BOOM
Five-star 2028 wide receiver Jett Harrison, the younger brother of Marvin Harrison Jr., commits to Ohio State.
Nobody planned for the New York Knicks to win the NBA title.
There were signs, like winning the Emirates NBA Cup over their eventual Finals opponent, San Antonio. Of course, almost nobody knows what the NBA Cup is. You probably found out it existed one sentence ago.
The Knicks had the Eastern Conference's 3-seed and were a respectable unit all season, but as anyone who follows the NBA knows, they're also the Knicks. The last time New York won the NBA title, Archie Griffin was still a full season away from having any Heisman Trophies.
Ryan Day was still six years away from being born. A gallon of gas cost 39 cents. Nobody anticipated the Knicks' June takeover, which created consequences extending well beyond sports.
When the wedding's at 6 but Game 5 is at 8:30 pic.twitter.com/oe9TH5ybtt
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) June 13, 2026
That's commitment. Even Jalen Brunson didn't wear a Jalen Brunson jersey to his wedding.
The Knicks came out of nowhere. The World Cup, currently in-progress and the biggest single sport event on earth did not. We've known this was coming since 2018. It is literally unavoidable in North American host cities and hard to tune out everywhere else.
But maybe you're not a soccer person and aren't keeping up with the games. Chances are you didn't realize every single one of these things is basically a garden variety Super Bowl in terms of energy and congestion. I live between Philly and New York City, and on match days people who work in offices here were told a few months ago to work from home. That's how much traffic there is.
Imagine scheduling something enormous that day because you're not a soccer person. Something requiring deposits, months of planning and dozens of guests, vendors and employees.
Oops, who knew Algeria-Austria and Jordan-Argentina were going to happen at the same time? Billions of people, that's who. Maybe you were oblivious. Perhaps it didn't affect your big plans. Feel fortunate, unless you took Jordan to cover the 1.5 goal spread - oof.
No one likes to be oblivious. We're a little more than four months from Nov. 7. I don't enjoy making giant predictions, but this slate deserves one. We're talking about ranked teams facing each other at a clip that is close to being mathematically impossible. Look at this.
| GAME | PROJECTED RANKINGS ON NOV. 7 | CONFIDENCE |
|---|---|---|
| Miami @ Notre Dame | No. 8 Miami @ No. 4 Notre Dame | 0.70 |
| Oregon @ Ohio State | No. 3 Oregon @ No. 2 Ohio State | 0.74 |
| Alabama @ LSU | No. 13 Alabama @ No. 9 LSU | 0.58 |
| Georgia @ Ole Miss | No. 5 Georgia @ No. 17 Ole Miss | 0.64 |
| BYU @ Utah | No. 20 BYU @ No. 24 Utah | 0.52 |
| Oklahoma @ Florida | No. 14 Oklahoma @ No. 22 Florida | 0.50 |
| Penn State @ Washington | No. 18 Penn State @ No. 21 Washington | 0.53 |
| Virginia Tech @ SMU | Virginia Tech NR/fringe @ No. 25 SMU | 0.46 |
| Texas @ Missouri | No. 7 Texas @ Missouri NR/fringe | 0.55 |
Before you justifiably get on my ass for having the audacity to predict who is going to be ranked in November, consider the games that aren't in that chart. Arkansas at Auburn. TAMU at South Carolina. Kentucky at Tennessee. West Virginia at Texas Tech. Michigan State at Michigan. Just put those to the side for now.
We're looking at nine games featuring ranked vs. ranked the first Saturday in November.
Does this happen often? Not really. Does it happen at all? Barely. We have no idea who will actually be ranked in November because college football specializes in humiliating preseason certainty.
Caveats and reasons to be cynical aside, this slate is heavily overpromising heading into Independence Day with that asteroid still four months from impact. Tuesday MACtion makes its debut five days earlier, so the whole week is lubricated for a Saturday nobody will want to miss.
Nov 7 marks Oregon's first trip back to Ohio Stadium since the 2021 season. The Ducks were still members of the Pac-12 and Ryan Day was still beardless. ®USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
There's a lot of SEC in the chart above, as well as right below the cutline. Do you know what two three-loss teams with SEC Grade Inflation™ facing each other in November is called? That's right, it's Ranked vs. Ranked. Several of these games are fringe College Football Gameday candidates on a slower Saturday.
Closer to home, Penn State-Washington is the sneakiest awesome matchup on that chart. The Nittany Lions are now Iowa State with a cupcake schedule, so congratulations in advance to Matt Campbell on his 2026 B1G Coach of the Year honors.
Washington should be a fringe ranked team, and kind of like the person who finishes last in med school also gets to be called doctor, the team at the bottom of the AP Poll gets to be called ranked. James Franklin's new program has a forgiving schedule, but they'll have to climb into the top 25 rather than fall out of it.
SMU should be right where it's been over the past several seasons, while Missouri has the makings to be this season's chaos team - they could be Top 10 or somewhere in the 40s by the time they face Texas on Nov 7.
If all nine of those matchups hit and it's Ranked vs. Ranked, well we've never seen anything like that before in November or any other month. In the CFP era, the closest thing we've ever seen to 18 ranked teams facing each other on the same Saturday is six.
And it happened during the inaugural four-team playoff season.
| GAME | OUTCOME |
|---|---|
| No. 12 Mississippi State vs. No. 6 Texas A&M | Mississippi State 48, Texas A&M 31 |
| No. 11 Ole Miss vs. No. 3 Alabama | Ole Miss 23, Alabama 17 |
| No. 25 TCU vs. No. 4 Oklahoma | TCU 37, Oklahoma 33 |
| No. 9 Notre Dame vs. No. 14 Stanford | Notre Dame 17, Stanford 14 |
| No. 5 Auburn vs. No. 15 LSU | Auburn 41, LSU 7 |
| No. 10 Michigan State vs. No. 19 Nebraska | Michigan State 27, Nebraska 22 |
The Buckeyes were beating up on Maryland that day. Cardale Jones, then still only famous for making one bad tweet - jumped over a guy. Ohio State, ranked no.20 in October during a season where it would win the national title (!) did not participate in the best Saturday of the CFP era.
The only eventual playoff team in the slate was Alabama, which lost. College Gameday was there for the spectacle; an easy choice given the rankings while also in the midst of the All SEC Everything Era for ESPN. But here's the thing about that Saturday that gets lost to the sands of time - it had an aftershock.
Look what happened one week later.
| GAME | OUTCOME |
|---|---|
| No. 3 Mississippi State vs. No. 2 Auburn | Mississippi State 38, Auburn 23 |
| No. 5 Baylor vs. No. 9 TCU | Baylor 61, TCU 58 |
| No. 12 Oregon at No. 18 UCLA | Oregon 42, UCLA 30 |
| No. 13 Georgia at No. 23 Missouri | Georgia 34, Missouri 0 |
| No. 3 Ole Miss at No. 14 Texas A&M | Ole Miss 35, Texas A&M 20 |
Five Ranked vs. Ranked games, with your Buckeyes safely enjoying a bye week after Maryland (and ahead of Rutgers, like thank you B1G schedulers - thanks for taking care of your cash cow like this).
It took two consecutive Saturdays unlike anything we'd seen before to produce 11 ranked-vs.-ranked matchups. Even then, six in one Saturday remained the ceiling, which is why the possibility of nine on Nov. 7 still feels like an asteroid worth tracking.
To avoid over-charting you, here are the other Saturdays where five or six ranked teams - the threshold which has never been breached and is rarely met - faced each other:
- October 17, 2015 - No.1 Ohio State beat unranked Penn State in blackout conditions
- November 4, 2017 - No.6 Ohio State was scheduled to play at unranked Iowa that day, but alas the game was canceled for no reason and never rescheduled or thought of again
- September 29, 2018 - No.4 Ohio State came from behind to beat No.9 Penn State in white out conditions
- October 15, 2022 - No.2 Ohio State was on a bye that weekend. Perhaps you made alternative plans
- September 23, 2023 - No.6 Ohio State won at No.9 Notre Dame to cap a slate of bangers
So 12 years into the playoff era, premium matchups blanked the entire Saturday just six times, with only one of those dream slates taking place in November. And now we can see Nov 7 staring at us from space, threatening to elevate the ceiling into another realm. The conditions are ripe.
And the science is inexact. But choosing to ignore what's coming for us would be irresponsible.
We'll blink, and go from sunbathing while pants-less and eating hot dogs to suddenly wearing lucky hooded sweatshirts, still being pants-less and still eating hot dogs. It's going to come at us fast. College football will be here. Whether this slate actually delivers nine ranked matchups almost doesn't matter anymore.
The possibility alone makes Nov. 7 a day worth circling now, because if college football cooperates, we'll experience something never seen before. Don't say you weren't warned.
