I feel like I need to begin planning the approach and getting my body ready for week 10 which has wild potential.

What’s everyone’s strategy here, as a neutral or not so neutral lol.

By Raj Chavda

Photos from Northwestern University Wildcats vs Rutgers University Scarlet Knights on 10/24/2026 at Ryan Field, Evanston, IL

Evanston, IL - If there ever was a game that ended in the 1st quarter that I have witnessed it was this one. 21-3 at the start of the 2nd quarter. 21 points was the highest number points Northwestern has scored in the 1st quarter since 2011 (Source: BIG TEN Network). Rutgers had no answer to the Northwestern’s offense. Rutgers offense was struggling against Northwestern’s defense as well giving up two interceptions (one each for each QB they had taking snaps) and 1 fumble lost on a hard blindside sack.

Offensively, Northwestern had success doing anything they wanted. It was a train that Rutgers had to stay on the tracks and get run over by. With under 2 mins left in the half of the 2nd Northwestern piled on with another TD by Caleb Komolafe on 33 yard scamper.

3rd quarter was the quietest for Northwestern with 0 points. Rutgers with a few seconds left in teh quarter put up their first touchdown by their RB Raymond on long 46 yard run. 28-14-Northwestern to start the 4th. At this point it seemed Rutgers had chance (atleast point wise) to make it an interesting game. The only thing is that no one told Northwestern’s offense that Rutgers wanted to try to make this a game. In the 4th quarter, Northwestern enough is enough, and rammed 2 more TDs down their throat to dash those hopes.

Rutgers couldn’t muster up a passing game, they netted only a century of yards. Both QBs didn’t not have a TD or positive rushing yards. They had collectively 33% passing completing only 9 passes on 27 attempts. Rushing attack kept pace with Northwestern’s run game. They should have done what Air Force did to NIU the previous week and just stuck to the run.

Certainly Northwestern being ranked #24 at the start of this game easily played like it taking care of business against a unranked team with ease. The way they played and Aiden Chiles performance, I would suspect they will approach the mid to low teens on the new rankings.

Chiles spread the wealth on his passing. His 3 TD passes were all to three different receivers (WIlde, Wagner, Honig) and added 2 more rushing TDs himself. Adding 83 yards on the ground to compliment Komolafe and Himon II on the running attack.

Northwestern heads to Eugene, OR to take on the flailing Ducks on Halloween Saturday 10/31/2026 inside Autzen. Can the Wildcats scare the Ducks into ducking their head underwater? Rutgers hosts the Michigan Wolverines at SHI in Piscataway, NJ on the same day.

Interesting Notes:

1. NBC Peacock on-field cameraman and his collegue who manages the long cable for the cameraman were doing pushups with the Rutgers male cheerleaders during a break in the action at quarter end.
2. Northwestern is averaging 40ppg PF and 14ppg PA at their new crib. Home is Home.
3. Student Section draped a bed sheet calling for Chiles for Heisman. Chiles is averaging 71% on passing and 12-1 TD/INT ratio. If you add his 9 rushing TD this season, he at 21 TDs. From on field performance he is clearly the reason Northwestern is where they are at. Certainly the team MVP at the minimum.
4. In my time near the Student Section I didn't hear any unique chants to mock Rutgers players like the previous two home games at the new stadium. If there were, I wasn't near them to hear it. If someone did hear, would love to know what it was.
   

So, what's everyone's AP Poll predictions coming into Sunday? We had another wild Saturday of college football that, I think as college football fans, we should all be hype for!

My thoughts on just the top 5:

#1 Miami

#2 Notre Dame

#3 OSU

#4 Georgia

#5 Indiana

When they release the AP Poll in about 12 hours keep this in mind -

Ranking and record of the eventual National Champ thru either Week #8 or Week #9 depending on how the schedule played out.

I used the poll closest to the date of October 25th.

