College football’s Week 11 results, updates and fun stuff

Saturday’s showdown between Alabama and LSU was pretty tense, as showdowns between those two schools tend to be. The Tide ended up beating the Tigers on the road in overtime, but not before LSU fans took advantage of a break in the action to loudly exclaim a vulgar chant directed toward Alabama head coach Nick Saban.

Saban was previously the head coach at LSU, winning two conference championships and one national title during his time with the Tigers.

I don’t know what dance this is, but it doesn’t seem fair to that one guy:

(via BTN)

Big 12 referees have received a lot of guff from around the internet and beyond for their consistent boobery. And you know what? Whoever’s running the Big 12 twitter account is sick of it!

Well, they were sick of it, because now that tweet no longer exists. It’s generally good practice to stand behind your opinions, but putting on for Big 12 refs may not be the most credible stance at the moment. After all, their catalog of hilarious mistakes is pretty thick already, and it’s just the beginning of November. Hopefully no one gets fined over this!

Via Fox Sports 1

Technically, that ball might strike Orion Stewart in the lower back, then bounce down his leg, but somewhere in there, I’m pretty sure it finds butt. Baylor is winning, 24-14, despite precision heaves such as this.

The revival of Duke football under coach David Cutcliffe has been incredible. The Blue Devils enter their matchup with Syracuse on Saturday afternoon at 7-1 and leading the ACC Coastal division. There’s a legitimate chance that Duke -- Duke! -- could be one of the four teams in college football’s first ever playoff if it can win out in the regular season and find victory in the conference title game, presumably against Florida State.

Even more surprising? Duke football has actually been better than Duke basketball recently.

Oklahoma-Baylor has started out as a defensive battle, with the Bears holding a 3-0 lead midway through the first. The Sooners have needed a big play, and they got one from quarterback Trevor Knight.

Knight already had the first down here, but his hurdle of Terrell Burt gave the Sooners five more yards and an explosive play that eventually led to a touchdown to give Oklahoma the lead.

The Bruins were largely left for dead after back-to-back home defeats against Utah and Oregon in early October, but they have rebounded to win three straight Pac-12 games. By far the most impressive of that streak -- and arguably the most impressive of the season -- came last Saturday, when UCLA held Arizona’s potent offense to just seven points in a 10-point victory. The Bruins are now just a game back of Arizona State for the Pac-12 North lead and hold a tiebreaker over the Sun Devils by virtue of a 35-point win in September.

Washington is still trying to find its way in its first season under new head coach Chris Petersen. After starting the season with four wins, the Huskies have stumbled to a 2-3 record in five conference games and need one more win to solidity a bowl trip. Now things get tougher, as top cornerback Marcus Peters was kicked off the team. Saturday’s game will be the fourth that Washington has played against a ranked opponent since September 27.

Last week, we got a chance to see just how good two of the Pac-12’s one-loss teams really were. One of them was thoroughly impressive. The other ... wasn’t.

The latter was Utah. The Utes’ offense could never get going against a somewhat-inconsistent Arizona State defense, falling, 19-16, in Tempe. That score is all sorts of confusing. On one hand, it “exposed” Utah’s offense, but on the other hand, the Utes almost won against a very good opponent. As SB Nation’s Bill Connelly wrote, “that Utah almost won a huge conference road game while averaging 3.3 yards per play is a strange, impressive backhanded achievement of sorts.” So Utah isn’t bad, but any hopes the Utes had of winning the Pac-12 title look to be in serious jeopardy.

Could this be a trap game for Florida State? The Seminoles are fresh off a close win over Louisville and have a road trip at Miami to look forward to next week, but first they play host to a Virginia team in full free-fall mode.

The Seminoles remain undefeated since the 2012 season, but the last time they played Virginia, in 2011, they lost. On paper, this looks like a team Florida State should defeat with no problem, but the ‘Noles have had trouble with unranked opponents previously this season in Oklahoma State and NC State. Both games were notably on the road.

