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Hess: No upsets in college football Week 11 (column)

WILL HESS
On College Football

This is the first week of the season where no team in the top 10 suffered a loss. That leaves us with a very uneventful weekend.

Alabama shutout a ranked team for the second straight week, but the question is if Tua Tagovailoa is healthy and more importantly can the Crimson Tide offensive line keep him upright for the rest of the season.

They shouldn’t have any trouble against Citadel this weekend. Alabama’s scout team could handle Citadel easily.



Clemson did not seem phased by the cold New England weather against Boston College, winning 27-7. The Tigers look like the only team that can take down mighty Alabama. Clemson has the best defensive line in the country and an offense that can keep up with the Crimson Tide.

Both teams are headed for a collision course with each other in the national championship game. If the Tigers and Crimson Tide eventually play each other, it would be the fourth-straight year both teams have faced each other in the postseason.

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Five up, five down

Just like that, Colorado is now a .500 team. Laviska Shenault made his return for the Buffs, but it did not seem to help. Washington State is clearly the better team, but the Buffs could have mustered more than one touchdown.

The Buffs are going to have their work cut out for them to make a bowl game. This week against Utah, the Buffs will be a touchdown underdog at home. A win for the Utes gives them the Pac 12 South division title, so expect them to have more motivation than the Buffs.

The regular season finale against the Cal Bears would have been a guarantee win at the start of the season, but Cal has improved a ton since a 24-17 loss to Arizona at the start of October. The Bears just went 2-1 against Washington, Washington State and USC in three straight weekends. Thats impressive for a program that has had three coaches this decade.

Worst division in Power 5

There are some atrocious divisions in the Power 5. The question is which one is the worst?

The Pac 12 South has been hard to gauge all season. With the aforementioned Buffs starting the season 5-0, it looked like it was the Buffs division to lose, until … well you know what happened. Utah is looking like the team to win the division and they are ranked 21st.

The Big 10 West is somehow worse than the Pac 12 South with the division’s best team being 6-4 No. 24 ranked Northwestern. When the best team in the division is Northwestern, you know the division is bad.

Yet somehow the Big 10 West is not the worst division in Power 5 football.

That title belongs to the ACC Coastal.

Pittsburgh is 5-1 in the conference, but has a 6-4 overall record. That sounds respectable until you realize that the only ACC loss the Panthers suffered was to 1-8 UNC. Clemson is going to be able to pick the score in the ACC Championship.

Looking ahead

ESPN’s College Gameday will be in Orlando for the UCF/Cincinnati game, but that won’t be the best game of the weekend.

The biggest game with playoff implications is Syracuse vs. Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium. This is the best chance for Notre Dame to lose and a Syracuse win would open the door for the eventual Big 12 Champion. Oklahoma and West Virginia will be donning orange all weekend pulling for Syracuse.

Notre Dame still has a date with USC and if the Irish make it 12-0, they certainly deserve a spot in the playoff.


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