{"id":82905,"date":"2025-11-23T10:00:45","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T15:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=82905"},"modified":"2025-11-23T10:00:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T15:00:45","slug":"82905-college-footballs-sunday-summary-looks-at-who-is-in-and-who-is-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2025\/11\/23\/82905-college-footballs-sunday-summary-looks-at-who-is-in-and-who-is-out\/","title":{"rendered":"College Football’s Sunday Summary Looks At Who Is In and Who Is Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we enter the last week of the regular season for college football, we continue to try to see who is in and who is out. There are conference races to be examined and changes in the playoff fortune of some after Saturday\u2019s games. It is a long stretch. We start with the pre-season prognostication magazines like Phil Steele\u2019s in early July, to conference media days spread out over Summer weeks. Then, Fall camp and the excitement of early-season games. Now we sit here at the end of November trying to figure out who is in and who is out. And we try to base it on what we actually see, leaving the nonsense for the clickbait sites.<\/p>\n

College Football’s Sunday Summary Looks At Who Is In and Who Is Out<\/h2>\n

The ACC<\/h3>\n

Everyone is in. And Everyone is out. That is the only way to get through the chaos of the conference, which no one is taking control of. Commissioner Jim Phillips will say it is parity that is great for the sport. Come Tuesday night, playoff committee chair Hunter Yurachek will say it is a bunch of teams that are not good enough for the big stage.<\/p>\n

All Georgia Tech had to do was win at home against Pitt to secure one of the two spots in the conference championship game in two weeks. No go. The Panthers beat the Yellowjackets 42-28. That takes Georgia Tech from the driver\u2019s seat to being shoved in the trunk.<\/p>\n

Virginia, Pitt, and SMU, all given up for dead a few weeks ago, are now in a three-way tie for first place in the conference at 6-1. UVA is 9-2 overall. Pitt and SMU are 9-3. There is no head-to-head record this season among any of the three. So, we will now begin digging through an absurd list of potential tie-breaker scenarios.<\/p>\n

Hey, Virginia and SMU have one thing in common. The one conference loss for each of them came at the hands of the rebuilt Wake Forest program.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re In<\/h3>\n

You can spend every September through November hating Notre Dame all you want. But the Irish will be back in the College Football Playoff. The dismantling of Syracuse on Saturday was one of the more surreal games of the day.<\/p>\n

Notre Dame had a 21-0 first-quarter lead before its offense had ever taken a snap. A pick-six followed by a blocked punt returned for a touchdown, followed by another pick-six six and the game was over early. When Notre Dame\u2019s offense did get some time, it took only two plays before Jeremiyah Love ran 45 yards for another touchdown. At 9-2 with only Stanford left on the horizon, the Irish will be back in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s In<\/h3>\n

If Love is not at or near the top of your Heisman ballot, you are doing it wrong. With more than 1,300 yards rushing and 17 touchdowns through Saturday, he belongs in New York for the ceremony.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s Debatable<\/h3>\n

For the past week, we heard about how GA Tech quarterback Haynes King<\/a> should be in the Heisman conversation.<\/p>\n

In the loss to Pitt on Saturday, King was 27 of 41 passing for 257 yards and two touchdowns. He also ran for another touchdown on 76 rushing yards. But he threw two critical interceptions. Do those interceptions in a loss hurt his Heisman bid?<\/p>\n

He\u2019s In\u2026The Books<\/h3>\n

BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier is carving out his own name, not just in the football family, but Cougars\u2019 lore. He ran for his 11th<\/sup> rushing touchdown in the win over Cincinnati on Saturday. That gives him more single-season rushing touchdowns than the likes of BYU legends like Steve Young, Marc Wilson, Robbie Bosco, and Ty Detmer. And Bachmeier, the Bear version of the Bachmeier clan, is only a freshman.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, he also has BYU right in the heat of the chaotic Big 12 race. The Cougars look to be in when it comes to the conference championship game.<\/p>\n

Looking Stronger<\/h3>\n

Oregon strengthened its playoff position with a convincing win over USC. The Ducks are not likely to be playing for the Big 10 championship, especially with the one loss being to an Indiana team that is ranked ahead of them. But the Ducks will be able to chill while watching an Ohio State versus Indiana conference championship game in two weeks. And they will do so knowing that they knocked USC from any faint playoff hopes in the process.<\/p>\n

Is UCLA Out?<\/h3>\n

We don\u2019t mean out of the playoff picture. They were never in that. We mean out of the Rose Bowl. The stadium, not the game. They haven\u2019t sniffed the game in 25 years. But it is possible that the 48-14 thrashing at the hands of Washington<\/a> Saturday night could be the last game UCLA plays in the stadium they have called home for the last 43 years.<\/p>\n

The Bruins had been secretly negotiating a move to SoFi Stadium starting next year. That would be an apparent breach of their contract with the Rose Bowl, which has them as a lessee through 2044.<\/p>\n

Athletic director Martin Jarmond has visions of increased revenue from luxury suites at SoFi that are of a higher quality than at the Rose Bowl. Attendance at home games has drifted in the 30,000-40,000 range in a stadium that holds more than double the latter number.<\/p>\n

A couple of key elements to keep in mind before declaring UCLA out. The City of Pasadena is filing suit against UCLA to try to enforce the terms of the lease, which has no exit clause.<\/p>\n

And attendance at home games is tied more to the poor product on the field than to the stadium that houses the team. UCLA is 43-49 in the eight years since Jim Mora was fired as head coach. There were plenty of years where the attendance was a regular 70,000+. But the team was worth watching.<\/p>\n

Main Image: MICHAEL CLUBB\/SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we enter the last week of the regular season for college football, we continue to try to see who is in and who is out. There are conference races to be examined and changes in the playoff fortune of some after Saturday\u2019s games. It is a long stretch. We start with the pre-season prognostication […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":82908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,5,35660,35633,35602,35639,35640,35652,35603,35642,35643],"tags":[35785,33968,10492,7993],"class_list":["post-82905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acc","category-big12","category-bigten","category-byu-cougars","category-georgia-tech-yellow-jackets","category-oregon-ducks","category-pitt-panthers","category-smu-mustangs","category-ucla-bruins","category-usc-trojans","category-virginia-cavaliers","category-wake-forest-demon-deacons","tag-bear-bachmeier","tag-hunter-yurachek","tag-jeremiyah-love","tag-jim-phillips"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82905"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82909,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82905\/revisions\/82909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}