This Week in Our Dumb, Beautiful Sport: Alabama is Mortal, Ohio State Reaches a Milestone and Texas A&M Survives a Weird One

By Ryan Ginn on November 17, 2025 at 9:10 am
Oklahoma Sooner football players celebrate their upset win at Alabama Saturday, November 15, 2025
Gary Cosby Jr.-Imagn Images
24 Comments

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.

It's crunch time in college football, and several flawed teams on the playoff bubble are waiting to see if their mistakes will ever catch up to them. 

ALABAMA DEALS WITH REALITY AS A MERE MORTAL

Life is pretty good when you're allowed to play for national championships without winning your division. From the 2007 season when Nick Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa through the 2017 season, Alabama had more national championships in years when it didn't even win the SEC West (two) than any other school won period in those same 11 seasons (one, or zero). 

But now Saban is gone, the transfer portal and NIL are here, and Alabama has won just one national championship since 2017. The Tide missed the College Football Playoff last season and then opened this year with a 14-point loss to a Florida State team that turned out to be just as bad as everyone thought it would before the season. Since then, they've gotten it together well enough to all but ensure they won't miss the playoff twice in a row. 

However, they are certainly not without flaws, which I imagine is an adjustment to anyone in their fan base who doesn't remember the early 2000s. I could not believe how bad they looked against an embarrassing LSU team, for example. They also squeaked out a win against a self-sabotaging South Carolina team and had to sweat out a 27-24 win against Missouri. 

And now it turns out the black hoodie of death is just a regular ol' sweatshirt and not some magical force field protecting against Alabama's inability to run the ball. The Crimson Tide played with fire too often in a 23-21 loss to Oklahoma, and while they're still comfortably in the playoff at this point their margin for error is all but gone. 

TEXAS A&M KEEPS GETTING AWAY WITH IT

Are we sure Texas A&M is good? That's of course a stupid thing to ask about a 10-0 team that is clearly headed for a first-round CFP bye, but stupid questions are our specialty here. The Aggies won 16-10 against Auburn and 45-42 against Arkansas before pulling their greatest escape yet -- a 31-30 win against South Carolina after trailing 30-3 at halftime.  

Credit to the Aggies for beating the teams they play -- and it's only fair to mention one of those teams is Notre Dame, even though I think the Irish are also wildly overrated -- but it would be nice for them to have to show a little more than this before we just hand them a first-round bye.

Here is a list of SEC teams Texas A&M does not play this season and their current AP Top 25 rank: No. 4 Georgia, No. 5 Ole Miss, No. 8 Oklahoma, No. 10 Alabama, No. 12 Vanderbilt, No. 20 Tennessee. Put another way, the Venn diagram of good SEC teams and SEC teams Texas A&M has not played is basically one circle. They did play No. 23 Missouri and still have to play No. 17 Texas, but Missouri plays Oklahoma next week and likely won't be ranked by the end of the season and the only way Texas will be ranked is if the Aggies lose to them. So they'll likely finish the regular season 12-0 with zero wins against of the six or so conference opponents ranked in the top 25. 

And because the gifts will never stop coming for them, Texas A&M will likely get to play a flawed Alabama team rather than Georgia or Ole Miss in the SEC Championship. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. 

OHIO STATE WINS NO. 1,000

Ohio State won its 1,000th football game on Saturday, just the second college football team to do so. The official NCAA list currently has the Buckeyes 12 games short of the mark, but I have working eyes and saw them score more points than the other team 12 times in 2010. You can't vacate memories. 

MICHIGAN KEEPS GETTING AWAY WITH IT

Michigan, a team that has lost to the only two decent teams it has played, has recently started flirting with the idea of losing to the non-decent teams as well. The 30-27 win against Nebraska was perhaps a warning sign. Michigan's last three games have included the following wins: 31-20 over Michigan State, 21-16 vs. Purdue, and this week's 24-22 win against Northwestern at Wrigley Field that included five Wolverines turnovers. 

"In college football, in the Big Ten, it is hard to win," UM coach Sherrone Moore said. "Every week it’s a battle. So, you know, you can’t have five turnovers a week. That’s not going to help you win. So we got to clean that up."

The Wolverines don't play No. 2 Indiana or No. 6 Oregon, but there is one team remaining on the schedule that I assume would love to put the final nail in their coffin. 

GEORGIA CONTINUES TO OWN TEXAS

Kirby Smart can't beat Alabama, so it's only fair that he gets a coach who can't beat him. Enter Steve Sarkisian and Texas, who have now lost to Smart and Georgia by the following scores over the past two seasons: 30-15, 22-19, and 35-10. 

Smart even called the first onside kick of his nine-year Georgia tenure on Saturday, and the Bulldogs recovered it with ease. 

