TEAMS OF THE WEEK: 14 squads you should catch up on, led by Bill Snyder’s jiu jitsu

Bill Snyder has had basically two hall-of-fame tenures as Kansas State’s head coach.

The first was Herculean; he turned the nation’s most moribund major program into one capable of complete physical domination.

Marc Simoneau and Terence Newman and Chris Canty and Lamar Chapman on defense knocked you flat, while Michael Bishop and Darren Sproles and Quincy Morgan and Darnell McDonald ran by you. And if a game came down to special teams, the Wildcats had Martin Gramatica and David Allen, and you didn’t.

Snyder’s second go-round in Manhattan, which has now produced 72 wins, a second conference title, and eight consecutive bowl bids, has been of a completely different vintage.

The Wildcats are now jiu jitsu artists, at their best moments capable of using your own strengths against you. You think you are in control, and you don’t see the counter-punches coming, but there you are, lying on the mat. And when you need to make a stop, you can’t stop KSU from running that damned zone read for first down after first down. Meanwhile, they’ve still got the scary special teams guys that you lack.

Granted, KSU’s upset of Oklahoma State didn’t quite finish that way, but it started that way, at least. The Wildcats confused OSU quarterback Mason Rudolph and took advantage of every wayward pass he threw, jumping out to a jarring, 42-13 lead in Stillwater.

They seemingly had two plays — the Skylar Thompson keeper and the bomb to Byron Pringle — and they sliced OSU with them repeatedly. Thompson rushed 14 times for 105 yards, not including three sacks, and Pringle caught four passes for 166 yards and three scores. In between, he also returned a kickoff 89 yards for a touchdown.

Things got weird from there, of course. The Cowboys finally snapped out of their spell and caught fire, going on a 27-3 run to cut the Wildcats’ lead to five. Thompson, the third QB to start a game this season, got hurt, leaving halfback Alex Barnes to take wildcat snaps. The KSU offense went missing.

When OSU got the ball back with 2:16 left, we all knew how this was going to end. But then the Cowboys fell back under the spell. James Washington dropped a first-down pass. Rudolph misfired on a couple more. OSU’s surefire, game-winning drive instead became four incomplete passes and a turnover on downs.

This hasn’t been that great a season in Manhattan. Snyder’s Wildcats were No. 20 in the preseason polls but stumbled at Vanderbilt in Week 3, then began Big 12 play with three consecutive losses. Semi-ugly rumors emerged about Snyder blocking a potential coach-in-waiting situation to give his son a chance at the head coaching job (if or when the 78-year-old ever retires again).

When KSU lost an extremely winnable home game against WVU last week, it appeared that might prevent the Wildcats from securing bowl eligibility.

They decided to end the tension with a huge upset win regardless. An aging jiu jitsu artist might not have quite as many tricks as he used to. But he’ll take you down when you least expect it. Maybe this is Snyder’s final season, and maybe it isn’t; the rumors aren’t going away, but they’ve been wrong for at least a couple of years now, too. But on the off chance that this is his final go-round, it’ll involve a bowl trip.

TCU still has quite a bit to play for. The Horned Frogs entered Saturday with work to do to clinch a rematch with Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game, and they could still butt their way into the College Football Playoff conversation, if the next couple of weekends feature enough chaos.

It was a pretty big deal, then, that they had to go and face Texas Tech in Lubbock with a backup quarterback. Starter Kenny Hill was left home due to concussion symptoms, and freshman Shawn Robinson had to take over. He didn’t fare too well, either, completing just six of 17 passes.

TCU’s defense is still TCU’s defense, however. While the Horned Frogs gained just 289 total yards, they held Tech to its lowest point total since 2006 (at TCU, naturally) and its lowest home point total since a 56-3 loss to Nebraska in 2000, when current Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury was Tech quarterback.

Wisconsin has become one of the two faces of the annual “Who you played vs. how you played” debate. (The other: UCF.) The Badgers have plowed their way through a pretty cakey slate, to be sure, but they have dominated all the same, with only two wins coming by fewer than 14 points.

