College football Saturday: Top 5 cleared out in absurd Week 6

Saturday night, third-ranked Florida State visited ACC rival North Carolina State. The Seminoles entered Raleigh with a 5-0 record, and FSU fans harbored dreams of a national title shot.

Thanks in part to an anemic second-half offense that launched punt after punt, such hopes were effectively dashed. NC State quarterback Mike Glennon, who couldn’t piece together much of anything in the first half, took advantage of great field position, and his three consecutive fourth-down conversions dealt the ‘Noles a shocking upset in just about the most agonizing way possible. (Here is video evidence, if you have the stomach for it.)

2. Approximate number of plays separating Penn State from an undefeated record. Ohio scored a fluky touchdown off a deflected pass, and it completely redefined an eventual 24-14 loss for the Nittany Lions. The next week, PSU’s Sam Ficken missed four of five field goals (all 42 yards or shorter) in a one-point loss to Virginia. Since then, Bill O’Brien’s squad has won four games in a row. PSU ripped off a lovely second-half comeback to take out previously unbeaten Northwestern this weekend. As incredible as O’Brien’s coaching job seems -- Matt McGloin has turned into a competent, confident quarterback, and PSU is 4-2 despite all of the offseason negativity surrounding NCAA sanctions, defections, and, of course, Joe Paterno’s death -- it would seem doubly impressive at 6-0. Regardless, hell of a job so far, Coach.

2.7. Average points scored by Florida State in six trips inside N.C. State’s 40-yard line. They scored one touchdown, settled for three field goals (including one from the State 2), threw an interception and, on fourth-and-17 from the 34, punted. Despite second-half troubles (four of six trips inside State’s 40 happened in the first half), the Seminoles did well in setting the table for an easy win. But they squandered the opportunities they created and suffered a jarring 17-16 loss. Always be closing, boys and girls.

Atomic. This part is about Gus Malzahn, but first you need to hear about Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only man on the planet to survive two atomic bomb attacks. Yamaguchi, a Nagasaki resident, was on a three-month business trip to Hiroshima when the first bomb hit on August 6th, 1945. Despite being burned over much of the left side of his body, Yamaguchi got treatment and showed up in bandages for work on August 9th. In his hometown of Nagasaki. Where the Americans dropped a bomb at 11:00 a.m., and Yamaguchi had to have had the most justified, “REALLY, LIFE? I MEAN REALLY?” moment ever.

Bailing. He lived. In comparison, what Gus Malzahn has survived is piddling, but comparable in terms of timing. Malzahn was hired in a cheap recruiting ploy at Arkansas, then thrown clear into the arms of Todd Graham at Tulsa. Malzahn’s offenses thrived, but fate intervened again as Malzahn opted to move to Auburn, and thus both missed the Todd Graham Pitt disaster and met up with Cam Newton. After one non-Cam season at Auburn, Malzahn then took the oddball move of going to Arkansas State. This looked very strange until Auburn imploded this year and Arkansas got Petrino’d, and now Gus Malzahn is 3-3 at Arkansas State, comfortable and in line for interviews as a head coach in the offseason.

What happens when you lose to the fanbase that coined “false hope is worse than death”? You lead TWIS. Welcome to the We Lost To John L Smith club, Auburn. The gibbering mess in the corner is Jacksonville State. You will spend the next 50 years breaking rocks to pay off JLS’s creditors.

Do we have a plan, folks?

Three weeks ago, we took a look at how the opening games of the season had affected the temperatures of given coaches’ seats. Some were finding a cooler seat on which to sit (Oregon State’s Mike Riley), and some were in desperate need of some time to update resumes (John L. Smith, Frank Spaziani). After six full weeks of the 2012 season, not a lot has changed. Let’s check in. Once again, we will go from 1 (“mostly safe”) to 10 (“d-o-n-e”).

Jimbo Fisher, Florida State

Alabama is still the nation’s top team in the Week 7 BlogPoll, but two other SEC teams are slicing into the Crimson Tide’s share of first-place votes after big Week 6 wins. And Florida State and Georgia fell, fell, fell after suffering their first losses of the season.

Alabama stays No. 1 comfortably, receiving 64 of 87 first-place votes and outpacing No. 2 Oregon (four first-place votes) by more than a point per ballot, 24.37 to 23.20. And Oregon looks like the consensus No. 2 team in the country, with South Carolina sitting at No. 3 and more than half a point (22.60) behind the Ducks despite earning seven first-place votes.

The biggest winner of the week in recruiting is West Virginia. The Mountaineers were already experiencing some bump in Texas recruiting (five commitments in 2012) simply by joining the Big XII and hiring a coach with Texas ties in Dana Holgorsen. But to go to Austin and beat the Longhorns while running an offense that many high schools in the state employ is huge. Texas recruits are going to give West Virginia a much longer look than they would have previously.

What about N.C. State? The Wolfpack may see an uptick in recruiting thanks to the win over Florida State, but it’s still very much wait and see with a staff that simply has not brought in top talent on a consistent basis.

