Bye week carnage is unique to college football and one of the best experiences for fans enjoying a relaxing Saturday away from the emotional attachment of their team. This past Saturday we got a banger of a weekend. USC? Lost. Michigan? Lost. Tennessee? Lost. Plus, the number one team in the country went into Nashville and couldn’t stop Vanderbilt’s tricky offense. Congratulations to Clark Lea on the biggest win of his football career!
Here’s the latest 18 Stripes Top 20 Poll:
18 Stripes Top 20 Poll
| RANK | TEAM | RECORD | NEXT |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas (+1) | 5-0 | vs. Oklahoma |
| 2 | Oregon (+2) | 5-0 | vs. Ohio State |
| 3 | Ohio State (+2) | 5-0 | at Oregon |
| 4 | Miami (+3) | 6-0 | BYE |
| 5 | Penn State (+3) | 5-0 | at USC |
| 6 | Alabama (-5) | 4-1 | vs. South Carolina |
| 7 | Georgia (-1) | 4-1 | vs. Miss State |
| 8 | Iowa State (+2) | 5-0 | at West Virginia |
| 9 | BYU (+2) | 5-0 | vs. Arizona |
| 10 | Tennessee (-7) | 4-1 | vs. Florida |
| 11 | Indiana (+4) | 6-0 | BYE |
| 12 | Ole Miss (+4) | 5-1 | at LSU |
| 13 | Clemson (+5) | 4-1 | at Wake Forest |
| 14 | Notre Dame (NR) | 4-1 | vs. Stanford |
| 15 | Texas A&M (NR) | 5-1 | BYE |
| 16 | Kansas State (+3) | 4-1 | at Colorado |
| 17 | Utah (+3) | 4-1 | at Arizona State |
| 18 | Missouri (-9) | 4-1 | at UMass |
| 19 | Oklahoma (NR) | 4-1 | vs. Texas |
| 20 | LSU (NR) | 4-1 | vs. Ole Miss |
OUT:
#12 USC
#13 UNLV
#14 Michigan
#17 Louisville
If USC can’t beat Minnesota on the road, things aren’t looking great for the Trojans to return to the 18S Top 20 this season. The unbeaten season for UNLV is over following a 44-41 overtime loss to Syracuse. Michigan were soundly outplayed in Seattle losing 27-17 to Washington and hopefully this is the last we hear of the Wolverines for the rankings in 2024. As suspected, Louisville was going to have a hard time this weekend and lost to SMU 34-27.
First round bye watch (if they win their conferences):
#1 Texas
#2 Oregon
#4 Miami
#8 Iowa State
Texas now moves up to the no. 1 spot in the country and with it the SEC bye for the playoffs. The 3 other teams remain the same from last week except everyone moves up in the polls a little bit.
National Storylines
Back on Friday night, Oregon took care of Michigan State 31-10 to set up this weekend’s massive matchup with Ohio State. The Buckeyes blew out Iowa 35-7 in Columbus to remain unbeaten.
Houston picked up its first Big 12 win of the season beating TCU 30-19.
A historic win for Vanderbilt who upsets no. 1 Alabama 40-35 and looked pretty damn good in doing so! Clark Lea may have something cooking in Nashville right now.
Penn State keeps sneaking up in the polls. They beat UCLA 27-11 in Happy Valley.
Tennessee laid an egg on Saturday night in Fayetteville. The Vols lost 19-14 on the road and tumble in our rankings.
It was a methodical 31-10 win for Georgia over Auburn. The Tigers are 0-3 in the SEC now.
Ole Miss bounced back from their loss last week with a 27-3 win at South Carolina.
Iowa State remains undefeated with a 43-21 win over Baylor.
Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty’s remarkable season continued as he’s the first runner over 1,000 yards in 2024 on just 95 carries after the Broncos beat Utah State 62-30.
Is this a charmed season for Miami? Or will the hammer drop eventually? Trailing 35-10 in the middle of the 3rd quarter, the Hurricanes came back to win 39-38 in a certified wild one.
