Another fantastically bonkers week of college football is almost in the books, and we're still dumbfounded by all the things we saw over the course of the day. This edition College Football Final is here to sift through the madness and bring a little bit of order to all the entertaining chaos across the nation.
Utah Could Be The Best Team In The Country
The Utes beat Cal 30-24 late Saturday night in a game that wasn't as close as the score indicated. Utah showed their prowess in all phases of the game against the Golden Bears as their stout defense forced six turnovers and running back Devontae Booker powered the offense with 222 rushing yards and two touchdowns.
Utah is one of the only teams in the country that have looked really good all year, already posting big wins over Michigan, Oregon, and now Cal. They're now the favorite to win the Pac-12, and they should shoot up even higher from their No. 5 ranking.
Oklahoma Is No Longer CFP Material
The Oklahoma Sooners looked like world-beaters over the first five games of 2015, riding a streaking offense and an opportunistic defense to impressive wins over the likes of Tennessee and West Virginia. All of that good will went up in flames on Saturday after the Sooners got worked over by an inferior Texas Longhorns team in a 24-17 debacle of a loss. Oklahoma's running game mustered just 67 yards on 37 carries against a Longhorns defense which just had 50 dropped on them by TCU last week.
OU isn't in the College Football Playoff discussion anymore, and they're barely alive when talking about the Big 12 going forward.
Stop Sleeping On Baylor
We had #3 Baylor putting 70 on Kansas today, but a 66-7 win will do just the same. The Bears amassed 644 yards of total offense against the Jayhawks, including 363 combined passing yards and five touchdowns (with no interceptions) by QBs Seth Russell and Jarrett Stidham. With OU's horrible day at the Cotton Bowl and TCU's struggles against Kansas State, Baylor appears to be the class of the Big 12 and maybe the nation.
Ohio State Continues To Escape
Cardale Jones threw two touchdown passes, J.T. Barrett scored three times and #1 Ohio State stayed unbeaten with a 49-28 home win over Maryland. However, the score line doesn't reveal just how much OSU struggled in this one. Maryland had this game tied at 21-21 in the third quarter before the Buckeyes could shake them off to up the nation's longest winning streak to 19. The defending national champs don't appear to be coasting, per se. However, they're not exactly performing up to the standard of the best team in the nation.
Michigan Is Back
There is no denying it -- the #18 Michigan Wolverines are a full-fledged Big Ten (and dark horse College Football Playoff) contender. They showed as much in a 38-0 beatdown of the formerly-undefeated #13 Northwestern Wildcats at the Big House on Saturday behind the play of their historically great defense. Michigan is the first team to shut out three consecutive opponents since the 1995 Kansas State Wildcats. They've outscored their last five opponents by a combined count of 150-14. Jim Harbaugh has Michigan back to playing the bullies and not the bullied. That could very well carry over all the way to a Big Ten title (or even more).
LSU May Be The Class Of The SEC
Leonard Fournette had an off day. Well, at least relatively. Fournette finished with a season-low 158 yards on 20 carries in three quarters. Let that sink in for a moment. The Heisman Trophy candidate is now the fastest to 1,000 yards in a season at LSU -- a school that has been playing college football since 1893. That's insane, but he's just the shining star on a LSU squad which is now 5-0 after a 45-24 defeat of South Carolina and playing as well as any team in the nation.
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