College football officially got a little weirder and more fun in Week 6. Michigan State once again beat Michigan in a monsoon, Alabama looked mortal for the first time in weeks, Clemson elected once again to pull its “look good when you have to, and not a moment more” routine, and your Heisman favorite (Penn State’s Saquon Barkley) had negative rushing yards well into the second half of an easy win. Weirdness, all of it.
Iowa State beating Oklahoma takes us one step closer to a chaotic 2017 home stretch
And the rest of the top 10 TEAMS OF THE WEEK!
Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images
Most notably, Iowa State beat Oklahoma for just the second time since JFK was president in a win that hearkened back to one of college football’s craziest seasons.
Team of the Week: Iowa State (def. No. 3 Oklahoma, 38-31)
An early lead can sometimes be the most dangerous possible thing.
Oklahoma probably didn’t expect a ton of trouble from an Iowa State team that had just lost its starting quarterback, Jacob Park, to what is being called a “leave of absence.” The third-ranked Sooners would likely have too much offense for the Cyclones, and giving a new quarterback (Kyle Kempt) his first start on the road against a top-five team doesn’t usually work out particularly well.
Just ten minutes into the game, Oklahoma was up 14-0. The Sooners had 168 yards in their first 16 plays and forced an easy three-and-out in between. This one was in hand, and you couldn’t blame OU for mentally hitting the cruise-control button.
Once you’re in cruise, though, it’s really difficult to get out of it. The Cyclones started mixing Kempt and quarterback-turned-linebacker-turned-wildcat-quarterback Joel Lanning and got a field goal late in the first quarter. They added a 75-yard touchdown drive in the second quarter, then poked in a 32-yard field goal before halftime. They still trailed 24-13 and hadn’t yet shown the capability of stopping the Sooners enough to catch up, but they were making it clear that OU was in a fight.
ISU kicked another field goal to start the second half, but OU was still driving to put the game out of reach midway through the third quarter. But Trey Sermon lost a fumble at the ISU 6. Kempt threw a 35-yard pass to Allen Lazard, a 28-yard score to Marchie Murdock, and a two-point conversion pass to Lazard. With 17 minutes left, the game was somehow tied.
Just four minutes later, ISU was ahead. OU’s Austin Seibert missed a field goal, and Kempt and Trever Ryen connected for a 57-yard score. OU settled down and tied the game, but ISU went right back ahead with a gorgeous 25-yard TD catch by Lazard.
You remember that scene in Miracle, when Kurt Russell’s Herb Brooks looks over at Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov late in the USA-USSR match and realizes, “He doesn’t know what to do”? I was reminded of that on OU’s last drive.
The Sooners got the ball back with 2:19 left, plenty of time for a high-octane offense to tie the game. But after an 11-yard quick out from Baker Mayfield to Jordan Smallwood, it quickly began to seem like they didn’t know what to do.
- They wasted quite a few seconds with a 4-yard hand-off to Sermon.
- Then they wasted a few more with a 2-yard pass to Sermon.
- They used a timeout, then Mayfield fired incomplete to Marquise Brown.
- They used another timeout despite the clock stoppage, and Mayfield had no idea where to go with the ball on the final play.
Iowa State had beaten Oklahoma just once since 1961. The Cyclones’ 33-31 victory over the host Sooners in 1990 played out in startlingly similar fashion: a ranked OU went up 14-0 in the first quarter against an ISU team dealing with a quarterback injury, then threw it into cruise too early.
That time around, ISU signal caller Chris Pedersen sported a bulky knee brace and still rushed 29 times for 148 yards. Twenty-seven years later, Kempt used his arm (18-for-24 passing for 343 yards) and Lanning’s legs (the linebacker finished with 35 rushing yards, 25 passing yards, four solo tackles, four assists, a sack, and a fumble recovery) to pull the comeback.
Granted, the 1990 OU team was ranked just 16th at the time and was coming off of a disappointing loss to Texas. This Sooners squad was third, sporting national title hopes and maybe the single most impressive résumé win of the season (a road pummeling of an Ohio State team that has been perfect since).
It is the 10th anniversary of the wackiest season of all time, and we’ve been reading tea leaves in search of similarly wild ride. September wasn’t particularly crazy (though it did have its own version of Appalachian State over Michigan). But we just rang in October with a reference to the second-craziest season ever. Yes. Bring on the crazy.
Other Teams of the Week
2. Michigan State (def. No. 7 Michigan, 14-10)
3. No. 13 Miami (def. Florida State, 24-20)
You just beat your biggest rival for the first time in nearly a decade! Now what?
4. Tulane (def. Tulsa, 62-28)
Willie Fritz’s second Green Wave team is now 3-2 with losses only to unbeaten Navy (by two) and unbeaten-until-yesterday Oklahoma on the road. They entered Saturday with a 50-50 chance at only their second bowl in 15 years. Let’s just say those odds are higher now. They absolutely destroyed Tulsa, bolting to a stunning 48-7 halftime lead and cruising.
5. Virginia (def. Duke, 28-21)
In the market for a nice 2007 reference to go with the 1990 reference above? Try this: Virginia is now 4-1 for the first time since ... you guessed it! Bronco Mendenhall for ACC Coach of the Year.
6. No. 24 NC State (def. No. 17 Louisville, 39-25)
If the Wolfpack keep this up (and that’s one hell of an if), Dave Doeren should give Mendenhall pretty good competition in that vote.
7. No. 21 Notre Dame (def. North Carolina, 33-10)
The Irish tempted the gods with a lot more wet passing in North Carolina, but ... RIP, 4-8 jokes, all the same.
8. No. 9 Wisconsin (def. Nebraska, 38-17)
What do you do when an easy-looking win has turned into a tie game? If you’re Wisconsin, you run. The. Damn. Ball.
9. No. 11 Washington State (def. Oregon, 33-10)
In Mike Leach’s first four seasons at Washington State, his Cougars had four wins of 23-plus points. Since the start of 2016, they have eight. Doing so in Eugene earns bonus points, as well.
10. UAB (def. Louisiana Tech, 23-22)
UAB’s self-imposed death penalty is one of college football’s dumbest recent stories. But it also makes the Blazers’ successes more heart-warming. They got their first conference win since late-2014 on Saturday, and it was a big one: 23-22 over a pretty good Louisiana Tech, sealed with a last-second field goal block.
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