Why we'll be looking at fewer unbeaten teams after Week 9
— -- College football has nine undefeated teams, and seven of them play away from home Saturday, so odds are there won't be nine undefeated teams Sunday.
No. 4 Washington?and No. 7 Nebraska?play their toughest opponents yet. No. 3 Clemson?plays at No. 12 Florida State, where the Tigers haven't won in a decade.
We haven't had a crazy weekend yet, the kind of Saturday where one upset trumps another from early games to late. Why not this one? Time for crazy.
1. Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson may be more passer than runner these days, but his competitive fire remains his best asset. Coach Dabo Swinney reminded everyone that after Watson threw the first pick-six of his life against NC State, he completed his next 14 throws (actually, it was 12 of his next 14 throws). Then Swinney noted the third-quarter play when Clemson wideout Mike Williams fumbled at the Wolfpack 4-yard line and NC State's? Shawn Boone returned it 70 yards. Tight end Jordan Leggett made the tackle because Watson threw himself into two blockers. "Deshaun has all of that other stuff," Swinney said, "but that right there, you can't coach that. That comes from the inside."
2. It's a long way from Clemson to South Carolina?these days, and a long way from 1-7 UMass, against whom 18-year-old Gamecocks freshman quarterback Jake Bentley threw for 201 yards and two touchdowns last week in his debut, to No. 18 Tennessee?coming off a bye week. While Bentley is the third quarterback the Gamecocks have started this season, he energized an offense that averaged only 14 points per game in its first six games. What made coach Will Muschamp feel good about Bentley was not what he did Saturday. It was Monday. "I asked him today on the field, 'How much film did you get in yesterday,'" Muschamp said Tuesday, "and he said, 'About two-and-a-half hours.' That's what you want your quarterback to do."
3. When Penn State?blocked the kick that rocked Ohio State's?world, the Nittany Lions scored their first special-teams touchdown in four years. The Nittany Lions had been the only Power 5 team not to score a touchdown in the kicking game in that time. I drew a direct connection from that failure to the Penn State roster depleted by NCAA-mandated scholarship reductions -- lack of depth, etc. But USC, which had similar reductions from 2012-14, scored 10 special-teams touchdowns -- five punt returns, three kickoff returns and two blocked kick returns -- in those three seasons. Either Penn State didn't get it done, USC did, or both.
4. Nuggets unearthed while combing through USA Today's annual survey of head-coaching salaries?released Wednesday: The SEC and the Big Ten each have five of the top 14 highest-paid coaches. But the SEC has the next four. The first Pac-12 coach on the list, David Shaw of Stanford, is 19th ($4.06 million annually). The top Mountain West coach, Tim DeRuyter of Fresno State?($1.51 million) was fired Sunday. The lowest-paid coach ranked in the top 10 listed in the database -- salary information for Baylor is not available -- is Mike Riley of No. 7 Nebraska (42nd at $2.8 million). Three of the top-10 salaries are paid to African-Americans -- Charlie Strong, Kevin Sumlin and James Franklin -- a reminder of the progress already made.
5. Speaking of Strong, nowhere is the disparity among the Big 12 membership more starkly illustrated than in head coaches' salaries. Bob Stoops of Oklahoma?($5.55 million) and Strong of Texas?($5.2 million) have the fourth- and sixth-biggest paychecks in the game, respectively. The next-highest Big 12 salary, Gary Patterson of TCU, is 20th ($4.01 million). The lowest-paid head coach among the Power 5 conferences, and the only one who isn't paid a seven-figure salary, is David Beaty of Kansas, 1-18 in his attempt to resurrect the Jayhawks. Beaty makes $801,169 per year. The next-lowest paid Power 5 head coach, first-year man Tracy Claeys of Minnesota, makes $1.4 million.
6. How about the tumultuous turnover at the top in the Pac-12? The league says that when Stanford dropped out of the AP poll two weeks ago, it was the first time since 1999 that neither Stanford, USC nor Oregon?was?ranked. It's not merely that the Cardinal and the Ducks, the only teams to win the North in the five-year history of the Pac-12, are fourth and sixth, respectively, in the division; it's that the only two South teams that have yet to appear in the championship game, Utah?and Colorado, are tied for first in their division. They play on Thanksgiving Saturday; No. 4 Washington and Washington State, both undefeated and atop the North, play the Apple Cup the day before. This could be fun.
7. Speaking of the Ducks, if Oregon loses at home Saturday to Arizona State, the Ducks' losing streak would reach six games for the first time since they lost the last six games of the 1991 season (and the first two of 1992). Coach Mark Helfrich has begun to look to the future by giving the offense to freshman Justin Herbert. He's the first Oregon native to start at quarterback since Kellen Clemens in 2005. That's a reminder that Oregon must find its players outside the state. The Oregonian earlier this year named the top 20 prep quarterbacks in Oregon since the '80s. The only one of recent vintage, Brett Smith, started at Wyoming while the Ducks played Darron Thomas and Marcus Mariota.