Indiana is already bowl eligible and 6-0 following a 41-24 at Northwestern.
A strong 2nd half saw Pittsburgh remain undefeated at 5-0 with a 34-24 win at North Carolina.
Nebraska handed Rutgers their first loss in 2024 with a Big Ten-ish 14-7 score in Lincoln.
Opponent Watch
Texas A&M (5-1): Notre Dame’s best win of the season looks a lot better now after the Aggies rocked Missouri 41-10 in College Station.
Northern Illinois (3-2): The Huskies struggled for a long time before putting away UMass 34-20.
Purdue (1-4): We’re checking the status on that Ryan Walters contract (roughly $14 million remaining on a deal through 2027) as the Boilermakers are blown out again, this time 52-6 at Wisconsin.
Miami [OH] (1-4): The Red Hawks dropped their MAC opener 30-20 at Toledo.
Louisville (3-2): Jeff Brohm has lost 5 out of his last 8 games with the Cardinals, FWIW.
Stanford (2-3): The Cardinal head to South Bend this weekend coming off a 31-7 home loss to Virginia Tech.
Georgia Tech (4-2): Duke is no longer undefeated after the Yellow Jackets beat them 24-14 in Atlanta.
Navy (5-0): The Middies are officially a problem after a 34-7 blowout win at Air Force.
Florida State (1-5): The Seminoles haven’t lost more than 7 games in a season since the mid-1970’s and drop their 5th game of 2024 after Clemson beats them 29-13.
Virginia (4-1): The Cavaliers are 1 of 5 remaining undefeated teams in the ACC following a 24-14 win versus Boston College.
Army (5-0): The Black Knights blasted Tulsa 49-7 and are an impressive +145 in point differential through 5 games.
USC (3-2): A big, Big Ten game awaits for USC as they host Penn State this weekend.
So tell us E, how good did it feel to have the honor of bouncing Southern Cal & Skunkbears in the same week?
This GIF was never more suitable:
Did not expect Miami and IU to be the first two teams to be bowl eligible this year.
I feel like between Brohm, Lea, and Elko, our next coach is in this article if HCMF can’t improve.
Maybe? Lea and Brohm are at their alma maters. Elko and Lea are still fairly new (3rd and 4th years as a HC respectively) and are in the prove it stage of their careers. Elko has had one good season so far. This one could make two out of three…if he does would he leave the SEC for a tougher job? Lea has thus far been in the normal range at Vandy, if he can build on yesterday’s win does he want the bigger, better job? Or does he want to be the school legend coaching for 20 years raising the bar and occasionally having Stanford 2010-16 like runs? Brohm has shown he can raise the bar at lesser programs, but will that lead to sustained success at a program that can contend for the ACC perennially?
Out of the four Elko might be the best coach, but along with Freeman and Lea the track record just isn’t long enough. If Freeman doesn’t improve (and i’m certain he gets at least two more years) will any of the other three still be the hot name in 2027? And if so, do any of them even want to leave their current job?
Brohm had always been someone on my radar as future me coach but man watching them up close the last couple weeks, it’d be rough. At this point i’m pretty sure most coaches are constantly messing up, nd fans just have proximity problems. We only see the nd problems and freeman’s faults.
Brohm going way too heavy on passing last week, the end of game clock management, his reliance on transfers, and the lack of discipline should have cost them more against nd then absolutely cost them against smu.
As for clark lea, pass. His qb is great and the offense is good, but just hard pass.
I’d put that at 0% that any of those 3 would be ND’s next head coach. Brohm would be a terrible hire IMO. He’s won 61% of his games and has only 10 games once outside of 2 years at Western Kentucky a decade ago. Clark Lea doesn’t recruit well enough and I don’t think is a great HC. And I don’t understand this star crossed lovers path with Elko that a lot of ND fans have had the past year. He spent 1 year at ND then immediately leveraged that for a raise and bounced. What makes anyone think he’s leaving A&M to come to ND.
