It wasn’t always pretty, but Missouri toughed it out against then-No, 24 Boston College Saturday and took another big step toward a very special season.
The Tigers can bask in the national limelight for another week with their No. 7 AP ranking. ÁńÁ«ĘÓƵ will be a hefty favorite against Vanderbilt Saturday.
Life is good for Truman these days.
Elsewhere on the college landscape, there was considerably less joy. Almost all the top teams took care of business during a weekend devoid of massive surprises, but there was some heartache to be found.
Florida State coach Mike Norvell is at wits end. His previous school, Memphis, fed it to the Seminoles. Mine you, FSU was ranked 10th coming into the season. Now it is 0-3.
Georgia barely got past Kentucky in a game that left both sides stinging. The Bulldogs did not look like a national title favorite while the Wildcats just missed scoring an upset that would have make their season.
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Like Kentucky, South Carolina seems doomed to a back-in-the-pack Like the Wildcats, the Gamecocks had a chance to score a huge victory,
But they, too, came up short – due to crazy circumstances that would make even a hardened Mizzou fan flinch.
Arkansas needed a big comeback to get past UAB . . . but come back they did, to coach Sam Pittman’s relief. He lives to fight another day.
Mississippi State got curb-stomped by Toledo at home. â€Nuff said.
Former Missouri coach Barry Odom did his alma mater a solid by leading UNLV to victory over Kansas. Remember when the Jayhawks had College Football Playoff dreams? Losses to Illinois and the Rebels ended all that.
And then there is Florida, which lost ugly fashion. Again. The Gators cleaned up their score somewhat against Texas A&M, but don’t be fooled by that bottom line.
The Aggies dominated the Gators and Florida boosters have seen enough of coach Billy Napier.
Here is what folks were writing about that scenario:
Brandon Marcello, : “Billy Napier's time in Gainesville, Florida, is nearing its end. The story is written, the book is closed. The fans cast their vote at The Swamp late Saturday. They booed Napier in the first half, and then they funneled to the exits in the third quarter, leaving maybe 60% of the stands occupied as the Gators fell behind 33-7 to a team led by a backup quarterback . . . The Gators lost 33-20, but the score was not indicative of how listless they looked most of the day. We've seen this scene before at other SEC stadiums over the years — Auburn and Arkansas come to mind — and it's usually the precursor to the inevitable firing of a coach. Humiliating. Debilitating. The scene in Gainesville was enough to tell the story. Then, with more than five minutes remaining in the game, ABC pulled the plug on the national broadcast to move ahead with coverage of No. 1 Georgia at Kentucky. The Gators have flopped and they're not getting up any time soon. Napier might not get the chance to try as Florida decides whether to pay his $28.3 million buyout.”
Matt Hayes, USA Today: “A group of Florida boosters have pulled together money to cover the expense of firing coach Billy Napier, two people with direct knowledge of the situation told USA TODAY ÁńÁ«ĘÓƵ. The two spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the process, which will begin when interim Florida president Kent Fuchs makes an official decision. The only variable is when. If Florida fires Napier, he will be owed approximately $26 million in buyout money. But that number could be mitigated because Florida is currently being investigated by the NCAA for its recruitment – and Napier’s role in the recruitment –of former high school recruit Jaden Rashada. Fuchs hired Napier in 2022, and was one of Napier’s biggest supporters before retiring in February of 2023. Fuchs returned in an interim role this summer when Ben Sasse resigned as president. Fuchs and the Florida administration desperately want Napier to succeed, and have given him everything he would need – financially, structurally, facilities – to do so. But the product on the field has progressively gotten worse, even after Napier promised this offseason that it would be different.”