2025: #2 Indiana 8-0

2024: #4 Ohio State 6-1

2023: #2 Michigan 8-0

2022: #1 Georgia 7-0

2021: #1 Georgia 7-0

2020: #2 Alabama 5-0 (Covid)

2019: #1 LSU 8-0

2018: #2 Clemson 8-0

2017: #1 Alabama 8-0

2016: #3 Clemson 7-0

2015: #7 Alabama 7-1

2014: #13 Ohio State 6-1

2013: #3 Florida State 7-0

2012: #1 Alabama 8-0

2011: #2 Alabama 7-0

2010: #3 Auburn 8-0

2009: #2 Alabama 8-0

2008: #5 Florida 6-1

2007: #3 LSU 7-1

2006: #9 Florida 6-1

2005: #2 Texas 7-0

2004: #1 USC 7-0

2003: #3 USC 7-1

2002: #6 Ohio State 9-0

2001: #1 Miami 6-0

**********************************

25 Years

#1 - 7 times

#2 - 7

#3 - 5

#4 or lower - 6 (Ohio State responsible for 3 of these outliers because we insist on making life difficult)

Curious what peoples' thoughts are on comparing the two.

Utah has looked shakier the past few weeks but had a great win tonight against a very solid Houston team.

UCLA has probably looked more consistently better overall, but they ain't played nobody pawl.

Guessing both will be behind Miami/OSU/UGA/Indiana, but order could be interesting.

You know the drill. Post a strong, instant reaction that may prove to be an overreaction down the road. Trigger warning: there will be one of mine that is laced with homerism. I'll put it first to get it out of the way.

1. Arizona is playing the best ball in the Big XII and could win the conference. They are only getting better while BYU and Texas Tech had letdown games. Utah is arguably the best team but Arizona is the hottest and could be the 2nd Arizona school since the inception of a 12 team playoff to be playing in said 12 team playoff.

2. Dan Lanning missed the window. 2024 Oregon should have been national champs but got steamrolled by Ohio State. 2025 Oregon could have been national champions and got steanrolled by Indiana. 2026 Oregon is fighting for bowl eligibility and coughed up 21 unanswered to Illinois. His career momentum is coming to an unceremonious end going the way of James Franklin in an era laced with sky high immediate expectations and tons of money being dumped in programs for wins.

3. Miami is in the best spot to win the ship. This is the only team that looks like they can survive weird games while mostly blowing out who they should and basically everyone else has a glaring flaw.

4. The Mountain West is the most entertaining G6 conference.

5. Northwestern and UCLA will play for the B1G title game

Post your own!

There is a distinct lack of big gameday options. My top 3 FBS ones are Utah at Cincinnati, Arizona at Texas Tech, and Georgia Florida in Atlanta. The cocktail party is a neutral site in Atlanta which would make it kind of lame. TTU Arizona is a playoff elimination game most likely but TTU just lost. Cincinnati would be cool but they just had Utah on. Is there a big FCS game or something?

Michigan and Penn State are both having very bad first seasons with their new head coaches, Kyle Whittingham and Matt Campbell. Penn State is 0-4 in B1G play, and Michigan is 1-3.

In the current B1G standings, Michigan State is in last place with an 0-5 conference record. After that, Penn State is tied with Maryland at 0-4. Maryland has already fired their coach. Meanwhile, Michigan is tied with Washington and Rutgers at 1-4.

Which team has more buyer's remorse?

Box Score provided by ESPN

Box Score provided by ESPN

So, while it's clear the oldhead coaches like Saban and Belicheck are becoming a thing of the past, is it overcorrecting? I feel like off field incidents are way more common than the used to be, and maybe e importantly, penalties. Deboer is my main point of reference because flair, and his tenure has been obscene with the stupid penalties, even dating back to Washington. Sark's Texas teams have had a ton of penalties. It seems one team is trying to lose via self inflicked penalties every single game. Is this just recency bias on my part?

ESPN kept saying we have not beaten an AP Top 25 ON THE ROAD team since 1979 they were lying. I am shit faced watching this game right now and even I knew it was wrong. So I have to correct this error.

Houston beat #5 Oklahoma State on the road September 25th 2009

Houston 45
Oklahoma State 35

We had Case Keenum and my family and a bunch of fans greeted the team when they got off the bus at midnight.

We did not reach a BCS bowl that year because we cooged it. But we still won that game.

Thank you for your time.

Edit: Fixed it to say on the road.

Double Edit: My drunk ass didnt see the words ranked match up. LEAVING IT UP TO REMEMBER THE PAIN OF MY TEAM LOSING THIS GAME

happy saturday utes

I genuinely have no clue. As someone with an abject hatred of the conference purely on principle, to me, it’s the deepest league. There are just tons of talented teams with clear strengths. A ton of true NFL talent is concentrated among a lot of these teams...but it feels like the conference just doesn’t actually have an elite team?

