The list of sports that lend themselves better to predictive thinking than college football is short. Tennis fans start gaming out scenarios right after major draws drop, but there are dozens of high-level ATP and WTA tournaments a year. Horse racing fans start thinking Triple Crown right after the Kentucky Derby, but there are plenty of opportunities for horses to lose outside those races.
In college football, there are 12 regular-season games, some conference championships, bowl games, and a playoff system. That is it—blink and it's done relative to other college sports and even the NFL. You only have one chance to make a first impression, and no medicine tastes more bitter than your first loss of the season.
That fate befell five teams Saturday, none of which was firmly eliminated from the College Football Playoff race but all of which suffered significant ego blows. Here's hoping your team has a zero—or at least a small or medium number—in the loss column as Halloween creeps closer. Welcome to Week 8's winners and losers.
Winner: Diego Pavia's Heisman campaign
Off the mat jumped the 24-year-old Vanderbilt quarterback two weeks after a humbling 30–14 loss to a motivated Alabama team. Picking apart a ballyhooed LSU defense, Diego Pavia completed 14 of 22 passes for 160 yards and a score while scampering 17 times for 86 yards and two touchdowns. That included a truly bonkers fourth-down conversion that will be in heavy rotation should Pavia become the Commodores' first-ever top-10 Heisman finisher. The vibrant, only-in-college-football personality completed his big day by mingling with 170—170!—admirers from his native New Mexico.
Losers: Miami, Texas Tech and their respective conferences
While you were partying and watching Dodgers designated hitter and pitcher Shohei Ohtani post one of sports' greatest individual performances, Louisville studied the blade. Picking off an uncharacteristically rattled Carson Beck four times, the Cardinals shrunk No. 2 Miami's CFP margin of error to zero with a 24–21 win. On Saturday, No. 7 Texas Tech erased a 12-point fourth-quarter deficit against Arizona State—only to lose 26–22 in the final minute. There's a lot of football left to play, but an awkward 12-team playoff for the sport's national vitality—i.e., a CFP field with nine Big Ten and SEC teams, an ACC team, a Big 12 team and a Group of Five team—does not seem impossible.
Winner: Georgia, master of clutch
There was a time when Georgia coach Kirby Smart's teams were world-beaters—think of his rarely-threatened 2022 squad, 65–7 victors over TCU in the national championship. In the last two years, the Bulldogs have adapted ably to a higher-parity era by learning to win in a new way. Georgia trailed Ole Miss for huge stretches Saturday and seemed to shrug, outscoring the Rebels 17–0 in the fourth quarter to win 43–35 and echoing recent comebacks against Georgia Tech (in Nov. 2024) and Tennessee (on Sept. 13). Such was the excitement of the Bulldogs' win that quarterback Gunner Stockton's hyper-efficient day—26-for-31 for 289 yards and four touchdowns—flew under the radar a bit.
Losers: Memphis and UNLV
Entering Saturday, three Group of Five squads maintained unbeaten records. UNLV and coach Dan Mullen fell first, blown out 56–31 by Boise State—not a huge surprise considering the Rebels' past close calls against Idaho State, Miami-Ohio and Air Force. Much more shocking was Memphis's 31–24 loss to old Conference USA rival UAB, coached by interim boss Alex Mortensen; the win was graciously covered by his late father Chris's ESPN colleagues. The last remaining Group of Five unbeaten: Navy, which faces an unenviable November slate of North Texas, Notre Dame, South Florida and Memphis.
Winner: Brent Key and Georgia Tech
How about an atypical unbeaten that actually did its job Saturday? No. 12 Georgia Tech landed in the Research Triangle a slight underdog to Duke, and left it a 27–18 winner behind quarterback Haynes King's arm (14-for-21 for 205 yards) and feet (14 carries for 120 yards and a touchdown). The Yellow Jackets are (semi-surprisingly) 6-0 for the first time since 1966, a testament to coach Brent Key's complete four-year image makeover. Georgia Tech lacks both a signature win and an opportunity to get one in the immediate future, but it's the ACC favorite and has a war coming up against the Bulldogs on Black Friday.
Loser: Matt Rhule
If Key was the big winner among coaches being bandied about for bigger jobs this week, no potential riser saw his stock crater like Nebraska coach Matt Rhule. In the wake of Penn State sacking coach James Franklin on Sunday, Rhule spent the entire week fending off attempts to connect him with his old team's top job. The Cornhuskers played Friday like that had been their staff's main priority, letting Minnesota outrush them 186–36 in a blowout 24–6 win for the Gophers. Salvage therapy for this Nebraska season begins next Saturday, when the soon-to-be-unranked Cornhuskers host a Northwestern team riding a four-game winning streak.
Winner: Willie Fritz
With the caveat that its schedule to date has been fairly light—Houston played Stephen F. Austin, Rice and Oregon State out of conference—the Cougars appear on their way to a 180-degree pivot under second-year coach Willie Fritz. At 65, Fritz deserves Rhule-like recognition as a turnaround artist—teams he has taken from sub-.500 to 10 wins include Central Missouri, Sam Houston, Tulane and possibly Houston (which doesn't play another ranked team in 2025). The Cougars topped Arizona 31–28 Saturday and host the Sun Devils next Saturday in an intriguing contest. For once, men's basketball can wait in the Space City.
Loser: Washington
Opportunity knocked for coach Jedd Fisch and company this week: a high-profile trip to a Michigan team overmatched by USC a week ago, which could serve as a lead-in to a late-season surge against a relatively light schedule. Instead, Fisch did his employer from 2015 to '16 an inadvertent solid as the Wolverines rolled to a 24–7 victory. Everything that could go wrong for Washington did go wrong: quarterback Demond Williams Jr. threw three interceptions, Michigan outrushed the Huskies 187–40, and Wolverines quarterback Bryce Underwood previewed his 2026 or 2027 Heisman Trophy run with a 21-for-27 outing. A juicy Wisconsin-Purdue-UCLA stretch is there for the taking in November if Washington wants to build confidence before hosting Oregon.
Winner: The sports desk
It was a very newsy week around Indiana football, and readers of the university's student newspaper—the —could have enjoyed stories by Dalton James on coach Curt Cignetti's extension or Conor Banks on the Hoosiers' defensive line. However, due to one of the most revered journalism schools in the world's sudden allergy to news, Bloomington residents were left to grovel for these stories online rather than in print as hard evidence of Indiana's historic season. The poise of the sports desk amid these circumstances is admirable, and if the college football gods are just, media school dean David Tolchinsky will be reluctantly reading print tales of Cignetti's wins, losses and draws for years to come.
Loser: South Carolina
If any team cried out for a breakthrough entering '25, it was South Carolina on the heels of a 9-4 campaign in 2024 that saw the Gamecocks build a fringe CFP case. This year, South Carolina seems intent on building a fringe Birmingham Bowl case. The Gamecocks have played a tough schedule and had early momentum thrown off by quarterback LaNorris Sellers's injury, but a team with a possible first-round pick at quarterback shouldn't be this lifeless offensively. South Carolina could use the Huskies' aforementioned stretch of downtime; instead the Gamecocks get (take a deep breath) Alabama, Ole Miss and Texas A&M in succession.
