The last Saturday of October started out as a treat for spoiler-minded teams but turned into a nightmare as multiple College Football Playoff contenders survived scares.
Here are our winners and losers from Week 9, or “Comeback Saturday,” of the college football season.
Winner: SEC College Football Playoff crashers
No. 8 Ole Miss Rebels (7-1, 4-1 in SEC) and No. 10 Vanderbilt Commodores (7-1, 3-1 in SEC) moved closer to crashing the College Football Playoff party with first-time bids after scoring top 25 wins.
Ole Miss began the day with a 34-26 win at No. 13 Oklahoma Sooners (6-2, 2-2 in SEC), outscoring the Sooners 9-0 in the fourth quarter one week after collapsing in the final 15 minutes at Georgia. Vanderbilt withstood a gritty performance by the No. 15 Missouri Tigers (6-2, 2-2 in SEC) in a 17-10 home win.
Of the two teams, the Rebels have the more favorable schedule the rest of the regular season, with their toughest game coming in the regular-season finale at the Mississippi State Bulldogs (4-4, 0-4 in SEC). The Commodores, meanwhile, play at No. 22 Texas Longhorns (6-2, 3-1 in SEC) next Saturday and end their season at No. 17 Tennessee Volunteers (5-2, 2-2 in SEC). While a playoff spot is far from guaranteed for either entering November, it’s no longer wild to think both will play meaningful games in December.
Loser: Missouri Tigers
The Tigers’ loss proved costly. Not only did their playoff odds drop to 16 percent according to ESPN’s playoff predictor, but they also could be without quarterback Beau Pribula for a while, if not the rest of the regular season, after he was taken off the field in an aircast brace and needed a wheelchair heading into the tunnel following a stop on 4th-and-goal at the Vanderbilt 1-yard line.
Making the loss even more painful, backup quarterback Matt Zollers’ Hail Mary attempt at the end of the regulation, ruled an incompletion on the field, was overturned to a completion, but receiver Kevin Coleman Jr. was ruled short of the end zone, keeping the result the same but with an extra twist of the knife.
Winner: Memphis Tigers
Coming off an inexplicable loss at UAB (3-4, 1-3 in American), Memphis (7-1, 3-1 in American) revived its playoff hopes by remaining in The American Conference championship game picture thanks to a rousing 34-31 comeback win over No. 18 South Florida Bulls (6-2, 3-1 in American). The Tigers trailed by 14 following a 73-yard touchdown run by South Florida running back Sam Franklin, but outscored the Bulls 17-0 in the fourth to emerge with the comeback victory.
At one point on Saturday, South Carolina (3-5, 1-5 in SEC) and Mississippi State, teams with one SEC win combined entering the day, were on their way to pulling off two of the biggest upsets in the conference this season. Instead, the SEC afterthoughts fell in painful fashion.
The Gamecocks led No. 4 Alabama Crimson Tide (7-1, 5-0 in SEC), 22-14, in the fourth quarter after converting an Alabama turnover into a touchdown. But they choked away the lead in the 29-22 loss, first allowing a tying touchdown then turning the ball over on a fumble from quarterback LaNorris Sellers, leading to Alabama’s winning score with 34 seconds left.
The Bulldogs endured an even worse collapse in their 16th consecutive SEC loss, falling 45-38 to Texas after squandering a 38-21 lead with under 10 minutes remaining. Neither team has had much to celebrate this season, and as close as that was to changing in Week 9 makes the stumbles tougher to accept.
BYU improved to 8-0 for the second year in a row — the first time in program history it’s done so — on the heels of a comeback win of its own, defeating Iowa State (5-3, 2-3 in Big 12), 41-27, after falling into a 14-point first-half hole.
True freshman quarterback Bear Bachmeier gets better each week and had arguably his best game of the season, going 22-of-35 for 307 yards and two touchdowns. The result sets up a huge game for BYU at No. 14 Texas Tech Red Raiders (7-1, 4-1 in Big 12) following its Week 10 bye.
No. 9 Miami (6-1, 2-1 in ACC) rebounded from its first loss of the season with a 42-7 win over Stanford, but it was hard to tell thanks to its questionable wardrobe choice.