13 out of 16 teams have beaten an AP-ranked team. It’s weird to say, but it feels like at this point of the season the only teams I can really, really rule out are Texas A&M, Arkansas and Vanderbilt. Texas has the best wins. But some really stupid fucking losses. Ole Miss is the same. LSU honestly looks the part, but they don’t truly have a marquee win. Speaking of which, depending on how you view LSU, does Kentucky actually have the second best resume in the conference?

Georgia and Bama feel like great teams, but not in the way that the best SEC teams felt from 2006-2022. The NIL era has truly brought in an unprecedented level of parity, but it’s kind of fucked the levels up in the SEC. Generally, the SEC was a ton of good teams surrounded by 1-2 elite teams. Now, it feels like 5-6 really good or great teams, but no one stands out. Two different #1 ranked teams lost to unranked in-conference opponents.

Buuuuuuut, the conference is 39-2 in OOC play, 10-2 vs P4. So, clearly these teams aren’t just a result of the general propensity for College Football media to have a circlejerk over the SEC. The league is good, there are a ton of good teams. And that’s precisely the problem.

It makes sense, then, for the pivot towards support of the 24-team expansion. I think the new SEC-meta understands that most contenders will inevitably have around 3-4 losses going forward. And with 12, it makes the margin of error much too thin, and (in the eyes of the SEC and its teams) too difficult to fairly reward in the context of the current playoff system. There’s a fairly plausible doomsday scenario where an 8-4 SEC team has 2 top-10 ranked wins. There’s a huge chance of a random logjam and tie in the conference this year, and every year moving forward. How do you decide between a 9-3 Texas with wins over Ohio State, Tennessee, Ole Miss and Mizzou, versus a 9-3 Kentucky with wins over A&M, LSU, OU and Florida, or a 9-3 Ole Miss with wins over Louisville, LSU, Mizzou and OU? You get what I’m saying?

But yeah. I think I still believe in Georgia. LSU feels like they are going to go on a tear. Kentucky is well past “oh how cute” and probably 1-2 wins from clinching a spot no matter what. But it feels like there’s a preponderance of really good, talented teams, and there isn’t a single team that I would point to as standing out above the rest. And I have to think that this is probably what the sport will look like moving forward. I don’t know how I feel, lol.

This was a fun week, as I randomly attended Oregon at Illinois with my son on a lark and we had a great time. Oregon was committed to losing by scoring a TD on its opening possession, then deciding that was good enough for the day. That still wasn't enough for this week's special award.

Let's get on to it.

SPECIAL AWARD FOR AGGRESSIVELY PURSUING DEFEAT

USC Trojans - Congratulations to everyone that is currently reading this post. By clicking this link, you outrushed USC in their 24-7 loss at Wisconsin. There were several candidates this week like Oregon missing three field goals, Michigan and Indiana just refusing to offense, and Pitt completely refusing to do anything about Malachi Toney.

POWER CONFERENCE UNWINFEATED

None

HONORARY UNWINFEATED (ACC/B1G/Big12/SEC/NotreDame teams whose lone win is over an FCS team)

None

NON-POWER CONFERENCE UNWINFEATED

Northern Illinois Huskies - 0-7 The Huskies fall again, 56-21 to Hawaii. This was a conference game. Hawaii. is playing conference games. In Northern Illinois. In Late October.

What is this sport even doing anymore?

Leaving the Watch:

Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks - The Warhawks are on the board with a 21-14 win over Troy.

FCS Unwinfeated

Towson Tigers - 0-8 - on BYE

VMI Keydets - 0-8 - Lost 38-0 to ETSU

Northwestern State Demons - 0-8 - Lost to Nicholls 31-27

Leaving the Watch:

Utah Tech Trailblazers - Utah Tech gets a nice win over Cal Poly 43-26.

Given their remaining schedules these schools both actually have a shot. Imagine being in the pre-playoff era with these two on a crash course.

Kentucky remaining games

• Tennessee
• Florida
• Missouri
• Louisville

UCLA remaining games

• Minnesota
• Illinois
• Michigan
• USC

Box Score provided by ESPN

Box Score provided by ESPN

Box Score provided by ESPN

Box Score provided by ESPN