Indiana cannot lose, Oregon can win ugly and more college football Week 11 takeaways

And now, 20 Final Thoughts from Week 11, when it worked out quite nicely for many of us that the two best games of the day did not air on ABC or ESPN.

1. After spending most of the last century finding inexplicable ways to lose, Indiana is suddenly incapable of losing. Even on the road, short-handed, down 4 points with 1:30 left and no timeouts, facing second-and-17 from its own 13-yard line after its star quarterback was sacked to start the drive. A seemingly broken Penn State team rising and knocking off an unbeaten Indiana team looked imminent.

But that’s not how things work anymore. In 2025, Indiana is the one that gets to break Penn State’s heart.

2. That aforementioned QB, Fernando Mendoza, got up from getting sacked and promptly led his team 87 yards, entirely through the air. He got help from tight end Charlie Becker, with his acrobatic sideline catch, and most notably, receiver Omar Cooper Jr., whose epic toe-grazing, back-of-the-end zone-touchdown catch helped deliver a 27-24 Hoosiers victory.

Nobody clinches the Heisman Trophy on Nov. 8, but Mendoza went from one of the front-runners to the front-runner with his latest road-game rescue. (Against Iowa, he threw a go-ahead 49-yard touchdown to Elijah Sarratt, who missed Saturday’s game.) The 10-0 Hoosiers, No. 2 in the College Football Playoff rankings, are two more wins (against 3-6 Wisconsin and 2-8 Purdue) from a potential conference championship game against 9-0 and No. 1 Ohio State.

If so, it would be the Big Ten’s first intraconference 1-versus-2 clash since the famous 2006 Ohio State-Michigan game. Imagine telling someone that day that the next one would involve Indiana.

3. In a similar fashion, Dante Moore and No. 9 Oregon refused to succumb to the rain or the long history of top-10 upsets at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium. After the Hawkeyes drove 93 yards to go up 16-15 with 1:51 remaining, Moore’s 24-yard laser down the sideline to Malik Benson set up a game-winning 39-yard Atticus Sappington field goal. Oregon football has long been synonymous with speed and sizzle, but Dan Lanning’s Ducks — 14-1 in Big Ten play since the start of last season — have now shown repeatedly they, too, can win ugly.

Oregon, now 8-1, has tough games remaining against both 7-2 USC and 6-3 Washington. The Ducks may get boxed out of a return trip to Indianapolis, but their CFP hopes look a lot better than they did with 1:51 left Saturday.

4. No. 8 Texas Tech doesn’t just look like the class of the Big 12. The Red Raiders, with their $25 million roster, look fully capable of making a Playoff run.

Joey McGuire’s team suffocated undefeated BYU, 29-7, much like it did in a 34-10 win at the current No. 13 team, Utah, earlier in the year. Presumptive All-American linebacker Jacob Rodriguez, national sack leader David Bailey and friends continually put the Cougars (8-1) in third-and-long situations and gave quarterback Bear Bachmeier little time to throw. And the tandem of Cameron Dickey and J’Koby Williams combined for 198 rushing yards.

It has long been assumed the Big 12 will be a one-bid league again, but I don’t see how the committee could leave out the Red Raiders, now 9-1, if they lose in the conference title game. They have two top-15 wins and suffered a last-minute 26-22 loss at Arizona State when they were without quarterback Behren Morton.

5. Mendoza and Ohio State’s Julian Sayin have risen to the top of the Heisman odds over the last two weeks, and they’re both great. But don’t forget about Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia.

The 16th-ranked Commodores, now 8-2, got into an unexpected shootout with Auburn, which was playing its first game under interim coach D.J. Durkin. Pavia led them to a 45-38 overtime escape while passing for 377 yards, running for 112 and producing four total TDs. His 489 yards of total offense marked a new career high — and that’s saying something given he has been playing college football for 37 years.

Pavia’s stock took a hit when Vandy lost at Texas, but even in that game, he notched 408 total yards and four TDs. Most importantly, though: The guy has Vandy in the thick of the CFP race.

6. I wish Louisiana’s governor had waited two weeks before blowing up the LSU football program, because it made for the most anticlimactic LSU-Alabama game in some time. The Tide’s defense largely controlled a low-scoring game, to the point where LSU interim coach Frank Wilson eventually benched quarterback Garrett Nussmeier in a 20-9 Bama win. Kalen DeBoer’s team, now 6-0 in the SEC, struggled to run the ball, but it never felt like the 8-1 Tide were in danger.

Freshman receiver Lotzeir Brooks has emerged as another big-play target for quarterback Ty Simpson. Simpson’s 53-yard bomb to Brooks set up a crucial Ryan Williams TD to go up 17-3 shortly before halftime.

