Week 5 gave college football a little bit of everything: a blown lead, a damaged playoff path, a rough weekend for one of the sport’s loudest voices, and a Heisman push that may have gone up in smoke. The contenders are starting to separate, and the losers are getting harder to ignore.
Shane Beamer might be sitting closest to the edge. South Carolina had a 17-point lead against Kentucky and still walked out of Saturday with a loss after the Wildcats finished the game with a winning 2-point conversion in overtime. Beamer has only 1 SEC win dating back to November of 2024, and the idea that his 2024 season was a fluke is looking harder to dismiss by the week.
Michigan’s situation is ugly for a different reason. The Wolverines already stunned Oklahoma, but they’ve since backed themselves into a corner that makes a Playoff run look unrealistic.
After the Iowa loss, the offense again sputtered against Minnesota, and Bryce Underwood threw a pair of interceptions. With 4 ranked opponents still waiting down the stretch, the schedule is only getting more unforgiving.
That Michigan loss hit Dave Portnoy too. It capped off a rough weekend for the Barstool Sports figure, who also saw news break that he and Barstool Sports would no longer be on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff. Portnoy blamed Ohio State complaints for the move, and with his role in helping bring Bryce Underwood to Ann Arbor, the timing made the whole stretch feel even worse for the outspoken Michigan supporter.
Penn State also took a hit to its own optimism. Plenty of preseason talk centered on the Nittany Lions’ soft schedule and the chance to contend for the College Football Playoff in Year 1 under Matt Campbell.
Instead, they’ve now dropped back-to-back “easy games” after the Friday night loss to Northwestern. Rocco Becht has not looked like a quarterback with that much experience, and the defense has enough holes to make this season spiral fast.
Then there’s Jadan Baugh, whose Heisman case may have taken the kind of blow that doesn’t heal. After the dominant performance against Ole Miss, he had emerged as the best shot to end the running back Heisman drought.
But Florida’s stay in the top 10 may be short after Missouri upset the Gators and shut down the rushing attack. Baugh finished with just 13 yards on 12 carries, the kind of stat line that can crush a Heisman campaign in a hurry, much like Alabama ended Leonard Fournette’s run.
In Other News...
Penn State Fans Have Another Saquon Barkley Reason To Be Miserable
Saquon Barkleys latest exit from a game with the Rams was the kind of sight that makes Penn State fans wince, because it came with an apparent hamstring injury and no return to action after the first quarter. For a player whose career has already included a major ACL tear in 2020, any lower-body issue carries extra weight, especially when it involves a part of the body that can linger for weeks before a running back is truly back to full speed.
For Penn State, the timing only adds to the unease. The Nittany Lions are already staring at a difficult stretch ahead with USC and Michigan on the schedule, and recent losses have left the seasons outlook cloudy. Losing even the conversation around one of the programs most recognizable stars to another injury scare is the sort of development that keeps the mood around State College uneasy, even before the next kickoff arrives. [Read more 🡒]
Penn State Suddenly Has A Credibility Problem Fans Can't Ignore
Penn States rough stretch has turned what looked like a promising season into a much tougher sell. The 34-13 loss to Northwestern sent the Nittany Lions out of the Coaches Poll entirely, a sharp fall for a program that opened the year ranked and expected to stay in the national picture under new coach Matt Campbell.
The schedule does not offer much time to linger on the setback. USC and Michigan are next, and those matchups will give Penn State a chance to reestablish itself against high-profile opponents and climb back toward the top 25, but only if the Nittany Lions start looking like a different team than the one that just slipped against Northwestern. [Read more 🡒]
Penn States 2027 Class Just Got More Exciting For Two Reasons
Penn State added two more pieces to its 2027 recruiting class with commitments from running back Chukwuma Odoh and cornerback KeiShjuan Telfair, giving the early haul a little more juice on both sides of the ball. Odoh arrives as a top-50 running back recruit out of Paramus Catholic High School after a strong senior season, while Telfair brings a reputation for versatility and playmaking from Euclid High School.
KeiShjuan Telfair is ranked 116th overall and 13th among cornerbacks, and both prospects pointed to positive relationships with Penn States position coaches as part of what made the fit click. For a program that always has to balance long-term roster building with the pressure of the present, landing two highly regarded juniors this early is the kind of development that can shape how the rest of the class takes form. [Read more 🡒]