TEXAS A&M TROOPER REMOVED FROM GAME

Texas A&M's rough first half against the Gamecocks included this insane moment when a Texas A&M policer officer sought responded to a Nyck Harbor touchdown by intentionally shoulder bumping him and then screaming at him.

The police department later tweeted that the officer had been sent home from the game. 

BRENT KEY'S POSTGAME INTERVIEW

I'll say this: for all the jokes about it, Brent Key was about as happy as I'd want my coach to be if I were the fan of a team who almost just lost to 1-9 Boston College. 

LOUISVILLE BLOWS IT AGAINST CLEMSON

Look at this. Woof. Do not leave the game in the hands of your backup kicker.

What's amazing is that this is really just scratching the surface of what an eyesore that game was. Clemson fumbled two snaps in a row on the opposing 1-yard line to turn the ball over on downs, Louisville committed about 50 untimely personal fouls, and the Cardinals also missed two field goals and a PAT in a 1-point loss. 

MORE GROUP OF FIVE CHAOS

Navy beat USF and East Carolina beat Memphis, throwing the Group of Five playoff spot into further chaos. Right now, the general consensus seems to be that the American champion (North Texas, Navy, or Tulane) will have an advantage over James Madison. But if the Dukes finish the season with their only loss coming to Louisville, there will at least be some debate there. Further complicating things is Navy's status as a contender, as the Midshipmen don't play Army until Dec. 13, a week after the CFP field is announced. 

THIS WEEK IN CFB LINKEDIN

Here are some quick updates on the coaching carousel:

FOOTBALL AT FENWAY

Two of my favorite memories of my time as an Ohio State beat writer were the 2014 game against Navy in Baltimore and the 2017 game against Army in Ohio Stadium. The service academies are just awesome. Anyways, the Division III equivalent of the Army-Navy game -- the Coast Guard Academy vs. the Merchant Marine Academy -- was played at Fenway Park on Saturday. It was apparently a banger, too, with the Merchant Marine Academy winning 39-38. 

If we're going to use baseball stadiums, let's use them for big rivalries between schools where it will feel like a big deal instead of opening Wrigley for the crime against football that was Northwestern vs. Michigan.  

VALPARAISO'S WILD COMEBACK

We're really getting into the weeds here but it's my column and I can talk about Pioneer League football if I want. Especially if this happens. FCS team Valparaiso trailed Stetson 24-0 in the second half but then scored three touchdowns and got all three 2-point conversions to send the game into overtime. When Stetson scored first to go up by 7, Valparaiso decided to -- you guessed it -- go for 2. They got it and won the game, finishing 4 for 4 on 2-point conversion attempts. If you need a 2-point conversion play, just call Valparaiso.

PLAY OF THE WEEK

Three sections in row covering non-FBS teams! I don't necessarily love giving player of the week to a kicker, but an Ivy League nerd drilling a 52-yarder for the win is good enough for me. Especially because Harvard was losing rather than tied, so the outcome was actually hanging in the balance. Game-winning kicks in tie games where the worst that can happen if you miss is overtime (well, unless you're 2013 Alabama) just aren't the same. 

IDIOT OF THE WEEK

"Like I said, we weren't surprised," Shane Beamer said. "Nobody came into the locker room at halftime celebrating, thinking the game was over, thinking that we could just go out there and coast in the second half."

About as bad a quote as it gets when your own school posted a video of you celebrating on your way to the locker room at halftime. 

REF JAIL INMATE OF THE WEEK

In a real-life example of the "Heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point" meme, the time has come for me to defend Lane Kiffin. With less than two minutes to go in the first half and Ole Miss losing to Florida, the Rebels kicked a 23-yard field goal. However, Florida was flagged for illegal hands to the face. This would have given Ole Miss a fresh set of downs, but the officials indicated that the penalty was after the play, not during it. I have no idea how they came to that conclusion, so I won't bother guessing. 

“Just really disappointing to have communication with the refs,” Kiffin said. “They come over, try to get it right. The hands to the face is during the play, let’s just get it right. It’s not that hard. So that’s really just discouraging, to have that much time to talk about it. And they admit they’re wrong now, so what good does that do?”

Officiating is a hard job. Nobody disputes this. But you can't mess up something this obvious. 

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:

Northern Illinois 45, UMass 3
Texas Tech 48, UCF 9
Notre Dame 37, Pitt 15
USC 26, Iowa 21
Kansas State 14, Oklahoma State 6
Illinois 24, Maryland 6
Florida State 34, Virginia Tech 14

24 Comments

Quick Hits: Ryan Day Says Jeremiah Smith Left Game Early Due to “Nagging” Injury, Julian Sayin Says He’s “Feeling Good Now” After Turning Ankle

Jeremiah Smith

Christoph Tilly's Game-Winning Heroics, Bruce Thornton's 24 Points Push Ohio State Past Notre Dame 64-63

Christoph Tilly game-winner
View 24 Comments