This Week in Our Dumb, Beautiful Sport: Miami Chokes Again, Another Coach Gets the Axe, and CFP Ranking Chaos Looms

By Ryan Ginn on November 3, 2025 at 9:10 am
Miami Hurricanes fans cheer for Miami during the first quarter against the SMU
Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
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Welcome to This Week in Our Dumb Beautiful Sport, a weekly look at the chaos that reigns over the most perfectly imperfect world of college football.

As the first College Football Playoff rankings approach, the chaos meter is getting dialed up again. Mario Cristobal is choking, the ACC as a whole is imploding, Louisiana's governor is firing people, and Auburn is joining an already wild coaching carousel. Buckle up! 

MARIO CRISTOBAL DOES MARIO CRISTOBAL THINGS

Here's a sentence from my first-ever Dumb, Beautiful Sport, after Miami (Fla.) beat Notre Dame: "They’re on track to make the College Football Playoff after this win, but I can confidently say I’d rather light myself on fire than root for a team coached by Mario Cristobal because I simply would not be able to handle this mess on a week-to-week basis."

I started to second guess myself a few weeks ago when the Hurricanes were ranked No. 2 in the country and had put together one of the strongest resumes in the country at that point. It turns out I was right to second-guess myself, but it's the first part of the sentence that I should have taken back. 

Miami found a way to mess up a perfect scenario, losing 26-20 to SMU for its second loss in three weeks. This one pretty much had it all -- hitting the quarterback well after a blown whistle to give SMU new life on the game-tying drive (more on that later), kneeling the ball to not even try to get into field goal range at the end of regulation, and a disastrous overtime interception from $3 million quarterback Carson Beck. 

As an aside, it's never a bad time to order our We Broke The U shirt. 

HUGH FREEZE FIRED BY AUBURN

There have been a couple times this season when I wondered if Auburn would keep Hugh Freeze around for one more season due to the quality of jobs that have already come open this season. Instead, Freeze didn't give them much choice in the matter.  He was probably toast the minute the golf rumors exploded, because it was clear at that point that the fan base was done with him, but any chance of him sticking around was clearly undone by a 1-5 SEC record that included this week's 10-3 loss to Kentucky. 

"I have informed Coach Freeze of my decision to make a change in leadership with the Auburn Football program," Auburn athletic director John Cohen said. "Coach Freeze is a man of integrity, and we are appreciative of his investment in Auburn and his relentless work over the last three years in bolstering our roster. Our expectations for Auburn Football are to annually compete for championships and the search for the next leader of Auburn Football begins immediately."

The sensible thing to do would be to hire Tulane coach Jon Sumrall, who went 23-4 at Troy and has done well at Tulane despite several high-profile transfers, but sensible wouldn't make a list of the top 1,000 adjectives used to describe Auburn. 

OHIO STATE AND INDIANA: STILL REALLY GOOD

Sometimes I see the weekly chaos in college football and think this season feels as wide open as any I can remember. Then I see Ohio State's wide receivers and playmaking defense and it feels impossible to imagine anyone beating them. 

Look at this. What can you even do about that?

If there's a 1B to Ohio State's 1A, it's Indiana. The Hoosiers have been all season clearly demonstrating that they're the real deal, constantly punishing inferior teams. The latest beatdown was a 55-10 demolition of Maryland. 

BUT WHO'S NEXT?

The first College Football Playoff rankings come out this week, and I assume the top three teams will be Ohio State, Indiana, and Texas A&M. (What a world we're living in right now.) What's less certain is who, and in what order, will follow. All of the other teams are at least somewhat flawed. Alabama that lost by 14 to Florida State and has had other underwhelming performances, and Georgia keeps escaping death by the skin of its teeth. Oregon and Ole Miss certainly aren't world beaters and Texas Tech and BYU are navigating a chaotic Big 12. Meanwhile, the ACC has essentially imploded. 

What are your predictions for how Tuesday's rankings shake out?

A USELESS PLEA TO STOP CFP CHAIRMAN INTERVIEWS

I know this is never going to happen because there was no going back once ESPN tasted the sweet, sweet money that surely accompanies the ridiculous charade that is the College Football Playoff weekly rankings show, but I'd still like to get on the record that it is a horrible, no-good, very bad idea to have the committee chairman do weekly interviews after the rankings. 

As I understand it, the rankings are generally created in a similar way to the AP Top 25 -- everyone votes, and they combine the results. It's not a situation where the committee discusses who they are collectively going to rank No. 1, then who they are collectively going to rank No. 2, and so on and so forth. That's how you get situations like 2018, when Georgia was inexplicably fifth and Ohio State sixth. No sane person would have actually ranked 11-2 Georgia behind 12-1 Oklahoma but ahead of 12-1 Ohio State. Instead, the Bulldogs likely ended up fifth because some committee members had them fourth (ahead of Oklahoma and Ohio State) while the rest had them sixth (behind both). 

It makes no sense for the committee chairman to go on TV and act like they collectively decided something. It would be the equivalent of an AP Poll voter having to go on TV to explain why Texas, who beat Oklahoma by 17 points, is ranked behind Oklahoma despite both teams having the same record. Unless he can read the minds of his fellow voters, it's a futile exercise. All it does is muddy the waters and confuse people who take these explanations at face value when in reality he cannot possibly explain why the combination of secret ballots turned out the way it did.

ARE WE SURE NOTRE DAME IS GOOD?