I honestly wouldn’t even know where to go if Freeman didn’t work out. I’m in the camp that Freeman is going to work out I think if he can just get to the playoffs he’ll win a game or two and the confidence will build from there. I love his coaching in big games, I just hate it against inferior teams where they come out tight and playing not to lose.
Maybe the Indiana coach who was at JMU. That would theoretically be 2 to 3 years at IU and then call him. The whole thing is a crap shoot though. How many slam dunk hires have there been in the past 20 years? Urban Meyer at Florida & Ohio State, Saban at Bama, anyone else?
For me I’m in not in any rush to oust Freeman. He’s not done anything in 2.5 years that I would say wasn’t worth the risk that came with hiring in 2021. Recruiting has seen a bump up, definitely the depth at least has. We’ve not been blown out in any games, let alone our big games where people questioned if ND could compete against the big dogs and he’s not nosediving the program. I want to see him clean up these MAC losses for sure.
Elko seems to have that ability where things turn around sharp when he jumps in, at least on the defensive side of the ball. He had a nice run at Duke and I think he’ll do well at A&M, but I don’t see him being a viable candidate for us just because I don’t think we – or almost anyone – will outspend A&M.
The funny thing about the elko love, aside from how he tried to leverage nd not once but twice in 72 hours to get more money, is that he’s been out coached by freeman twice already. I mean 2023 duke was mostly elko yakking up the game at the end punting from the plus 35, but either way he had not been good when playing ND.
Cignetti at IU does seem great, but he’s already 63. I land where you are. Be patient with Freeman and see where this year goes and the couple years after that.
Good points — but as a sadly traumatized veteran of so many failed third years and their eventual fated outcomes I do think if we lose again speculation on who might step in after MF’s 5 years would not be unwarranted.
In the meantime — even after the most ugly and painful loss I can remember since the wheels fell right off Gerry Faust’s bandwagon — let’s stay noisy!
Undefeated and so back right now…
We’re going to end up beating OSU in the national championship, they fire Ryan Day to hire Freeman, and we hire Day.
Southern Cal stays home for PSU I believe. Another loss eliminates them from playoff contention this year. I wonder how warm Riley’s seat feels to start 2025
Edited, I had it right in the poll but not the article.
I posited this to the 18s slack Saturday…
Is TAMU that good?
Mizz that overrated?
How much growth did TAMU make since week1?
Whats the interplay between all that above? They had 500 yards against the number 9 team, and specifically, weiggman had more passing yards in Q1 than he did the entire ND game. Just watching the first half of that game, it felt like every play they called was from the “plays that work” part of the book (I don’t think Leonard’s got that far in our playbook yet).
And their d line absolutely clowned all day, so while this ND squad has probably taken a decade off my life, I will fully commit to retroactive props to our oline.
My mind initially goes to Missouri being an early media darling; they played a lot of close games to not so great teams earlier this year, so maybe this was their first reality check.
Yeah, Missou is definitely heavily overrated, but i think TAMU is improving steadily.
are we still ready to punt on the season and give up on our ability to beat teams who lose vanderbilt arkansas and minnesota ?
lol
Being serious what a great weekend to have a BYE
Hard to ever be excited about playing Stanford but I’m glad it’s not a night game
I think this also puts into perspective how good of a coach Saban was. His teams just didn’t lose games to lesser competition (with an asterisk on the Manziel game). He was always able to keep his teams mentally engaged. Which I’m coming to think might be the most difficult task for a coach of a top 15ish team.
100%. heard today he gave up 13 points total in his bama career vs vandy.
After he retired, I think in one of these comments sections, I recalled every loss post 2010 cam newton auburn loss. Outside of 2021 texas am they were all bangers, all to good to great teams and games that I still remember. He really was the GOAT
The 13 points thing is impressive, but they only played 4 times from ’07-’23
Yeah I had to look up the match up and Winsipedia and man, SEC scheduling before the 2014 realignment was weird.
