The best chance the American Athletic Conference is going to have for another signature win in 2015 came and went on Saturday night. Temple scared Notre Dame on Halloween, sure, but it also succumbed to the more talented Irish late in a 24-20 victory.
Temple missed the AAC’s biggest win, but Houston and Memphis have high Playoff hopes
Don’t cry for the AAC. Not today, anyway.
Thomas B. Shea-USA TODAY Sports
And that's undoubtedly the reason that Temple's 2015 path won't culminate in a College Football Playoff berth. But the AAC has other options. Both Houston and Memphis remain undefeated, both now own wins over SEC schools and both are probably better than maybe the best Temple team ever.
Memphis already had its SEC pelt, a 37-24 toppling of SEC West contender Ole Miss that stands as an even better victory now that the Rebels have won the Alabama state title, too. For Houston, the victim wasn’t nearly as impressive -- Vanderbilt had just one SEC win entering Saturday, and it was over Missouri, a team that has forgotten what touchdowns are.
And yet the Cougars may have quietly been this week’s most impressive team, thoroughly dismantling the Commodores for a 34-0 win. Houston built that lead entirely before the fourth quarter, held Vandy to 185 total yards and allowed just 44 passing yards on five completions.
The only ranked team to win by a wider margin this week? Oklahoma -- which played abysmal Kansas, a far cry from the Vanderbilt program that still recruits better than most non-SEC teams. The indefatigable Tom Herman already wasn't really one for sleep, but with Houston now 8-0, and coming off a three-week stretch in which it outscored opponents 135-17, his counterparts might not be sleeping much, either.
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The most important among those other coaches are Temple’s Matt Rhule and Memphis’s Justin Fuente, both of whom can still certainly sell the chance to play on New Year’s Day to their players. And the Owls’ road to January is about as hard as Houston’s. Temple has to beat both Memphis on Nov. 21 and the AAC West champ (likely Houston) in an AAC Championship Game. Houston would have to beat Memphis on Nov. 14 and then beat the East champ (likely Temple) to play into 2016.
Memphis, meanwhile, would likely have to beat Houston once and Temple twice to do the same -- and wouldn’t get a home game against either team until the AAC Championship Game. The Tigers’ November matchups against both teams are on the road, too, and a tricky game against Navy -- itself 6-1, with only its own loss to Notre Dame as a blemish -- precedes them.
And, hey, it’s not impossible for Navy to play spoiler or make its own dynamite stretch run, by upsetting one or both of Memphis and Houston on the road in November. The Midshipmen could even play Army as the American champions! The difference between Navy and Temple is essentially when the two teams lost to Notre Dame.
In fact, the only team that’s beaten anybody in the AAC’s top four so far this year is Notre Dame -- and while the Irish certainly look like legitimate Playoff contenders in their own right, there’s no compelling reason to think the Irish are head-and-shoulders above that quartet. Heck, when December rolls around, an undefeated AAC champion could actually have a better resume than Notre Dame.
Undefeated Memphis would have a win over Ole Miss, road wins over two AAC powers, and either a second win over one of those teams or a win over Navy’s triple option on a week’s preparation. Undefeated Houston would have likely knocked off Memphis and beaten Temple, adding those wins to ones over Louisville and Vandy.
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