With six games between ranked teams on Saturday’s schedule, ESPN College GameDay chose to broadcast from the site of the Big Ten game of the year: East Lansing, Michigan. It gave Michigan State fans a rare opportunity to mock Urban Meyer, and they did not disappoint.

Last year, Urban Meyer was seen eating some postgame pizza after Ohio State’s Big Ten Championship Game loss to the Spartans. Michigan State fans did not forget:

Auburn tries to avoid a letdown game after its thrilling (and kind of gross) 35-31 victory over Ole Miss last week as it hosts Texas A&M in a rematch of one of 2013’s best SEC games. Auburn QB Nick Marshall is likely licking his chops at the prospect of facing a soft A&M defense, with struggles in both the secondary (allowing a horrific 162.83 QB rating in SEC play) and run support (86th in the nation at 177 yards per game allowed, plus 15 TDs) often dooming the Aggies’ hopes regardless of what they do on offense.

Game time: 3:30 ET (2:30 local)

LSU mascot Mike the Tiger has missed each of the Bayou Bengals’ home games this season. It’s forced LSU fans to find alternates, like a great dane painted to look like a tiger.

Not sure if Elmer the Tigerdog is going to have the same effect on the opposition.

The College Football Playoff picture will get a bit clearer after this one. Notre Dame and Arizona State will try to strengthen their resumes Saturday afternoon, and the loser of this game is likely eliminated from contention.

The Sun Devils’ only loss this season was a blowout, a 62-27 home defeat to a UCLA team that has similar explosive ability to Notre Dame. Arizona State has been able to beat some ranked teams, however, winning against USC, Stanford and Utah over its past four games. Todd Graham’s squad is passing the ball well and scoring this season, but the defense has been particularly good over the past three weeks, holding Stanford, Utah and Washington to a combined 36 points.

TV: Noon ET, Fox Sports 1 (Joe Davis, Joey Harrington, Kris Budden)

Radio: Baylor affiliates available here. Oklahoma affiliates here.

Many onlookers had Wisconsin out of the Big Ten West picture after it opened conference play with a loss at Northwestern, but the Badgers have since won three straight and returned to the top 25. A win at Purdue on Saturday would continue their resurgence and allow them to keep pace with Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota in the division.

Wisconsin hit the road for Rutgers last weekend and came away with a 37-0 rout. Fully healthy and with the nation’s best total defense (253.8 yards allowed per game) -- plus a fairly favorable schedule down the stretch -- the Badgers seem primed to play for a Big Ten title berth into the regular season’s final weekends.

If you’re wondering why Fordham-Bucknell started a bit late (which I’m sure you were):

Fire delay. A pretty serious fire from the look of it, too. As far as I can tell, no harm done except for some postponed football, some stinky clothes, and probably a few ruined hamburgers. The game started after a delay of about 10 minutes to deal with the fire.

If No. 9 Arizona State wins, it’ll have a marquee win on its resume that will bolster the Pac-12’s case if either ASU or Oregon emerges as the conference champion. For No. 10 Notre Dame, the Irish need a little more than “almost beat Florida State on the road” to build their own case for inclusion. A win on the road here could very well do the trick.

While four-star sophomore Folston has always been a promising runner, he wasn’t handed the keys until the North Carolina game, when he responded with 98 yards on 18 carries.

This week provided us with a different kind of look at the College Football Playoff committee’s leanings. Last week, the committee was reacting to nine weeks at once. This time, with only one week of games since the last polls, we got to find out how it would react on the fly.

Peter Berkes has already covered most of what we learned from Tuesday night’s rankings. I will add one other thing:

Star Ole Miss wide receiver Laquon Treadwell will miss the remainder of the season after a tragic injury suffered in Saturday night’s loss to Auburn. Ole Miss announced that Treadwell had surgery Saturday night for a fractured left fibula and a dislocated ankle.

The sophomore appeared to score the leading touchdown with 90 seconds to play, weaving his way through the Tigers’ defense before fighting to the goal line (trapping his leg under an Auburn tackler and causing the gruesome injury). Replay showed he fumbled the ball just before the end zone, giving Auburn the ball and the win.