Broken Coverage for Week 9: Games of the Year, Rooting for Hartman, 22 Forever
Every winter after the college football season’s ended, I am tasked with ranking the fall’s best college football games for Athlon Sports. It’s usually one of my favorite assignments, but the 2020 installment was a slog.
Not so in 2021.
Halloween eve alone delivered two games that are top-tier contenders for Game of the Year, closing an October filled with some of the most memorable and most fun contests of recent years.
Michigan-Michigan State and SMU-Houston delivered on so many fronts. Both had championship implications, with Blue and Sparty coming into East Lansing undefeated and SMU visiting Houston ranked No. 19 and unbeaten.
The battle for the Paul Bunyan Trophy also gave us our first true front-runner to emerge in the Heisman conversation this season, Kenneth Walker III.
Heisman voters are proven to be intellectually lazy, DeVonta Smith’s win last year notwithstanding. They default to the quarterback on a team in Playoff contention so routinely that in a season like this, when none of the programs leading the CFB discussion have had a clear star quarterback stand out, they’ll start pushing a QB who made his first appearance the second week of October as Heisman front-runner.
Against an outstanding Michigan defense, Walker kicked in Heisman voters’ doors.
In addition to Walker surging to the front of the Heisman pack, the aftermath of Michigan State’s 37-33 win focused on Jim Harbaugh. Michigan’s success under Harbaugh is overshadowed by the Wolverines’ losses against highly ranked competition.
I understand why that’s at the heart of the conversation, but in this instance it overlooks a more compelling story: the meteoric rise of Mel Tucker.
Tucker’s abbreviated tenure at Colorado was impressive. The Buffs played hard every week win or lose, which hadn’t been the case for the last couple Mike MacIntyre teams.
Michigan State plays with the same intensity and combines it with more talent to implement the vision successfully. Offensive coordinator Jay Johnson’s play-calling is a part of that vision, and he’s managed to introduce concepts that made Louisiana a fun, high-scoring program in the early 2010s and bring them to a Michigan State program that was long painful to watch play offense.
Having a muse like Walker certainly helps. And that the Heisman Trophy could realistically come down to a former Wake Forest running back and current Wake Forest quarterback (more on that in a moment), while both Michigan State and Wake jockey for the Playoff, speaks to the exciting nature of the 2021 season.
As for the Playoff hunt, so much of the conversation around an outside crashing the final four focused on Cincinnati this season, and deservedly so. The Bearcats are more than halfway to completing the near-impossible puzzle the committee and its propaganda wing1 have set forth for Group of Five championship hopefuls: Go undefeated in consecutive regular seasons, and do it against competition deemed worthy.
Cincinnati’s win over Notre Dame on Oct. 2, which prompted one of the more hilariously pathetic homer media tweets I’ve ever seen, seems like it would fulfill a portion of that requirement. Completely out of the Bearcats’ control, however, is the rest of the American Athletic Conference.
The American has typically been good for two Top 25-ranked teams a season, and came into the weekend with a pair in the Top 20 thanks to SMU.
The Mustangs’ trip to rival Houston, 10 years after Lee Corso delivered the best headgear selection in College Gameday history at another Houston-SMU showdown…
…again came with high stakes. Houston was in the BCS discussion in 2011, much like Cincinnati today — and arguably, like SMU may have had it run the table.
But Houston came into Saturday’s encounter with just one loss and looking like a team with American championship aspirations of its own. The Cougars were ever bit SMU’s equal, answering every haymaker with a powerful counter-punch of their own.
The Playoff chatter that dominates college football every fall applies to the aftermath of Houston’s 44-37 win; an undefeated showdown with SMU may have been to Cincinnati’s benefit. But irrespective of the Bearcats’ place in the journey, Houston-SMU was one of the best damn games of recent years — and boasts maybe the best finish of any regular-season contest since Auburn’s 2013 Pick Six with Marcus Jones completing what was almost a walk-off kick return.
Akin to the Michigan-Michigan State conversation focused on Harbaugh perhaps missing a more interesting story in Tucker, I posit that the attention paid to Cincinnati no longer getting an undefeated SMU in November overlooks that Houston could be poised to break into the Top 25.
Should the Cougars join the polls and SMU remain, that gives Cincinnati two opportunities at Top 25 wins in the final month of competition.
And Houston can look forward to more chances to celebrate with some Red Bulls.
THE SEASON OF THE DEACS
No matter what occurs the rest of the way, following Wake Forest in 2021 has been a joy. The Demon Deacons have so routinely lived in the basement of the ACC, they’re the only program in the conference to have never cracked the AP Top 10.
The latest poll may be out by the time you read this, but I suspect Wake will have broken that streak this week. The Deacs already reached another milestone this weekend with their first-ever 8-0 start.
Wake is the only team in the nation to score at least 35 points in every game, and its fun style of play is attracted remarkable crowds. Truist Field’s student section on Saturday in a blowout of Duke attracted more than 80 percent of the undergraduate population at Wake.
This unpredictable run would be a blast to follow on its own, but I gained some personal attachment to Wake Forest last week. I very rarely catch any of College Gameday any more, but had it on in my hotel room while I got ready to cover Elon-New Hampshire last week.
The show aired a feature on Wake quarterback Sam Hartman, one of the most electrifying playmakers in college football this season. For my money, Hartman’s 22 passing touchdowns against just three interceptions and six rushing touchdowns place him firmly in one of the top spots of the Heisman race.
And that Hartman balls out wearing No. 10 resonates with me in a deeply personal way.
Hartman’s adoptive brother and former Elon wide receiver Demitri Allison wore the number before his suicide death in 2015. My older brother, Scott, died of suicide when he was 19. I started wearing No. 45, Scott’s basketball number, in his honor. It’s a small thing, but I keep the digits in my social media handles to this day to keep his memory with me.
Impartiality be damned, I’m a Sam Hartman fan. Using his platform to bring attention not only to his adoptive brother, but to mental-health issues for young people as a whole is one of the most powerful stories to emerge from this college football season.
22% BETTER
Another powerful story of triumph through tragedy this season: Utah’s perseverance after the tragic deaths of Ty Jordan and Aaron Lowe in the last 10 months.
The Utes head into November with a commanding lead atop the Pac-12 South after routing UCLA on Saturday night, the same night in which Utah retired the No. 22. Jordan wore 22 a season ago, and Lowe adopted the number this season in Ty’s honor.
In a poetic twist, the Utes scored 44 points on Saturday.
Following Utah’s win at USC on Oct. 9, as coach Kyle Whittingham first wore the t-shirt with the words “22% Better Everyday” on it, I asked him what it meant to him to see his players smiling, celebrating, experiencing joy on the football field in the wake of all they’ve endured.
“It’s a breath of fresh air, after all we’ve been through, to see their just sheer enjoyment. That’s the best way to describe it. They obviously had Ty and Aaron on their mind, that’s going to be a constant the rest of the season,” Whittingham said.
Meanwhile, the conference’s embrace of Utah speaks to the bonds football builds, which oftentimes transcend locker rooms. Each Pac-12 team playing at home on Saturday denoted their fields’ 22-yard lines with a red hash.
Look for a newsletter entry this week dissecting ESPN’s flagrant and egregious Playoff propaganda efforts.