that helped it survive the pushback.
The trouble for teams that climb into the spotlight? Staying there.
A week after No. 2 BYU, No.
11 Tennessee and Auburn each celebrated major top-10 wins, all three came back to earth. BYU fell 39-31 in overtime at UCF and came up short on fourth down in the second OT.
Tennessee rallied from a 14-0 hole at South Carolina, only to lose 27-24 on a walk-off field goal. Auburn’s collapse was even uglier, finishing out a 38-17 home loss to No.
18 LSU in a half-empty stadium.
“Any Given Saturday” showed up again in full force. The message was simple: beating a top-10 team is hard, and following it with another big performance might be even harder.
Minnesota, meanwhile, put together one of the day’s best results by knocking off No. 15 Iowa and staying in the Big Ten title picture.
After the game, P.J. Fleck made his case for his team with a passionate postgame message.
“This is our third-ranked win of the year. Our players never gave up,” Fleck said on the field afterward.
“This is what college football is all about. A team like Minnesota doing what we're doing with the players we have.”
That kind of win could push Minnesota into the AP rankings on Sunday, but the next two weeks are going to be a real test. No.
6 Indiana and No. 9 UCLA are next, and Fleck’s team will have to turn the page fast if it wants to avoid the same letdown that hit so many others after their signature victories.
The Big 12’s bad weekend got even worse when No. 8 Texas Tech followed BYU into the loss column. Texas Tech was beaten convincingly at Cincinnati, 37-24, leaving the conference’s playoff picture looking far shakier than it did a day earlier.
Before Saturday, the Big 12 had four teams in the AP top 14 and three of the nation’s final five undefeated teams, which had sparked real questions about how many playoff bids the league could land. After Sunday, it looks much more like a one-bid league again.
BYU still has its win over No. 4 Notre Dame, but its margin for error is now razor thin.
Texas Tech, lacking a signature win on its résumé, may need a run to the Big 12 championship game to earn a second straight CFP berth.
USC’s afternoon was ugly in a different way. Coming off a bye, the No. 16 Trojans got nothing going and lost 24-7 at Wisconsin, their lowest-scoring game of the Lincoln Riley era, which began in 2022.
The run game was a disaster. Because of Maiava’s five sacks for 57 yards, USC finished with negative 17 rushing yards, and the backs never offered much help. Sophomore King Miller led the group with 11 carries but managed just eight yards, while the team’s three running backs combined for 40 yards on 20 attempts.
For a coach known as an offensive mind, Riley’s group looked lost in a game it badly needed. And the closing stretch is brutal: three of USC’s final four opponents are No.
3 Ohio State, Indiana and UCLA. Another 7-5 finish is suddenly very much in play.
Elsewhere, there was Malachi Toney, who took the day’s spotlight and made it his own. With Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith and Oregon State’s Jesse Legree on bye, the Miami sophomore wideout delivered one of the best stat lines of the weekend in the 52-23 win over Pittsburgh.
Toney set a Miami program record with 16 catches and finished with 183 receiving yards and three touchdowns. On one 53-yard score, ESPN play-by-play announcer Bob Wischusen summed up the obvious.
“They just keep feeding their best player,” Wischusen said.
With Smith, Legree and Toney all pushing the conversation, there’s no shortage of arguments over who sits at the top of the receiver mountain. For now, the only certainty is that all three are building something special.
Week 8 had plenty of winners. It just had even more teams finding out how quickly one big Saturday can turn into a hard fall.
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