7. No. 22 Missouri was snake-bitten this season, losing its top two quarterbacks, Sam Horn and Beau Pribula, to season-ending injuries. Freshman third-stringer Matt Zollers stood no chance against No. 3 Texas A&M’s defense, and the undefeated Aggies rolled on with a 38-17 win in Columbia.

Second-year coach Mike Elko is exorcising a lot of demons for A&M, now 9-0 for the first time since 1992 and 6-0 in conference for the first time since its 1998 Big 12 championship run. It’s impressive how well the Aggies have played on the road, knocking off Notre Dame and beating LSU so badly that the Tigers fired their coach.

8. After a season of close calls (and one loss), No. 5 Georgia laid an old-school Kirby Smart-style bludgeoning on Mississippi State. The Dawgs ran for 303 yards and Gunner Stockton threw for three TDs in a 41-21 win in Starkville.

Georgia, 8-1 overall and 6-1 in the SEC, has won five straight since its Sept. 27 home loss to Alabama. The Dawgs’ chances of repeating as SEC champs are growing slim with the Tide and Texas A&M both now 6-0 in league play, but Smart’s team can effectively seal a CFP berth if it wins next week’s showdown against No. 11 Texas in Athens.

9. No. 1 Ohio State’s 34-10 rout at 2-8 Purdue was largely the Sayin and Jeremiah Smith show. But at some point, the 9-0 Buckeyes will have to run the ball to beat someone. After getting little usage to start the season, freshman tailback Isaiah West got nine carries for the second time in Ohio State’s last three games, rushing for 60 yards on a season-high 6.7 yards per carry.

Fellow freshman Bo Jackson remains the Buckeyes’ top rusher. Still, Ryan Day and offensive coordinator Brian Hartline have taken advantage of this soft stretch in the schedule to do some mixing and matching in the backfield. And they’ll probably keep tinkering with 3-6 UCLA up next.

10. Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love was my first-round pick in The Athletic’s preseason Heisman draft. I figured Love’s hopes of reaching New York were done when his team started 0-2. But the Irish have since won seven straight, and their star running back keeps breaking off more dazzling runs. In the third quarter of No. 10 Notre Dame’s 49-10 rout of Navy, Love was chased down in the backfield, twisted 180 degrees in the wrong direction, and literally seated on a Midshipmen defender’s chest, got up and sprinted 48 yards to the end zone. He’s now tied for first nationally with 16 touchdowns (13 rushing, three receiving).

Marcus Freeman may need several more of them next weekend, when the 7-2 Irish face their toughest remaining test, at No. 24 Pitt. After that, it’s a pair of 3-7 foes, Syracuse and Stanford, so it’s kind of a big one.

11. After a wild night in the ACC, the top of the conference standings looks like someone threw a bunch of random ingredients in a blender and shook them up. What will it taste like when we’re done? Your guess is as good as mine.

No. 14 Virginia became the last ACC team to suffer its first conference loss, a 16-9 dud against Wake Forest in which the Cavaliers lost quarterback Chandler Morris in the second quarter on a hit to the head and neck area. Wake, a surprise 6-3 team in coach Jake Dickert’s first season, scored the game’s only TD on a Carlos Hernandez punt return.

But Virginia, 8-2, still has a great shot to get to Charlotte because …

12. At nearly the same time that game ended, 18.5-point road underdog Cal was taking No. 15 Louisville to overtime, where the Bears, down by 3, went for the win on fourth-and-goal at the 3. Cal’s talented freshman quarterback, Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, hit wideout Jacob De Jesus for his 16th catch of the day to seal a 29-26 upset. It was a massive win for Cal coach Justin Wilcox, whose 6-4 team is bowl-eligible for a third straight season.

But what a missed opportunity for the 7-2 Cardinals, who got hot starting with an Oct. 17 upset of then second-ranked Miami but now, at 4-2 in the ACC, are behind five teams with one conference loss: Georgia Tech (5-1), Virginia (5-1), Pitt (5-1), SMU (5-1) and Duke (4-1).

Let’s get “College GameDay” to The Flats in two weeks for Pitt-Georgia Tech.

13. Jim Mora doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the turnaround he has engineered at UConn. A program that went 10-50 over the five seasons before Mora’s 2022 arrival is bound for its third bowl trip in four years after taking down Duke, 37-34. It’s the 7-3 Huskies’ third win against an ACC foe since last year’s Fenway Bowl against North Carolina, this one coming against a 6-4 Blue Devils team that remains tied for first in the loss column of the conference. (Not the greatest testament for the ACC that Duke went 1-3 out of conference but could still win the league.)

Mora has resurrected his career after his 2017 ouster at UCLA, where he went 46-30. Will one of the umpteen Power 4 schools with a job opening come calling in late November?

14. And now, let me blow your mind: Since 2024, UConn has more wins against ACC foes (three) than Florida State (two). Not great, Mike Norvell.

