Best college football Saturday ever? Wild endings, huge games and hate all over

I am a fan of Northwestern, a school with 11 fans. I know what it’s like when there are no fans in a college football stadium. Some teams, like Northwestern, try to hide it, with tarps. Others, like Illinois, pretend there are actually fans there, which doesn’t go well:

Illinois: You need to stop! You’re just helping everybody notice that there are no fans there!

Wednesday, we reminded those who like SB Nation on Facebook that college football fans would have trouble with pretty much any Saturday fall wedding. Among the replies, we received the following from an Auburn fan named Garrett:

I simply had to follow up.

And while the rest of us were peeling ourselves off the floor, barely capable of any reaction beyond swearing, Auburn’s band members had to reassemble enough parts of their brains to play the fight song.

Watch at the 15-second mark, when the director begins waving. This is a special touchdown, and it might be the most special touchdown that’s ever been scored, but it’s still a touchdown in need of the same touchdown music as all the others. A duty is a duty, no matter whether your heart is screaming out of your chest or not, and even if the blond man between you and the field is flailing like a fish flying through the air.

Clemson, SC - Mumford & Sons?

“Seriously. Mumford & Sons.”

Alabama lost to Auburn last Saturday. Did you hear about it? Maybe you did. It was the craziest thing we’ve ever seen and capped the best college football weekend we’ve ever seen. Also, wagers were impacted.

Including one made by former Alabama running back Mark Ingram with some fellow New Orleans Saints:

You may have heard the collective scream from the internet at around 7 PM Saturday; if you did not, you certainly felt the disturbance in the college football force. I myself was at a bowling alley, watching it without sound, dead certain that Chris Davis had stepped out around the 50 and saying the words “no way” at ever-increasing volume levels as the enormity of what just happened became clear.

I thought it was fun. Alabama fans did not. Deadspin has already collected the various death threats issued to the kicker who missed three field goals, thus prompting Saban to put in the backup on the 57-yarder. “I hope you get rapped,” says one scholar, proving that for every adult on Twitter, there are 20 14-year-olds with poor impulse control.

Last Week: 19-for-31, 327 passing yards, three TDs, one INT; defeated Florida, 37-7

2013 Season: 218-for-319, 3,490 passing yards, 35 TDs, eight INTs; 134 rushing yards, three TDs

No one but Jameis Winston is going to win the 2013 Heisman Trophy, barring him being charged with sexual battery (a decision is expected within a week or so). While his off-the-field situation remains murky, his lapping of the field on the field gets clearer.

Winston is a celestially talented thrower who is aggressive with the ball, has leadership skills, and is about as prototypical a Heisman candidate as a pocket passer can be. But he’s not just a pocket passer, as he can run around, and his stats aren’t even as important as Florida State’s new No. 1 ranking and his centrality to earning it.

The play that ended the 2013 Alabama-Auburn game deserves a proper diagram, if only to explain the inexplicable for future generations. They will not believe it happened if we don’t explain the science to them, and no one needs yet another conspiracy theory surrounding football in the state of Alabama.

(Click for a big version.)

Amount of hours it would take to make sense of Oregon State’s 2013 season.

The Beavers allowed 625 yards (8.8 per play) in a 49-46 loss to Eastern Washington to start the season, then ripped off six straight wins, allowing 359 yards per game in the process while gaining an average of 514. Then, after a tight, competitive, 20-12 loss to Stanford, OSU lost to USC, Arizona State, and Washington by an average score of 43.3 to 19.3. And then they came within one point and 30 seconds of winning at Oregon in the regular season finale.

Is there a hotter team on the recruiting trail than Auburn? The Tigers currently have 18 commitments, including eight of the four and five-star variety. That ratio could soon get even better.

Coaches always tell recruits what they plan to do in the future. But for Auburn, its coaching staff doesn’t have to tell recruits what will happen. Auburn’s recruits just saw the Tigers topple the defending champion, in Auburn, in front of an insane atmosphere.

• BEST. COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEKEND. EVER.

• New bowl projections: FSU-Ohio State national title

Last week: Lost 38-17 to Iowa

Record: 8-4 (5-3 B1G)

Years: 6

Overall record: 57-24

School record: 57-24

Three-year record: 27-12

Salary: $2,875,000

Buyout: $4.5 million

Football ratio (percentage of the athletic department’s overall revenue derived from football): 65.4%

Subsidy (percentage of the athletic department’s budget that comes from John Q. Taxpayer): None

Dreaded vote of confidence? Yes.

Let’s start by simply running down Bo Pelini’s Friday: the sixth-year head coach started the day by falling two touchdowns behind Iowa on Senior Day. He then angrily called out a sideline reporter during a halftime interview, picked up a crucial penalty for throwing his hat near an official, and ran a doomed fake punt from deep in his own end of the field despite the fact that Iowa had put its first-team defense out to defend it. Iowa won 38-17, defeating Nebraska in Lincoln for the first time since the Roosevelt administration.

After a frankly insane Rivalry Week in college football, the national championship odds are looking considerably different, via Bovada.