That Manziel A&M team had some serious talent though. Manziel for all his subsequent flameout was a very good college QB. Plus he had Mike Evans and two 1st round tackles to protect him (Joeckel and Matthews). That era had A&M put like 4-5 1st round offensive linemen into the NFL in a couple years.
Yeah if you want to see bad coaching look no further than South Carolina vs Ole Miss
Gamecocks had a week off to prepare and got fully healthy against a team who just lost to Kentucky (who SCar beat 31-6 on the road) and the Cocks came out completely flat and uninspired in front of a sellout raucous crowd
They’re really bizarro ND because while the Irish barely do motion or play action but when they do it’s killer USC does it all the time and it’s frankly quite useless
I’ll basically always take us over a Lincoln Riley team but yes, I still think Alabama smokes us and Tennessee probably does too
The Tennessee offense has really struggled the two games they played legit teams, and neither Arkansas or Oklahoma have defenses as good as ours. When there are corners in the TV frame with their receivers they really have the same offensive strategy as us, get in a rock fight and try to snipe a couple big plays.
Hey all,
This is a serious offer. I am coming back to the USA in a couple of days for the Stanford game, and the various parts of my family and friends have totally crapped out on coming with me to the game.
So I have three good seats for free to the right 18S fans. Section 6, row 38, actually some of the better seats I’ve had in a while. Giving up a seat to an 18S colleague worked out well with Irish Spring for Dublin, and I wanted to try this route. You’ve all gotta help count when I (hopefully) do fairly real pushups after ND scores. Last year for USC I think the total pushup count was 216, no greater pleasure — but I actually enjoy beating the Tree, this could be fun depending on which Irish team shows up.
Any takers?
For those that don’t know Noise, this is one good dude. If I could get there I’d be a taker for sure.
Thanks for the endorsement, and I hope to see you again soon in Worcester!
upvoting for visibility (if that helps)
beyond general college requirements i’m seeing my buddy play D2 football that night so i cannot accept but I hope they go to some big Irish fans!
Merci!
That’s awesome, very generous! I have friends and family in South Bend who would jump at these if you don’t get enough 18S takers. Let me know if that’s something you’re open to considering.
Totally. I was born and raised in South Bend myself, and as long as they promise to make noise, I’d surely be delighted to welcome them. Let’s see if we get any 18S Premium subscribers in the next day,and I’ll revert to you.
Fantastic, yes I grew up a mile from campus and can never escape the shadow of Rockne’s house. We’ll circle back in a day.
Same. As a kid we didn’t watch home games…just played football in the backyard and sometimes the crowd noise matched up with our touchdowns!
Thanks for the invitation. I might just do that — I always go into the stadium early myself!
Afternoon! If the tickets are still available please feel free to reach out to my friend Peter in South Bend to work out details, text or call whichever you prefer. His number is (574) 210-3223. His French is rusty but his Creole’s not bad.
No other takers, so I called and left a voice mail, and texted him. I’ll be happy if these seats can find a good home!
Great, yes he mentioned you had connected! The stadium will be 3 native Michianans stronger now.
Hey, we connected, they have the tickets. his friend Tony was super nice, and I’m excited to meet the others. Thanks for connecting us!
I am also stopping by Gambit’s tailgate as it stands, about 1300-1330.
If you get the chance come by light pole 29 in the Joyce lot and stop by the tailgate with the [some ND flag on top and] St. X flag: royal blue field, white X. Anyone is welcome to stop by, but we do tend to pack up 2:30 ish to head into the game earlier than many tailgates.
Will you be tailgating at the FSU game on 11/9? My daughter and I will be coming up for that game from Texas, and I’d love to have a tailgating connection.
We plan to, but haven’t finalized a decision yet due to it being November in South Bend.
I will definitely stop by!
Thanks for the beer! And the great conversation! Fun to meet up.