College football Week 15 highlights – top plays, games, takeaways

Dabo Swinney is, in many ways, the last man still standing strong against the unrelenting headwinds of the modern game — ignoring the transfer portal, lamenting roster limits and, on Saturday, holding fast to Clemson’s oldest tradition of tripping over its own shoelaces when blessed with an otherwise advantageous position. It feels like there should be some word for that — a verb of some sort tying Clemson specifically to that type of collapse.

And yet, with just nine seconds left in the game, Clemson did something different and exhilarating, dramatic and miraculous. It won. And in doing so, it injected a small sliver of drama into championship week, a blow to the status quo that could bleed into Sunday’s final CFP rankings reveal, when the first 12-team playoff field is unveiled and some team — perhaps Swinney’s alma mater, Alabama, or perhaps Swinney’s latest conquest, SMU — will be left out.

Clemson’s 34-31 win over No. 8 SMU in the ACC championship game threw a wrench into what could’ve been a simple, relatively controversy-free final vote for this committee after the rest of championship weekend largely made things simple.

Boise State solidified the Group of 5’s slot in the playoff with a 21-7 win over UNLV.

Arizona State secured its bid by winning the Big 12 title, 45-19 over Iowa State.

Oregon proved it is the No. 1 team in the country, the last undefeated, upending Penn State 45-37 for a Big Ten championship in its first season in the conference.

And Georgia, despite an early deficit, a languid offense and an injured starting quarterback, found a way to escape Texas 22-19 in overtime. Carson Beck left the game with an upper-body injury, turning the offense over to Gunner Stockton, who led the Dawgs to a late lead following a gaudy fake punt and two fortunate fumble recoveries on the same drive.

Texas charged back to kick a game-tying field goal in the final minute to send the game to overtime, then delivered a harrowing blow to Stockton on a scramble that knocked him from the game. Beck, who had been ruled out for the remainder of the game after being unable to even grip the football, returned to hand off to Trevor Etienne, who rumbled into the end zone to secure the win in a finish so wild, a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters on a thousand Halloweens couldn’t have scripted such a ridiculous conclusion to Texas’ first SEC campaign.

And then there was Clemson, the party crasher.

The Tigers were demoralized in the opener against Georgia, thumped at home by Louisville a month ago and dumped by LaNorris Sellers in the finale just last week. At each turn, the Tigers’ playoff hopes appeared doomed, but Swinney kept finding a way to stay in the game until Clemson ultimately punched its ticket in Charlotte on Saturday.

So where does this leave the committee?

Behind Door No. 1 is SMU, a team easily in the playoff before Saturday’s loss in which Kevin Jennings coughed up two first-half turnovers and the special teams blundered their way through two brutal penalties and a missed field goal. The Mustangs looked genuinely unprepared for a moment this big, only to find life in the second half, tie the game with just seconds left, then fumble away the opportunity like Kevin carrying the pot of chili on “The Office.”

Behind Door No. 2 is Alabama, a team with a tenuous argument to be included even under the best of conditions, now a potential beneficiary of its three SEC losses — two to 6-6 teams — which had the Tide sitting idle at home in champ week.

On one hand, the committee would have to ignore its own edicts not to punish a team for playing in its conference championship if it were to demote SMU from the ranks of the 12-team playoff.

On the other hand, the committee would have to ignore years of precedent in which it prioritizes teams that are named Alabama.

“We know the committee has a tough job, so we believe and trust they’re going to do the right thing,” SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee said before Saturday’s defeat.

But SMU offered up all the excuses needed to bump the Mustangs from the playoff when it fell behind 24-7 at the half amid a calamity of errors.

Of course, it’s not as if there wasn’t room for other controversies on Saturday.

Mountain West commissioner Gloria Navarez issued a strongly worded statement defending the conference’s right to a first-round bye against a similar push from the Big 12.

In the SEC, Georgia arrives at the final playoff rankings in an intriguing situation. Its star QB is injured, and his availability for the postseason is unknown. In his stead, Georgia’s offense largely sputtered behind a backup who threw for just 71 yards and a pick. The Bulldogs are conference champions, but the game was the offensive equivalent a white noise machine.

This could certainly be cause for concern for the committee, but luckily no one in the room could remember a time in which a clearly deserving team was left out of the playoff just because its starting QB went down and it was forced to win its conference with an elite defense instead.

But paramount among the debate is the team that flubbed its way into an early hole, stormed back against a more heralded opponent, but ultimately fell just short and will arrive at the precipice of the playoff lacking a single signature win.

Oh, no, not SMU. We’re talking about Penn State.

The Nittany Lions trailed 28-10 early in the second quarter, but they refused to roll over, with Drew Allar accounting for four touchdowns in a wild second half that saw Penn State scratch and claw, only to have Oregon respond in kind again and again. The Nittany Lions made it a one-score game with 3:41 to play then forced a punt, but two plays later, Allar threw his second pick of the game to seal it.

