No, you’re not seeing the weekly parade of upsets which marked the 2007 college football season. The theme and trajectory of the 2015 campaign are changing to a certain degree.
Yet, what still feels a lot like 2007 is that the collection of national championship contenders does not seem to exist at a markedly higher level than the second tier.
College football is deeply unsettled and unstable. We’re halfway through the season, and there’s ample evidence to suggest that teams are failing to find comfort zones. The idea that teams are comfortably inhabiting the identities they want is being affirmed in some places, but not most. This is why it’s still hard to make comfortable projections about the national landscape.
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Polls should not be conducted until November, but with that having been said, Utah clearly sits at the forefront of the national conversation after fending off Arizona State late Saturday. The Sun Devils have lost their way on offense this season, but they were excellent on defense against the Utes. Utah’s ability to win another rugged and uneven game against determined opposition speaks well of the team’s intangible qualities. Yet, if the 62-20 win over Oregon seemed to herald the arrival of a new juggernaut in the Pac-12, that notion has not come to pass.
Utah is scuffling on offense instead of improving. Defense and the kicking game are doing most of the work for the Utes, a team which is improving its resume every week but not moving up the charts in terms of style points. No, style points shouldn’t matter when you’re unbeaten, but the idea of Utah remaining unbeaten appears to be less tenable, not more. If the Utes’ offense hasn’t undergone a 180-degree shift relative to the Oregon game, it has certainly come close — 135 degrees at minimum.
If you look around the rest of the country, you’ll see these 180-degree shifts — if not for whole teams, certainly for specific units. Saturday revealed as much.
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Consider the way Iowa’s offense played at Wisconsin. Consider the way Northwestern’s defense had played through Oct. 3. Those two units have experienced “the full 180,” a reality on hand for everyone to see on Saturday in Evanston, Illinois. Iowa’s offense wasn’t just transformed; the transformation occurred with backups on the offensive line and at running back. Iowa’s 10-6 win over Wisconsin and Northwestern’s 27-0 win over Minnesota are utterly unrecognizable in light of what the Hawkeyes did to the Wildcats on Saturday.
Northwestern’s complete 180 sheds more light on that season-opening game against Stanford. The Cardinal really are the same team which couldn’t tie its shoelaces on opening day. Stanford’s offense has become the best in the Pac-12 over the following weeks. Kevin Hogan — one of the least imposing quarterbacks we’ve ever seen — is generating top-tier results and silencing the chorus of voices which said that he never really amounted to much. Stanford is somewhat unique within the context of this season, in that its own 180 does point to stability. With most other teams, a 180 suggests more chaos in the coming weeks.
Speaking of that very point, Ole Miss — thought of as a national title contender following the win over Alabama in Tuscaloosa — now looks like a 7-5 team following its loss to Memphis. The Tigers, for their part, achieved a 180 on defense, containing the Rebels after failing to stem the tide (of points against them) versus the likes of Bowling Green and Cincinnati. Memphis probably won’t continue to play that well on defense, but Ole Miss might be that limited on offense. It’s a 180 from a month ago, with Hugh Freeze looking like a second-rate coach in the present moment. When his team won in Bryant-Denny Stadium, Freeze was in position to lead his program to unprecedented heights in the SEC’s split-division era, which began in 1992.
The team Ole Miss defeated — Alabama — underwent a 180 in an SEC West game of consequence. Instead of being the team which imploded, gifting a tsunami of point-producing turnovers to the opposition, the Crimson Tide became the beneficiaries of such generosity. Texas A&M presented three pick-sixes on a platter, as Alabama moved forward in an SEC West which is impossible to predict.
LSU was bipolar in its win over Florida, showing one personality in the first half and another in the second. LSU’s in-game 180 made its fans nervous, but it didn’t lead to a loss.
You could make a case that the Bayou Bengals are better than Bama and are ready to win the whole league, especially since Ole Miss looks like a second-rate group at the moment. Yet, you could make an equally convincing argument that LSU is smoke and mirrors, and will get exposed during the SEC West home stretch.
Michigan State might have needed one of the luckiest plays of all time to beat Michigan, but if you can cast aside that point for a few seconds, it’s worth noting that the Spartans looked and played a lot more like the team we’ve seen over the past few years. They met Michigan on even terms and had chances to forge an advantage earlier in Saturday’s game. Michigan, for its part, was facing a different and better opponent than in previous weeks, so a tougher day at the office was to be expected. Nevertheless, Michigan State’s injuries along the offensive line pointed to the idea that the Wolverines could not just outplay, but smother, the Spartans. That did not happen, on a day when two teams both departed from the patterns which had marked the previous three weeks or so.
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UCLA against Arizona. UCLA against Stanford last Thursday. The Bruins have been tagged in the process of pulling a not-so-happy 180 within the course of their season.
Oklahoma stumbled for 60 minutes against Texas, and looked like a team whose season was about to die. Then the Sooners had their plane delayed for more than eight hours heading to Kansas State… and beat the Wildcats, 55-0. A total 180. Who are the Sooners? Darned if I know at this point.
Remember the Minnesota team which played a relatively healthy (offense and defense) TCU team well and close in week one? That Golden Gopher group is impossible to recognize after a Saturday beatdown suffered at the hands of Nebraska. Minnesota has made the 180-degree journey in 2015 for all the worst reasons.
The North Carolina team which shot itself in the foot 7,372 times on offense in the Sept. 3 opener against South Carolina has managed to turn itself into a highly productive unit following an obliteration of Wake Forest on Saturday. The Tar Heels and Pittsburgh are in great position to win the ACC Coastal, with Duke having a shot as well.
Boise State could not have played much better against Virginia, a team which very nearly defeated Notre Dame. The Broncos could not have played any worse than they did at Utah State on Friday. Bryan Harsin has witnessed at least one 180-degree shift this season, if not two. (You could claim, legitimately, that Boise State has made a 360-degree spin, from mediocrity to quality and back to mediocrity again.)
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One could come up with even more examples of 180-degree turns for teams within the course of half a season. Sure, teams such as Florida State and Clemson are following a steady path of modest but consistent improvement as the season moves along, but for every example in that vein, you’ll find more teams which — having inhabited one distinct identity at some point in 2015 — have abruptly taken on a very different personality.
College football and many of its member programs have not decided what they want to be this season.
If the first seven weeks haven’t established settled trends or ingrained habits, the better bet for November is not stasis; it’s chaos.