I'm going to resurface this take every so often, because it seems insane to me that Notre Dame is going to waltz into the playoff with two losses against a schedule that would make 2000s Boise State blush. At this point, it's a certainty that their best win will be against Southern California, a two-loss team that needed some luck to beat Nebraska and still has to face Iowa and Oregon. It's great that they almost beat Miami (Fla.) and almost beat Texas A&M, but they didn't. This week, they beat 1-8 Boston College by the exact same margin that UConn did. 

I've pretty much accepted that this is going to happen at this point, but it doesn't mean that it should. The amount of teams that could go 10-2 against that schedule is not a small number. 

LET'S CHECK IN ON LSU

Here's a non-exclusive list of things that happened since LSU fired head coach Brian Kelly:

  • Former LSU players celebrated the firing, with Malik Nabers posting a video on Instagram essentially telling Kelly to kick rocks. 
  • Governor Jeff Landry said in no uncertain terms on Wednesday that athletic director Scott Woodward, who originally hired Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M and hired Kelly at LSU, would not be hiring LSU's next football coach. LSU is still in the process of hiring a full-time president after former president William Tate left for Rutgers. 
  • Tate, a respected university president, posted an image of Omar and Brother Mouzone from The Wire, implying that he and Woodward had a common enemy in Landry. 
  • LSU fired Woodward on Thursday. LSU reportedly owes him nearly $7 million for the remainder of his contract.
  • LSU held a press conference with interim AD Verge Ausberry to reassure everyone that everything is fine, actually. 
  • Women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey boycotted her postgame press conference on Thursday due to being upset over Woodward's firing. 
  • Political commentator and LSU alum James Carville threatened to burn his LSU diplomas and apparel. 
  • Urban Meyer said on a podcast that the governor's involvement might give coaching candidates pause. 
  • Landry responded to Meyer on Twitter. 
  • A multi-day debate over whether or not taxpayers are liable for Kelly's buyout ensued. 
  • The Athletic posted a story in which former players and staffers took a blowtorch to Kelly's handling of the program. 

JEFF SIMS (!!!) EMERGES FROM HIBERNATION

I am going to be honest with y'all. I forgot Jeff Sims existed. Or exists, rather. He's still alive. He's also apparently doing just fine, as I (and hopefully others) learned this weekend. With Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt out for the rest of the season, Sims rushed for 228 yards -- the highest single-game total by a quarterback in program history -- to lead the Sun Devils to a 24-19 win at Iowa State as an 8-point underdog. 

The win marked Sims' first victory as a starting quarterback since 2022, his third season at Georgia Tech. 

BRYCE UNDERWOOD: WOOF

It hasn't been a great few weeks for Bryce Underwood, and Saturday wasn't any better. The Wolverines did manage to beat 2-7 Purdue by 5 points, but the freshman quarterback finished 13 of 22 for 145 yards, no touchdowns and one interception. There's a reason most programs don't throw true freshmen quarterbacks out there. 

ROBB AKEY DELIVERS AN ALL-TIME INTERVIEW

New Coach O just dropped. 

Oregon State interim head coach Robb Akey, who coached at Idaho from 2007-12 and was the defensive coordinator at Central Michigan from 2019-24, helped the Beavers to a 10-7 win over Washington State. I don't know what I was prepared for when I saw his postgame interview, but it wasn't this voice. All jokes aside, college football is the best when it has colorful characters and people who care. Moments like this will simply never get old for me. 

PLAY OF THE WEEK

There were obviously more impactful plays on Saturday, but this is a column about our dumb, beautiful sport and dumb and beautiful things will be honored. As such, here is Northern Arizona successfully catching a 2-point conversion pass in the pitch black dark after the lights went out in the middle of the play. It had to be re-attempted by rule, but it's still one of the coolest things I've seen all season. NAU converted its second attempt as well, this time with the lights on. 

IDIOT OF THE WEEK

Oh boy. Here's Miami defensive lineman Marquise Lightfoot drawing a 15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty on 4th-and-9 with just over one minute left to play. The penalty gave SMU a first down and put the Mustangs in opposing territory, allowing them to eventually tie the game before winning in overtime. 

I know this was probably more punitive than it deserved to be, but you simply cannot do this right in front of the officials after your teammate doing the exact same thing as you managed to stop before hitting the quarterback. Mario Cristobal seemingly tried to make a case that Lightfoot couldn't hear the whistle, but the sound was clear enough for everyone else on the field to stop. 

My other issue with this: Why is Cristobal calling this timeout in the first place? It's fourth-and-9, and SMU is out of timeouts and scrambling. Even if Lightfoot doesn't commit a penalty there, the timeout gives SMU time to compose itself and think about what play they want to call. 

REF JAIL INMATE OF THE WEEK

I've seen the arguments in favor of this call from the officials. I just disagree. You could maybe argue there was some defensive holding going on earlier in the route, but Clemson cornerback Avieon Terrell got trucked by Duke wide receiver Que'Sean Brown. Jail. 

On the bright side, publicly disagreeing with the officials won't cost me $10,000.00 like it did Clemson. 

NO CONTEXT SCORES OF THE WEEK

Here are some scores that caught my eye for any number of reasons – randomness, outcome, unique matchup – that shall remain unknown:

North Carolina 27, Syracuse 10
Georgia 24, Florida 20
Mississippi State 38, Arkansas 35
Illinois 35, Rutgers 13
Texas Tech 43, Kansas State 20
North Texas 31, Navy 17
Arizona 52, Colorado 17

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