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...
South Carolina Suddenly Has A Coaching Question Fans Cant Ignore
South Carolinas season has reached an uneasy point, with the Gamecocks sitting at 0-3 in SEC play under Shane Beamer in his sixth season. The timing only makes the pressure feel heavier, especially with the teams best player, Dylan Stewart, suspended indefinitely after an altercation that has added another layer of uncertainty around a program already searching for answers.
Shane Beamers job is not suddenly on the line by one bad stretch alone, but the conversation around the coaching staff is no longer hypothetical. With the SEC skid mounting and outside speculation already turning toward possible replacements, the question for South Carolina is less about whether fans are noticing and more about how long the school can afford to let the uncertainty linger. [Read more 🡒]
Gamecocks Blew Another Winnable SEC Game And The Questions Are Growing
South Carolina had this one in hand long enough to make the ending sting even more, building a 17-point lead before letting No. 24 Kentucky claw all the way back in a 35-34 overtime loss. The game fit a frustrating pattern for the Gamecocks, who had chances to put it away but kept leaving openings with a Jabree Coleman fumble and failed fourth-down tries that changed the feel of the afternoon in a hurry.
The defeat was another rough marker in SEC play, stretching South Carolinas conference skid to eight straight and undercutting a four-game winning streak over Kentucky that had helped balance the rivalry. For Shane Beamer, the bigger concern is that these losses keep coming in games that feel winnable, which only deepens the questions around what this team has to clean up before the schedule tightens again. [Read more 🡒]
Shane Beamer Debate Just Got More Uncomfortable For South Carolina Fans
South Carolinas latest SEC setback left another uneasy postgame scene for fans already watching a troubling slide, and it came with an unexpected twist from the other sideline. After Kentuckys 35-34 overtime win, Wildcats coach Will Stein took time in his press conference to praise Shane Beamer, calling the Gamecocks coach elite as South Carolina absorbed its third straight conference loss and a double-digit lead slipped away.
Stein also broke down Kentuckys game-winning two-point conversion in overtime, adding a little more sting to a result that already felt hard enough for South Carolina supporters to process. The Gamecocks have been trying to steady themselves through the league grind, but days like this only sharpen the debate around Beamer and how much patience remains as the losses keep piling up. [Read more 🡒]