Florida State is your strong favorite to win it all, with Ohio State in second place, just ahead of an Auburn team that just beat Alabama. In fact, the only other three teams left on the board are all in the SEC, hoping that either Florida State or Ohio State lose their conference title games (looking at you, Duke and Michigan State). Auburn and Missouri will square off in the SEC Championship Game on Saturday.

Turns out, we were only watching the prequel.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a masterpiece of a college football weekend, one that included a miracle in Auburn, a one-handed, conference title-saving touchdown grab in Philadelphia, a high-fivin’ dog in DeKalb, and a Cajun man with a sword in Los Angeles. It was a nearly perfect weekend of college football. The only way you could have improved it would have been to raise the stakes a bit. And maybe stretch out the excitement for an extra day.

Well, this is fairly wonderful. Except for Alabama fans, probably.

This poem is actually titled “Twas the Night They’ll Remember” and was written by Chuck Porretto. Thanks, Chuck, for adding yet another layer to this magical holiday football season that just keeps giving.

Florida State and Ohio State sit atop the new BCS standings, as expected. Auburn came in at No. 3, just ahead of fellow SEC programs Alabama and Missouri.

At this point, most BCS gurus are at a consensus: if the Seminoles and Buckeyes win their respective conference championship games, they’ll play for the national championship in January. Even if Auburn blows out No. 5 Missouri and Ohio State squeaks one out against Michigan State, the Buckeyes should have enough of a buffer between the navy and blue Tigers to play for the title. Emphasis on should. But this is the BCS, where weird, weird things tend to happen.

It doesn’t matter that Ohio State went 12-0 last year. It doesn’t matter that an unbeaten Auburn was shut out of the BCS National Championship in 2004. It doesn’t matter that Ohio State has lost two national title games against SEC teams in recent years. It doesn’t matter that the SEC has won seven straight championships.

Or at least it shouldn’t.

The Internet loves amazing moments rendered in Tecmo Bowl form, so you knew this was coming. Here, with a perfectly synced radio call and a little poetic license with all the zig-zagging, is Chris Davis of Auburn’s incredible, Iron Bowl-winning return of a missed Alabama field goal in pixelated form.

(via Justin Hokanson)

Clemson-South Carolina is going to be a good game any year, but especially so when both teams enter the matchup ranked in the top 10 nationally. That was the case Saturday night, when No. 6 Clemson entered their contest against No. 10 South Carolina as underdogs, and the Gamecocks did not disappoint in an easy victory.

Shakin’ the Southland is distraught over the loss, and says the Tigers simply aren’t living up to expectations set for themselves.

Hall and Wilson were both ejected from Saturday’s win over Michigan in an ugly incident where the two teams brawled on the field. Wilson was perhaps the worst offender, throwing a punch that connected solidly with a Wolverine player.

Hall, for his part, made his feelings on the matter and the ejection very clear.

Missouri got a huge boost to its national title hopes when Auburn took down Alabama on Saturday afternoon. After that, the Tigers simply need to win out and have Ohio State or Florida State lose one of their respective conference title games.

Rock M Nation could not be happier with defensive coordinator Dave Steckel, who coached a phenomenal game and stopped the dominant Aggie offense.

The Iron Bowl wasn’t the only huge rivalry game with national title implications that came down to a play in the final minute Saturday. No. 3 Ohio State survived a scare from Michigan, stopping a last-minute two-point conversion attempt en route to a 42-41 victory, keeping the Buckeyes’ national title aspirations alive for one more week.

Ted Glover of Land-Grant Holy Land was impressed with Ohio State’s ground attack, which came from both the quarterback and running back positions.

A loss to hated rival Auburn did far more than lose the Iron Bowl for Alabama -- it ensured that they would fall out of the No. 1 spot in the polls, as well. Florida State got to reap the benefits of that, as did Ohio State. If nothing goes wrong for them next week in their respective conference championship games, they should be your BCS Championship Game representatives.

First up, the AP, which doesn’t count toward the BCS:

That’s right, you’ve got a five-way tie for fourth place, two Pac-12 players below them, and Tajh Boyd back in the running even after a blowout loss to South Carolina.

Winston is still the favorite to win the award, as he has been much of the season. The quarterback of the top team in the land generally has a built-in advantage in the race (see: McCarron before this week), but it helps that the freshman has also had a fantastic statistical year, setting the Florida State single-season record for touchdown tosses (passing a mark set by Chris Weinke during his Heisman campaign).

ESPN’s SportsNation polls can be quite a bit of fun, either because they’re surprising or because they reveal intra-national divides that conform perfectly to what you’d expect. Take, for instance, these two polls on Ohio State’s merit as a top-two, championship-worthy team:

It’s nearly perfect. With the exception of a few stragglers, that dissenting chunk is pretty much exactly the SEC, give or take a North Carolina. New Mexico and Maine sometimes don’t care. Vermont is surprisingly pro-Auburn, and Michigan actually sided with Ohio State as No. 2 (which they are), but it’s otherwise SEC vs. everyone ... with one consistent exception: