Welcome to the Skull Session.
Ohio State recruiting is still hot, hot, hot!
Welcome aboard, Braxton Rembert and Brody McNeel.
Have a good Wednesday.
THE COMPUTERS! It's Hump Day. You know what that means. For the third straight week, Ohio State is the unanimous No. 1 team in college football. The Buckeyes are ranked No. 1 in the CFP, AP Poll and Coaches Poll. They are also No. 1 in both the College Football Power Index and SP+.
College Football Power Index
| TEAM | RECORD | FPI | WIN OUT | WIN CONF | MAKE CFP | WIN CFP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OHIO STATE | 10-0 | 27.8 | 51% | 51.8% | 99.8% | 26.5% |
| INDIANA | 11-0 | 26.0 | 42.5% | 43.2% | 99.8% | 22.1% |
| OREGON | 9-1 | 23.8 | 46.7% | 3.4% | 86.6% | 8.2% |
| GEORGIA | 9-1 | 22.8 | 59.9% | 35.7% | 99.1% | 12.7% |
| NOTRE DAME | 8-2 | 22.4 | 92.8% | N/A | 51.1% | 3.5% |
Ohio State's future opponents in the College Football Power Index: Rutgers (60), Michigan (18)
SP+
| TEAM | RECORD | RATING | OFFENSE | DEFENSE | SPECIAL TEAMS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OHIO STATE | 10-0 | 31.4 | 39.8 (7) | 8.7 (1) | 0.4 (39) |
| INDIANA | 11-0 | 30 | 40.7 (2) | 11.1 (2) | 0.4 (32) |
| TEXAS TECH | 10-1 | 28.8 | 40.8 (1) | 12.4 (4) | 0.4 (33) |
| OREGON | 9-1 | 26.6 | 38.4 (10) | 12.1 (3) | 0.4 (37) |
| NOTRE DAME | 8-2 | 22.5 | 39.1 (9) | 16.6 (13) | 0.0 (65) |
Ohio State's future opponents in the SP+: Rutgers (61), Michigan (22)
Matchup Predictor
| OPPONENT | DATE | LOCATION | PREDICTION |
|---|---|---|---|
| RUTGERS | 11/22 | COLUMBUS, OH | OHIO STATE 96.9% |
| MICHIGAN | 11/29 | ANN ARBOR, MI | OHIO STATE 80.7% |
Movements from Week 12 to Week 13
- Rutgers: 96.8% → 96.9%
- Michigan: 79.3% → 80.7%
For the ninth? 10th? 11th? straight week, FPI and SP+ tell me it's all about Ohio State. If the Buckeyes play like the Buckeyes, no one can stop them!
STOP! IN THE NAME OF DEFENSE. For the second straight week, Texas Tech and Ohio State lead college football in stop rate.
| TEAM | GAMES* | STOP RATE | PTS/DRIVE |
|---|---|---|---|
| TEXAS TECH | 10 | 83.5% | 0.95 |
| OHIO STATE | 9 | 82.1% | 0.89 |
| SAN DIEGO STATE | 9 | 81.4% | 1.07 |
| TOLEDO | 9 | 79.2% | 1.26 |
| INDIANA | 10 | 77.1% | 1.09 |
| OREGON | 9 | 75.8% | 1.31 |
| UTAH | 9 | 75.8% | 1.44 |
| MIAMI | 9 | 75.2% | 1.38 |
| JAMES MADISON | 9 | 74.8% | 1.35 |
| TEXAS | 10 | 73.9% | 1.52 |
| *GAMES VS. FBS OPPONENTS | |||
ESPN's Max Olson created stop rate to measure the percentage of a defense's drives that end in punts, turnovers or a turnover on downs for all 136 FBS teams.
The Red Raiders and Buckeyes lead yet another new-look top five, which features Tony Gwynn went there San Diego State (81.4%), The Paper is based there Toledo (79.2%) and They used to be good at basketball there Indiana (77.1%). The rest of the top 10 also experienced some shake-up, as Oregon ranks No. 6 at 75.8%, followed by Utah (75.8%), Miami (75.2%), James Madison (74.8%) and Texas (73.9%).
It’s impressive that Ohio State’s defense ranks No. 2 in stop rate. It’s even more impressive that the Buckeyes also rank No. 1 in total defense (212.7 YPG) and No. 1 in scoring defense (7.5 PPG), with the next-best teams being Toledo (231.5 YPG) and Indiana (11.6 PPG). Quick math tells me the Silver Bullets are 17.8 yards and 4.1 points better than the nation’s second-best defenses in those categories. That's pretty good... pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good!
OH, MOTHER OF PEARL! Pamela Maldonado has doubled down.
One week after she said Julian Sayin was too clean, efficient and technically superior to win the Heisman Trophy, the ESPN college football writer said Indiana's Fernando Mendoza is "defending the award, not chasing it" as Sayin has done nothing to shape "the season's emotional spine."
No. 2 Julian Sayin; QB, Ohio State
Sayin remains the second favorite because he has mastered efficiency without ever becoming the story. The numbers are clean, the mechanics are polished and the Buckeyes offense hums, but (as mentioned last week), nothing he has done has shaped the season's emotional spine.