In what felt like a zombie Florida State-Clemson game (remember when these teams played for national titles?), the Tigers built an 18-0 lead on the Seminoles and won 24-10, dropping FSU to 1-5 in the ACC. Clemson (4-5) is 3-4 in conference. Neither mark is excusable for two previously dominant programs, given their advantages over nearly every school above them in the standings.

Florida State athletic director Michael Alford gave Norvell a public vote of confidence after the Noles’ embarrassing loss to Stanford and would really, really like to avoid paying a $53 million buyout. It would really help Norvell’s cause if his 4-5 team wins two of its last three, including at 3-6 Florida in the regular-season finale.

15. On Thursday, Wisconsin AD Chris McIntosh made the surprising (to some) announcement that embattled coach Luke Fickell will return in 2026, despite his 2-6 team scoring seven points across its past three games. I worried Badgers fans might mutiny. But 48 hours later, many of them were storming the field after their team broke a 10-game conference losing streak by beating No. 23 Washington 13-10. Wisconsin, down to its fourth quarterback of the season (freshman Carter Smith), won while passing for 48 yards, 24 of which came on a fake punt.

I wouldn’t take it as a sign that Fickell’s program has turned the corner, per se, but it did have to play Alabama, Ohio State, Oregon and Michigan during its six-game losing streak. Maybe the Badgers can start salvaging their dignity … after next week’s game at Indiana.

16. On Tuesday, the selection committee said no Group of 5 team merited inclusion in its first Top 25 rankings, but Memphis, then 8-1, was its hypothetical automatic qualifier. On Friday, the Tigers likely fell out of contention completely.

Tulane QB Jake Retzlaff carved up their defense in the first half of an eventual 38-32 Green Wave upset of the home team. Memphis, which previously lost a league game at UAB, fell behind five other American teams with only one conference loss — Tulane included. It’s a disappointing setback for coach Ryan Silverfield, a popular coaching carousel name who is an impressive 50-22 in six seasons at the school but has yet to finish higher than third place.

17. Memphis’s loss opens the door for USF, which had suffered its sole conference loss to the Tigers. The 7-2 Bulls served a reminder of why they were ranked in the AP’s top 20 at one point in a 55-23 beatdown of UTSA, which itself stomped Tulane the week before. USF scored a pair of defensive TDs on its first two series, then QB Byrum Brown shredded the Roadrunners through both the passing and the running game.

The committee is generally lower on Group of 5 teams (2024 Boise State excluded) than the pollsters due to schedule strength, but USF should be ranked this week. It beat Boise State and Florida and hammered 8-1 North Texas 63-36. Its losses were to Miami and by 3 points at Memphis. Let ’em in.

18. No. 19 USC is hanging around the cusp of the CFP race. The Trojans, now 7-2, ran away from Northwestern 38-17 in a Friday night game that included huge nights by receivers Ja’Kobi Lane and Makai Lemon. (Plus a devious — and possibly illegal — fake punt call by Lincoln Riley.)

USC hasn’t remained ranked this late since Riley’s first season, in 2022, but I was there, and the Coliseum crowd of 67,179 seemed subdued. It’s like the fan base now expects a Riley team to blow it eventually. We’ll find out soon enough. The Trojans host Iowa before a season-defining trip to No. 9 Oregon.

19. Colorado coach Deion Sanders, whose team lost its previous two games 53-7 and 52-17, made two major changes to his offense before Saturday’s tilt at West Virginia: He demoted OC Pat Shurmur (that actually occurred a week ago) and named freshman QB Julian Lewis — who he’d been planning to redshirt — his new starter. Lewis did play well, but was sacked seven times as the Buffs lost 29-22 in Morgantown to fall to 3-7.

Colorado has taken a big step backward in Sanders’ third season, his first without Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders. He has also been dealing with health issues, leading to increasing speculation about whether Coach Prime would step down after the season. With no bowl to play for, his best-case scenario is Lewis leads CU to an upset of Arizona State or Kansas State to provide some hope for 2026.

20. Finally, if you’re about age 45 and older, you remember when Oregon State was a decades-long punching bag in the old Pac-8/10, before rising up in the late ’90s and becoming a solid program. Unfortunately, the left-behind Beavers have swung all the way back, and then some. Late Saturday, 2-8 Oregon State lost 21-17 at home to Conference USA’s Sam Houston, which had not won a game this season. Forget the famous 1983 Toilet Bowl, a 0-0 tie between 4-6 Oregon and 2-8 Oregon State. This has to be the lowest moment in program history.

But good for the Bearkats and their first-year head coach, who has had a rough couple of years. He was fired from his job as a Big Ten offensive coordinator last season, before getting a life raft from one of his former employers. Only to start 0-8. But eight days after losing 55-14 to Louisiana Tech, he walked out of a Pac-12 stadium a winner.

You go, Phil Longo.

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