Penn State’s résumé is this: It beat Illinois and lost to two top-10 teams by one possession.

SMU’s résumé is this: It beat Louisville and Duke and lost to two top-20 teams by one possession.

Lashlee said it would be “criminal” if SMU was out.

But, of course, this is college football. There are no rules here.

Jump to:
Jeanty’s strong finish | ASU’s dominant win
Army wins the American | Champ week trends
Heisman five | Under the radar

Jeanty finishes strong

It took most of the first half before it happened, but it was always as inevitable as the committee counting Vanderbilt as a “quality loss” for Alabama.

With under a minute to play before the break, Ashton Jeanty broke off a 75-yard touchdown run to put Boise State up 21-0 over UNLV — a lead safe for anyone not named Miami — and then helped the Broncos run out the clock in the second half with 18 carries in a 21-7 victory to clinch the Mountain West championship and potentially a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff.

Jeanty ran for 209 yards on 32 carries in the game. It was his sixth game with 200 yards, tied with Rashaad Penny and Melvin Gordon for the most by any player in the past 20 years. It was his seventh game with at least 30 carries this season, something only six other players have done in the past two decades. With all due respect to Colorado’s Travis Hunter, whose impact is felt on both sides of the ball, nobody meant more to their team this year than Jeanty.

But the question that has loomed over Jeanty all season is the same one that now looms over Boise State: How do we calculate the exchange rate between greatness in the Mountain West and playing among the best of the Power 4.

There is, of course, Boise State’s performance against Oregon — a three-point loss on a final-second field goal — that would suggest there’s not as much of a gap between Boise State and the best of college football as the average pundit might suggest, at least in a one-off meeting.

But there’s also this: The Group of 5 mustered just nine wins all season against the Power 4 — and none by Boise State (though its Mountain West championship game opponent did account for two of them).

The better question, however, might be how afraid Power 4 playoff defenses should be of Jeanty, because this isn’t really a David vs. Goliath story. It’s more Goliath vs. a freight train. Because here’s another fun stat on Jeanty: This season, he has 12 runs of 50 yards or more. No other player likely to be in the playoff had more than three, and no other team in the country had more than seven.

ASU wins the Big 12

In an era in which we’ve grown accustomed to the rich getting richer, the biggest and most influential programs sucking all the talent from the portal and the little guys being regulated to a second tier of success, the Big 12 offered us something different.

Arizona State, coming off a 3-9 campaign in 2023, faced off against Iowa State, among the most historically moribund programs in the country, with a playoff berth on the line. While other leagues put blue-chip stars and heralded head coaches on display, the Big 12 served up a meal for the common folks — a happy hour at Chili’s that felt entirely more authentic and comfortable than the Michelin-starred snooze fest in the SEC.

There wasn’t drama. Arizona State was dominant, thanks to another stellar performance from Cam Skattebo, who accounted for 208 yards and three touchdowns, and a dominant defense that forced three turnovers and smothered any attempt at an Iowa State comeback. The Sun Devils ultimately won 45-19. And Clemson’s win in the ACC championship upset the apple cart enough to zoom the Sun Devils from No. 15 in last week’s rankings to a likely first-round bye.

Doubt the Big 12’s champion at your own risk.

Army wins the American

In the past 134 years, the United States army has won two more world wars than conference championships (though neither of those wars were against the SEC, so they don’t really count.)

That changed Friday, as Bryson Daily, Kanye Udoh and Andon Thomas led the Black Knights to a 35-14 win over Tulane to claim the American Athletic championship.

Daily ran for four touchdowns, Udoh had 158 rush yards and a score, and Thomas had eight tackles, 1.5 for a loss and an interception in the win.

For Daily, it was yet another remarkable moment in a historic season. His four-touchdown effort Friday gives him 29 on the year rushing. He’ll get a chance to add to that total in a rivalry game with Navy next week. And in between, he’s set to defeat Thanos and retrieve the final Infinity Stone.

Still, Army will not get a ticket to the College Football Playoff, in spite of its 11-1 record and conference championship, due in part to a woeful strength of schedule, in part to a blowout loss to Notre Dame and mostly because Ohio State has already been embarrassed enough this season and couldn’t deal with a first-round loss to another team that can’t throw the football consistently.

Nevertheless, if the Black Knights can dispose of Navy, they’d finish at 12-1 with a conference title — truly navigating uncharted waters. And if they’re the ones handling uncharted waters now, too, Navy’s even less useful than Army had thought.

Championship Week vibe shifts

Each week, the wins and losses on the field help shape the college football season. But beneath the headlines, there are smaller shifts in the power structure of the sport. We try to track those trends here.

