Most of the College Football Playoff contenders handled business on Saturday, with Georgia hammering Missouri, Alabama getting past Vanderbilt, Texas surviving a scare at LSU and Utah escaping Arizona. But for several prominent head coaches, Week 11 turned up the heat.
Two weeks after a Halloween win over then-No. 2 Ohio State revived its season, USC lost 27-13 at No. 9 Indiana, all but ensuring the Trojans will not be playing meaningful football in December. Fifth-year coach Lincoln Riley is 42-21 in Los Angeles, a 66.6 winning percentage only fractionally better than predecessor Clay Helton's 65.7, despite a reported annual salary above $11 million and total pay topping $50 million.
"We've definitely come a long way as a program," Riley said after the loss, "but we've still obviously got a little ways to go." In the spring, he told ESPN's Adam Rittenberg the program's championship window was finally open: "Honestly, now it's just time to go do it. It's time. The program's ready for it." With a reported buyout that could exceed $70 million, Riley is squarely back on the hot seat.
Michigan fell 31-7 to Oregon in a listless performance under Kyle Whittingham and now must upset either UCLA or Ohio State to avoid a losing season, a decline that would fuel talk of a one-and-done exit if the school had a permanent athletic director. Clemson, meanwhile, lost 20-6 to last-place Georgia Tech, its second straight game without an offensive touchdown and its lowest-scoring home performance since 2003. Unlike Riley and Whittingham, Dabo Swinney carries a vault of goodwill from coaching Clemson to four CFP national championship games and winning two.
A nationwide FAA ground stop on Friday scrambled travel plans across the country. Utah could not get to Tucson as planned and kicked off at 8:30 p.m. local time, then won one of the season's most thrilling games, 40-39 over Arizona, with seven lead changes. Devon Dampier's 70-yard touchdown pass to Creed Whittemore with 2:35 left came less than a minute after Arizona took a 39-33 lead. The Utes improved to 10-0, extended the nation's longest winning streak to 16 games and clinched a place in the Big 12 title game in Morgan Scalley's first season.
Ole Miss was the only team unable to make arrangements to play Saturday, so the SEC moved its game at Oklahoma to Sunday, a decision that infuriated Sooners athletic director Roger Denny. "I can't wrap my mind around the fact that they can't find a way to get here," he said. The Rebels cited duty-time restrictions for their charter crew and said it was too late to send players on a bus trip of more than eight hours. Tulane, by contrast, loaded onto buses for a 5½-hour drive to Houston when its flight was stopped on the runway.
No. 6 Texas trailed 22-16 in the final seconds at LSU before Steve Sarkisian dialed up a play that sent Raleek Brown in motion, freeing him for a 4-yard touchdown catch from Arch Manning with three seconds left. The score capped a comeback from an 11-point second-half deficit. The Longhorns have won four straight to reach 8-2, and with Arkansas and Texas A&M remaining, a 10-2 finish and a playoff berth are within reach.
No. 13 Wake Forest, the lowest-ranked one-loss team from a Power 4 conference, demolished No. 25 SMU 49-7 after leading 42-0 at halftime. The Demon Deacons have outscored their past four opponents 145-0 in the first half, the third-largest differential over a four-game stretch by any FBS team in the past 20 seasons, per ESPN research, and have outscored their past six opponents 313-38. "We keep making statement after statement," coach Jake Dickert said. "Eventually, they're going to have to say we're a pretty good team."
UCLA beat Illinois 22-14 on Friday night to move to 10-0, its first such start since the 1998 team coached by Bob Toledo and the third in program history. One season after winning just three games, the Bruins' seven-win improvement matches their best turnaround, and first-year coach Bob Chesney has transformed a program many thought was punting on football relevance when it left the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. With little separating the projected playoff teams, UCLA has reason to think big.
