College football Week 3 overreactions: SEC missing playoff, Shedeur Sanders winning Heisman
While sanity prevailed throughout most of the college football world over the weekend, it appeared we were on the verge of utter chaos at a number of sites on what on paper looked as though it would be a fairly mundane Saturday with no Top 25 matchups. Naturally, that meant a lot of uneasy moments for devoted fan bases throughout the country.
Once again, we’re back to try and help you sort out which surprising results or near misses should be true cause for concern and which fall into the realm of hyperbole. Here are the top overreactions from Week 3, the first of which might just mean more.
The SEC will miss the playoff
Seems almost unthinkable, doesn’t it? Could the conference that has dominated the four-team playoff era really be left out of the last pre-expansion field entirely?
The league’s non-conference record has not been good, with seven total losses against other Power Five conferences. Missouri’s improbable upset of Kansas State rates as the SEC’s best result out of conference to date.
Let’s state the obvious. Should recent standard bearer Georgia get through its regular season slate unscathed, it will absolutely be in the playoff. But the Bulldogs’ early struggles against South Carolina in their league opener demonstrated that even they are not without flaws. An SEC champ with one or possibly two losses on its résumé might not get the benefit of the doubt in comparison to the other power-conference contenders based on these early setbacks. Nobody at league headquarters is panicking yet, but check back in November.
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MISERY INDEX: Michigan State finds out it faces long rebuild
Give Shedeur Sanders the Heisman
Analysts have more than a few overused phrases that get trotted out at dramatic points – don’t get us started on listing them. "Heisman moment" has become prominent among them.
On its face, Shedeur Sanders’ 98-yard game-tying drive that rescued Colorado in the Rocky Mountain Showdown against Colorado State might qualify as one. But in the big picture, the Buffaloes needed a miraculous rally to get by a winless group-of-five squad, rivalry game or not.
This is not to say Sanders won’t be under consideration for the sport’s top individual honor. He certainly will be if the Buffs keep winning. But that’s about to become a big "if" as Colorado embarks on the meat of its Pac-12 schedule, starting next week at Oregon followed immediately by a home date with Southern California.
In truth, the entire concept of a Heisman moment is flawed (we keep using that word, don’t we?). In some cases, a signature play stands out – think the Doug Flutie Hail Mary for example – but all-in-all Heisman electors nowadays tend to look at a player’s overall body of work as well as his team’s success. Highlight plays are part of the equation, of course, but one single moment more often than not doesn’t make the entire case. That’s especially true this early in the season.
Duke will win the ACC
Mike Elko’s Blue Devils certainly looked the part of the conference favorites this weekend, easily dispatching an admittedly subpar Northwestern team on a day when Florida State was in a four-quarter fight with lowly Boston College and North Carolina had to overcome numerous mistakes to get by Minnesota. And, lest we forget, Duke already has a win in the bank against Clemson.
OK, it’s a wee bit early to declare the race over, but take these Blue Devils lightly at your peril.
Big 12 newbies are carrying the league
Outside of Texas and Oklahoma, the schools with a foot out the door, it was a rough day in the oversized dozen. Reigning champion Kansas State was on the receiving end of Mizzou’s aforementioned triumph, there were complete offensive no-shows by Oklahoma State and Iowa State, and even unbeaten Kansas struggled more than it should have at winless Nevada. West Virginia got a win against "Backyard Brawl" rival Pitt, but there was not much pretty about it. The league’s best moment arguably came from one of the newcomers as Brigham Young outlasted Arkansas for a hard-fought road win. Another conference rookie, Central Florida, is also 3-0. The Knights don’t have a Power Five victory but did pick up a solid road triumph at Boise State in Week 2.
It wasn’t all fun for the most recent additions, however, as Houston was handled by TCU in its first Big 12 contest, and Cincinnati was upended by regional rival Miami (Ohio) in the battle for the Victory Bell. In any case, we’ll know a bit more about how the newcomers will fare against the old guard next week as both UCF and BYU visit the Sunflower State.
The Big Ten waited a year too long to do away with its divisions
Well, actually that probably isn’t an overreaction. For the moment, nobody from the West appears equipped to unseat any member of the top-10 trio from the East. Iowa, the lone remaining unbeaten squad from the West, has a chance to alter that perception next week at Penn State, but for now the conference championship game looks like it will be a mere formality once again.