Trending up: One last goalpost heave

It has been a season of delightful goalpost thefts — and in Arizona State’s case, multiple thefts in the same game. College football upsets have actually sent goalpost manufacturing futures to an all-time high, which is good since the bulk of our 401K is goalpost oriented.

But the powers that be in the league offices hope to put a stop to all the field storming and goalpost absconding, so it’s possible this lovely tradition will slowly go extinct. Before that happens though, the great fans at Boise State gave the 2024 season a fitting send-off.

The goalposts will now remain frozen in the river until it thaws in June, a loving reminder of a tremendous win.

Trending up: Six degrees of beating Miami

Parker Navarro threw for two touchdowns and ran for two more as Ohio walloped Miami (OH) 38-3 to win the MAC championship on Saturday.

The win came on the heels of Timothée Chalamet joining ESPN’s “College GameDay,” where he hyped Navarro’s season, was the only host to pick Ohio and somehow upstaged Arch Manning as the most swoon-worthy performer of championship weekend. Somehow, this was Quinn Ewers’ fault.

It wasn’t just Navarro and Chalamet who starred, however. There are 180 miles separating Ohio’s campus from Miami’s, and that’s also approximately how many more yards the Bobcats ran for than the RedHawks on Saturday. Anthony Tyus III had 151 yards and a touchdown on his own, and the Bobcats finished with 232 on the day.

The win gives Ohio its first conference title since 1968, and it’s further evidence of just what a tremendous job head coach Tim Albin has done helming the Bobcats. After losing 12 of his first 17 in Athens, the Bobcats are 28-7 since. Ohio is now one of just five programs with at least three straight 10-win seasons (though Alabama can run its streak to 17 straight with a postseason win). He’ll now leave to take over at Charlotte, where if he simply shows up to games wearing a shirt with sleeves, he’ll be a local hero.

The outcome is also something of a coincidental result, as it turns out. Back in Week 1, Ohio’s Tyus rushed for 203 yards in an ultimately failed upset bid of Syracuse.

Then, in the season’s waning weeks, those two teams ended title hopes for Miami — both of them.

Syracuse erased a 21-0 deficit to beat the Florida version in Week 14, sending the Hurricanes tumbling out of the ACC championship game and the College Football Playoff before Ohio stomped the Ohio version Saturday.

The good news is, when fans complain about how Miami wasted superior talent and blew a championship opportunity again, Mario Cristobal will safely assume they’re talking about the RedHawks.

Trending down: Our sense of decency

Once again, Championship Weekend was highlighted by contestants vying for scholarship money in Dr Pepper’s famous football toss, and once again, those contestants spat in the face of all ethical boundaries by insisting on chest passes rather than throwing a football like a football.

As frustrating as this scuttling of the unspoken rules of halftime competitions is to see so routinely, there’s no arguing about its effectiveness, and so Florida State head coach Mike Norvell will have his QBs exclusively throwing chest passes in 2025 and will hope that Dr Pepper will chip in to cover some of the NIL money wasted on DJ Uiagalelei this year.

Trending up: Going home again

In its second year in Conference USA, Jacksonville State demolished Western Kentucky 52-12 on Friday to win the conference championship.

A dominant ground game led the way for the Gamecocks, with Tre Stewart rushing for 201 yards and three touchdowns, while QB Tyler Huff ran for 167 and accounted for three total scores.

More than anything, however, it was something of a moment of redemption for Jacksonville State head coach Rich Rodriguez, who had seen his fortunes dimmed since leaving West Virginia 18 years ago. A failed stint at Michigan was followed by a controversial exit at Arizona before finally landing with the Gamecocks, where he’s helped shepherd the program into FBS and, now, has a conference championship under his belt.

And because time is a flat circle, Rodriguez now finds himself as a potential replacement for Neal Brown at West Virginia. It would be a heralded homecoming for Rodriguez, and undoubtedly would work out just as well as other long-awaited reunions like Mack Brown at North Carolina, David Lee Roth with Van Halen and “Zoolander 2.”

OK, OK, but surely it’ll work out with Scott Frost and UCF, right? Name a single other time Frost was reunited with a former team that didn’t work out.

Heisman beyond five

Heisman voters aren’t supposed to reveal their ballot, so we’re taking a break from ranking our top five this week, and instead want to give a few other stars their flowers. While we don’t expect to see any of these guys in New York for the ceremony, they’re certainly worthy of praise and, if not a trip to New York, at least a layover at LaGuardia with Centurion Lounge access.

1. Army QB Bryson Daily

Daily ran for 126 yards and four touchdowns to lead Army to the American Athletic Conference championship on Friday, delivering another brilliant performance in a season that’s been chock full of them.

Daily’s final numbers: 2,357 total yards, 37 touchdowns, two turnovers.