Via r/cfb:

Check the national college football scoreboard right here, and look through SB Nation’s many excellent college football blogs to find your team’s community.

As we approach the midway point of the 2012 college football season, we still have 16 undefeated teams in the FBS ranks. Some undefeateds look great, and others have taken advantage of good breaks and/or easy schedules. Below, I will share my ranking of the Sweet 16. (Records and AP rankings are in parentheses.)

This one doesn’t really count -- in the Roadrunners’ provisional FBS season, they have played just two FBS opponents (South Alabama, New Mexico State), and those two are among FBS’ five worst. (Of course, this means that UTSA probably isn’t one of FBS’ five worst, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.)

Check the national college football scoreboard right here, and look through SB Nation’s many excellent college football blogs to find your team’s community.

Here are some of the video highlights of South Carolina throttling Georgia 35-7.

Check the national college football scoreboard right here, and look through SB Nation’s many excellent college football blogs to find your team’s community.

1. Alabama. Bye week. Nick Saban probably spent time with Urban Meyer’s family. This is a joke; he watched film 16 hours a day like he always does.

2. Oregon. Put up 35 in the first half on a hapless Washington team, and then let Puddles hold up the play cards for the second half.

Here are the video highlights of the game.

Check the national college football scoreboard right here, and look through SB Nation’s many excellent college football blogs to find your team’s community.

After its first touchdown in the first quarter, Oregon never looked back. The Ducks would go on score 21 unanswered points until Washington’s Bishop Sankey ran the ball 1 yard into the end zone in the second quarter. Following the Huskies touchdown, Oregon went on another scoring streak, this time for 17 points. Sankey would break the scoring streak again with his second rushing touchdown on the evening. The Ducks scored another 14 points before Washington’s Erich Wilson’s touchdown with 36 second left in the game.

Even when the game was clearly out of reach, Oregon’s starters remained in the game. The Ducks are now 6-0 heading into their bye week.

The Bruins were up 7-3 on Cal after the first quarter. This would be the only time UCLA had a lead in the game. Cal kept UCLA out of the end zone after the Bruins first touchdown until the middle of the third quarter. While successfully holding off the Bruins offense, Cal scored 23 unanswered points.

UCLA’s freshman quarterback Brent Hundley had a night he’d soon like to forget. Hundley was intercepted four times and sacked five times. When not throwing for 253 yards, he carried the ball 14 times for a total of 7 yards.

There’s one in every crowd, and this N.C. State Fan could not allow his excitement to be kept under the wraps of some bland white T-shirt.

Also:

After a slow start saw them fall behind 17-7, Ohio State exploded for 28 points in the second quarter en route to a 35-24 halftime lead. Nebraska trimmed the score to 35-31 early in the third quarter before Ohio State scored 21 unanswered points to take control.

Nebraska’s offense had some highlights of their own right, but three interceptions by quarterback Taylor Martinez helped doom the Cornhuskers. They fell to 4-2 overall and 1-1 in the Big 10.

The game was a defensive struggle affected by horrible weather in the Memphis area, even causing the officials to put the game in a delay. The Memphis offense was shut out in the first half, but after the delay, they came out in the third and were able to move the ball on Rice. Their second possession of the half ended with a five-yard touchdown pass from Jacob Karam to Keiwone Malone. The Tigers took advantage of quality field position to end the shutout, with the drive taking less than three minutes and covering 44 yards in seven plays.

The Tigers defense would take it from there to close out the win over the final quarter. Memphis gave up just one Rice touchdown, which came off a turnover on the Tigers’ first drive of the game. It was an ugly win, but the Tigers and Fuente will take it.

Florida State’s defense made it difficult for the Wolfpack for the rest of the 4th quarter, but a blocked punt with 2:34 to go set N.C. State up with fantastic field position. A pass interference call would see the Wolfpack advanced to the 14-yard line, followed by a 12-yard pass from Glennon to create a first-and-goal at the 2-yard line. Still, it took four tries for N.C. State to capitalize, as Glennon would find Brian Underwood on fourth and goal for the game-tying touchdown and game-winning extra point.

Box Score Hero: N.C. State quarterback Mike Glennon threw for 266 yards in the upset, leading the Wolfpack on the game-winning drive in the last two minutes.

Seriously, this happened many, many times in a row. I’ll look up the number in a second. Hang on.

And with a flag on the hit at the end, FSU’s going to have an even harder time of driving down the field in 16 seconds.

Miami had several chances to grab momentum early, but they dropped passes and committed boneheaded penalties that derailed their efforts. And once Notre Dame’s vaunted defense found their groove, they snuffed out any chances of a comeback.

Miami fell to 4-2 with the loss.

Rankings Ramifications: Both teams were unranked and neither are expected to be ranked following Saturday’s game. Vanderbilt is still just 2-3 on the season.

But Did They Cover? Missouri, 7-point favorites, were unable to cover the spread, meaning the Commodores did.