Roughly 900 Heisman voters mean almost no one is sitting around waiting for Week 12 Ohio State against Wisconsin to form an opinion, or even pressing for a Week 13 result. They already have a working hierarchy in their heads because they watched the season through narrative anchors, not PFF grades or EPA data. When you spread the vote across nearly a thousand people, the common denominator becomes simple: emotional imprint. Who defined the year? Who gave them the moment they'll remember when their ballot hits the screen? This is exactly where Sayin falls short.
With that many voters, you need a unifying storyline to cut through the noise, and Mendoza has it, Sayin does not -- not yet at least. A clean résumé does not carry 900 people unless it comes with a defining snapshot.
A week later, what is the highlight? Gus Johnson losing his mind over a big-time play to win a game? The moment was Mendoza rectifying the mistakes made early in the game to keep his team on track for an undefeated season.
For Sayin, invincible excellence blends into the background. Michigan is now his access point to influence a group that large. Live drama is needed to force 900 minds to shift. And if there is none, and the Buckeyes cruise, then his placement is logical -- second favorite. Again, not because he's not elite, but because 900 people don't vote for efficiency. They vote for imprint.
But wait, there's more!
As I predicted when Texas A&M trailed South Carolina 30–3 at halftime, Aggies quarterback Marcel Reed has established himself as one of the top Heisman candidates, according to Maldonado, because he led his team to a historic 28-point comeback to beat the Gamecocks benefited from one of the worst choke jobs I've ever seen in college football.
No. 3 Marcel Reed; QB, Texas A&M
The move to +550 is structural. Reed produced a moment that forces voters to stop scrolling. Down 27 points, two interceptions, the season collapsing with a bad first-half performance, but then ... he detonates the game. You can't manufacture that kind of narrative energy. It happens organically and violently, and when it does, it pushes a player from "value potential" to "credible contender."
The second half was cinematic -- 9.8 yards per play, no punts and Reed erasing his own disasters in real time. That's the kind of volatility that sticks. Voters remember quarterbacks who survive storms.
Reed is now the third favorite because he crossed that psychological threshold by becoming visible. Mendoza still owns the front-runner profile, but it was a single moment you can have on repeat 10 times a day, while Sayin still owns the technical résumé. But Reed now owns the chaos highlight that voters latch onto when they're looking for a December pivot.
Reed's path is still narrow, but it's no longer theoretical. Beat Texas, deliver a clean game, finish undefeated, and he could be the spoiler with real teeth. And right now, he's (still, as I've been saying for weeks) the only candidate who just authored a Heisman-style shockwave.
His Week 12 comeback (deservedly) moved his odds.
Maldonado wants story over sense — which, to me, makes no sense!
“WE WANT TO GET TO INDY.” On Tuesday, veteran Ohio State beat reporter Bill Rabinowitz asked Ryan Day if he wishes the Buckeyes could have faced more adversity to this point in the season. Day immediately responded, “I hear what you’re saying, but…”
Then Day shared an impassioned answer detailing Ohio State’s intense focus in practice and its desire to reach the Big Ten Championship Game for the first time since 2020…
And I loved every second of it.
“The intensity is high,” Day said of Ohio State’s season. “It’s the coach’s job to make sure everybody in the building is locked in. It’s my job to make sure the coaches are locked in, and it’s the position coaches’ job to make sure that their units are locked in and doing their job. And we’re on our game. Then practice has got to be good, too. I mean, we can’t just expect not to be physical in practice and not go good on good, because we’re going to need that to keep our edge. And so all those things are taken into consideration.
“But we don’t take anything for granted. We don’t make any assumptions. And every week, every Saturday, an opportunity to get to Indianapolis is on the line. That’s the way it is here right now. I mean, we want to get to Indy, and we haven’t got to Indy here. There’s nobody on this team that’s been to Indy right now, and they know it. And so that’s the edge. Wake up in the morning every day looking to reach our goals.”
What does Larry Johnson like to say?
Enjoy the chase. Enjoy the chase. Enjoy the chase... Fourth day, he decides, I'm done chasing. I'm now gonna go get him. So guess what he does? In the fourth day of his chase, he grabs him and tears him apart. Why? Because he loves the chase, and he says, I am the king of the jungle.
Ohio State is all about the chase!
DAILY DUBCAST. Today's Eleven Dubcast brings on Dan Hope to discuss the pending multi-billion dollar private equity deal between UC Investments and the Big Ten that Ohio State appears to support while schools including Michigan and USC publicly oppose.
SONG OF THE DAY. "Stop! In The Name Of Love" - The Supremes.
CUT TO THE CHASE. Cloudflare (kind of) resolved an outage that impacted thousands, ChatGPT, X and more... Australian prisoner sues for his "human right" to eat Vegemite... Curaçao makes history as smallest nation by population to qualify for a World Cup... Tackling his ADHD kept Jay Glazer in the game – here’s how he helped manage symptoms... Callaway offloads Topgolf in $1.1 billion sale to PE firm.