Here’s the list of other players with 2,000 yards, 30 touchdowns and two or fewer turnovers in the past 20 years: Ashton Jeanty and Keenan Reynolds.

Jeanty, of course, could win this year’s Heisman.

Reynolds finished fifth in 2015 in what was widely considered the best season by a service academy player since Roger Staubach.

In other words, what Daily has done this year is historic, and it certainly would be fun to see him with Jeanty, Travis Hunter and others in New York.

Instead, he’ll be busy that day taking on Navy, a prize the folks at Army probably value even more.

2. Iowa RB Kaleb Johnson

The Hawkeyes played five games against SP+ top-30 defenses this season. He carried 102 times in those games for 659 yards and nine touchdowns.

If the knock on Jeanty and Hunter is they had favorable schedules with which to pad their stats, that certainly wasn’t true for Johnson.

But what’s more impressive is Johnson did all this while playing offense for Iowa! He did it with a passing game that accounted for just nine touchdowns all season. Johnson accounted for more than 55% of Iowa’s touchdowns this season. He singlehandedly discovered the page that was missing from Brian Ferentz’s playbook that read “how to actually score points.” Aside from Iowa’s punter, no one was more beloved by the Hawkeyes faithful.

3. SMU RB Brashard Smith

After years toiling in Miami as an explosive player without a role, Smith hit the portal and connected with his former OC, Rhett Lashlee, at SMU. Lashlee had an idea. What if the explosive receiver tried his hand at tailback?

The result was nearly 1,600 scrimmage yards and 2,000 all-purpose yards, first-team All-ACC status, and a performance Saturday against Clemson that came oh-so-close to carrying SMU to a conference title.

Notably, Smith’s blossoming at tailback after leaving Miami is only like the fifth-most devastating thing to happen to the Canes this season.

4. Marshall DE Mike Green

Perhaps no player in the country has been more overlooked nationally than Green, who helped the Thundering Herd to a dominant 31-3 win over Louisiana in the Sun Belt title game on Saturday.

Green finished with five tackles — 1.5 for a loss — a sack and a pass breakup in the win. Marshall’s D held the Cajuns to just 256 yards of offense, with just 56 coming on the ground.

For the season, Green leads the country with 22.5 tackles for loss, has 17 sacks and 15 QB hurries.

Unfortunately for Green, he plays on a Sun Belt team that opened the year 3-3, and the world essentially stopped paying attention. Also the name Mike Green sounds like a generic 1987 football character on Sega Genesis. But Marshall’s seven-game winning streak to end the season and secure the Sun Belt title has everything to do with Green’s ferocity, and opposing offensive linemen are absolutely not ignoring him.

5. The officials

Sure, Hunter was great. Yes, Jeanty’s season was historic. Sure, Cam Skattebo and Cam Ward and others were amazing. But no one turned more big games this year — from Miami-Cal to Georgia-Texas to Georgia-Georgia Tech — than the officials, who had just a tremendous season of doing things no one could explain or understand. Isn’t that, after all, what a truly magical Heisman candidate does?

Under-the-radar game of the week

In a battle of unbeatens, Springfield (12-0) upended Cortland (11-1) by a 40-28 margin in the Division III tournament Saturday.

Springfield, which is apparently not called the Isotopes in what feels like a real missed opportunity by the school, scored with 2:11 left to secure the win, thus netting Mr. Burns a hefty sum from his rival at the Shelbyville Nuclear Power Plant.

Of Springfield’s 384 yards of offense, 351 came on the ground. Of Cortland’s 364 yards of offense, 325 came through the air. Unfortunately for the Red Dragons, two of their 36 passes were picked off by Springfield — one of which led to a touchdown and the other, which led to a drive that chewed up nearly six minutes of game clock late, leaving the Cortland faithful to all mutter, “D’oh!” in unison.

The Springfield Pride now advance to the quarterfinals against the North Central College … we’re gonna say Paradoxes? How can it be north and central?

It was the first loss of the season for the Red Dragons, but we can sympathize with their plight. Listen, Cortland. You tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.

Under-the-radar play of the week

SMU’s offense was a mess early in the ACC championship game, but Kevin Jennings & Co. found their rhythm midway through the first quarter, scoring on a 24-yard run with 7:05 left in the frame, leading to the moment everyone had been waiting for: a tiny horse running the length of the field in celebration.

Permission for Peruna to run the field after a touchdown — which he does at all home games — was initially denied, but SMU alum and Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt reportedly made a call to his fellow NFL team owner, David Tepper, and asked for a favor. Tepper relented and allowed the horse to run, so long as he stayed outside the numbers.

The decision was both a win for Peruna and SMU fans as well as for Tepper, who can finally say he did something worthwhile for the city of Charlotte.