On Saturday, they finally got a chance in the spotlight. They led off the day by taking on a Michigan team that is battered and young but talented, one that had found a new gear since installing Brandon Peters at quarterback. Peters had his moments on Saturday, but the Badgers did what they have done all year: absorb blows, make adjustments, and pull away. A pair of Alex Hornibrook-to-A.J. Taylor strikes turned the game around, and when Peters went down with injury, the rest was a formality. Wisconsin’s two wins from a Big Ten title, and the Badgers will be in the CFP if they finish 13-0.

I expected big things of Pat Fitzgerald’s Wildcats this year, and they rewarded that with a feckless, 2-3 start. They suffered a hopeless loss at Duke and looked unconvincing in an early win over Nevada. But they showed hints of promise in losses to Wisconsin (on offense) and Penn State (on defense).

Since Penn State left Evanston on October 7, they haven’t lost. They won back-to-back-to-back overtime games and handled Purdue last week. And in their final home game of the year, they throttled a Minnesota team coming off of a dominant win over Nebraska.

The Wildcats are now 8-3 and could very well produce the 10-win finish I both predicted in the offseason and completely gave up on a couple of games in.

Five weeks ago, Missouri was 1-5, and second-year head coach Barry Odom was very much on the hot seat. The Tigers’ 35-3 loss to Purdue in September was one of the most unprepared, hopeless losses this Missouri fan has ever seen. But the Tigers began to improve just as the schedule lightened up a bit (and, strangely enough, as Odom turned much of the depth chart over to underclassmen). And they have laid waste to faltering opponents.

Mizzou has now won five consecutive games, each by 28 points or more. The Tigers used a pair of return touchdowns to build a 35-0 halftime lead at Vanderbilt on Saturday night, and they now stand at 6-5, bowl eligible for the first time since 2014. Mizzou fans are used to plot twists, but this has been particularly disorienting. And positive.

Dave Clawson is a turnaround master, as he proved at Fordham, Richmond, and Bowling Green. He burnt the Wake Forest depth chart to the ground during a 3-9 debut in 2014 and went 3-9 again in 2015, but the Demon Deacons rebounded to 7-6 last fall and have played at a legitimate top-30 level this fall. They are now 7-4 following a win over a solid, if flailing, NC State, and they now have a chance at their first nine-win campaign in 10 years.

Yes, an injury to WVU quarterback Will Grier helped the cause here. But Tom Herman’s up-and-down first season will include a bowl game thanks to a two-touchdown win in Morgantown.

The Longhorns have played to their level of competition all season, losing to Maryland and looking completely unconvincing in a 10-point win over Kansas. But they nearly beat USC, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State, and they finally got over the hump on Saturday. And this depth chart is still awfully young.

I didn’t love Fresno State’s hire of Jeff Tedford. Or at least, I didn’t love the timing of it. The school rushed to hire the former Cal coach without first playing the field.

Evidently they knew something I didn’t. After going 10-27 over Tim DeRuyter’s final three seasons, the Bulldogs are 8-3 in Tedford’s first campaign. They will play Boise State in the MWC title game in a couple of weeks (after first playing the Broncos this coming week, too), and they have a shot at matching their 2014-16 win total in a single fall.

Lane Kiffin’s social media tendencies have distracted us from the fact that he has pulled off his best-ever coaching feat. Since a 1-3 start, the Owls have won seven straight games, averaging 48 points per game and seven yards per play in the meantime. Running backs Devin Singletary and Gregory Howell Jr. have combined to rush for 2,151 yards and 29 touchdowns (a majority of which has come from Singletary), and Kiffin’s next Conference USA loss will be his first.

He’s also undefeated in the Shula Bowl following Saturday’s dominant win.

Yes, the FBS slate was a bit lacking this weekend. That tends to be the case on the eve of Rivalry Week. But if you were hungry for intrigue, all you had to do was hop down a level. FCS was brimming with it.