Week five featured three top ten match-ups, which included one game between top five teams. There were a lot of great finishes and conference defining results. Here are takeaways from the weekend’s action!
1. It is the return of the 1990s.
Tennessee won this weekend in dramatic fashion. Their Hail Mary play to beat Georgia is one of the best plays in recent college football memory. The Volunteers may not be playing as well as they are capable of, but they are winning week in and week out. This is the best they have played since Phillip Fulmer’s tenure as head coach, when they won a National Championship in 1998.
Chris Petersen has Washington playing really well. Not only did they beat Stanford in a big Pac-12 North clash, they destroyed them, which doesn’t happen often to a team as physical as Stanford. It is still early in the season, but the Huskies are starting to resemble their teams in the early 1990s, when they were a national powerhouse.
Nebraska stayed undefeated this weekend and is slowly moving up the polls. They didn’t beat Illinois like a top fifteen team should, but they got the win. Their wins may not be the greatest, but they have gotten the results they desired. Tom Osborne coached the Cornhuskers to dominate the 1990s, something they have yet to acheive since.
With these three teams succeeding, after not doing really well in the 2000s or 2010s, it sure does feel like a blast from the past. Can one of these powers reach greatness in the new age of college football by making the CFP? Only time will tell.
2. Blaming the refs will do you no good.
Referees do their best to keep the game of football fair and clean, but it is impossible to do a perfect job. Two coaches got into headlines this week for criticizing officials. Jim Mora has been fined by the Pac-12 and Gary Patterson has gotten the same treatment from the Pac-12. The game is over and no bad calls will be changed by complaining to the media. So why do it? Head Coaches are getting fined and are starting to look more childish by being sore losers (Patterson even criticized Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield). There is a correct way to handle this, which includes talking to your conference and maybe appealing the game, but not taking it public like that. Let’s hope that coaches can start to behave better on the sidelines.
3. LSU can score.
The Tigers fired Les Miles because they didn’t score enough points. On Saturday night in Death Valley, LSU scored 42 points against a solid Missouri defense. The offense wasn’t too dynamic, they scored all six touchdowns on the ground, but they put up points. LSU may have two losses already, but if they can continue to score like this, the SEC West race could be a fun one. Credit interim head coach Ed Orgeron for getting the Tigers ready to play.