Chris Low, : “Napier has worked tirelessly to return Florida to national relevance. He's created a healthy culture within the locker room, treated people the right way and gone about his business in such a way that it's impossible not to like the guy. What he hasn't done is win enough games or show tangible proof that the program is headed in a championship direction, which is the standard at Florida. Napier is now 6-11 against SEC opponents. The Gators have lost seven straight games to Power 4 opponents, with four of those losses coming at home. A losing season would be his third in a row and the program's fourth straight. (Napier's buyout would be roughly $26 million and sources told ESPN that high-ranking boosters have gathered the money to fund it.) The home woes are particularly frustrating for Florida fans, many of whom didn't come back following a 47-minute lightning delay at the end of the first quarter. Texas A&M jumped to a 20-0 lead at the half, and by the start of the fourth quarter, the Swamp was less than half full. Napier has now lost six home games in a little more than two seasons. Steve Spurrier, who coined the 'Swamp' nickname, was 68-5 at home in his career. Urban Meyer was 35-5.”
Stewart Mandel, The Athletic: “A Texas A&M team that hadn’t won a true road game in nearly three years trounced Napier’s Gators 33-20 in the rain. It was 33-7 late in the third quarter, by which point it looked like a spring game in the stands. This, on top of Florida’s season-opening 41-17 loss to Miami in the same stadium, all but assures Napier won’t make it to Year 4. The only question is whether athletic director Scott Stricklin will keep his own job long enough to pull the plug. Florida is a puzzling place. It has reached two extreme highs, under Steve Spurrier in the 1990s and Urban Meyer in the 2000s, and been mediocre in nearly every other era. Whoever replaces Napier will become the Gators’ fifth head coach since Meyer stepped down after the 2010 season. He better be a heck of a recruiter, because that program desperately needs a talent infusion.”
Weep not for Napier. He’s set for life financially. If he wants to coach again, and we assume he will, he can jump back to the Group of 5 level and start anew.
THE GRIDIRON CHRONICLES
Here is what else folks were writing about the rest of college football:
Paul Myerberg, USA Today: “Florida State is already one of the biggest disappointments in recent Bowl Subdivision history. Actually, disappointment is too soft a word. The Seminoles should be considered a flat-out disaster after losing 20-12 at home to No. 25 Memphis, dropping the Seminoles to 0-3 after entering the year No. 10 in the coaches poll. Amid intense expectations on the heels of last year's ACC championship and unbeaten regular season, Florida State is the second team in the past 35 years to open the year in the top 10 during the poll era and lose its first three games, joining 2020 Penn State. The Tigers are the top team in the Group of Five and the choice at this point to land in the 12-team College Football Playoff. The Seminoles could be there, too — they'll just have to buy tickets like the rest of the country.”
Chris Wright, Saturday Down South: “FSU is 0-3 for the 3rd time in program history and 2nd time under Mike Norvell. The Noles were double-digit favorites in all 3 games. True, they have holes everywhere, but they look equal parts helpless, hapless and hopeless at the most important position on the field. You know, just like at the end of last season. The scariest part about the failed DJ Uiagalelei experiment is this: Norvell has continued to stick with it, which can only mean one thing — he doesn’t have any faith in anybody else in the QB room. Number to watch: FSU hasn’t lost more than 7 games since losing 8 in 1975 — the final season before Bobby Bowden arrived.”
Patrick Stevens, Washington Post: “The scoreboard at the end of Saturday’s 3-hour, 59-minute marathon in the Palmetto State revealed LSU was a 36-33 winner over South Carolina after Gamecocks kicker Alex Herrera barely missed a 49-yard field goal as time expired. But this felt like one of those situations that almost demand the possibility of ties being restored for games when it seems like both teams try their darnedest to give away a victory. For South Carolina (2-1, 1-1 SEC), this is a bit more forgivable. Few had the Gamecocks pegged as a playoff contender in the preseason. Their first two games provided mixed results — sluggish in slipping past Old Dominion, smothering against Kentucky — but victories nonetheless. And they played much of the second half without quarterback LaNorris Sellers, who rushed for two touchdowns while helping South Carolina build leads of 17-0 and 24-10. Still, the Gamecocks had three turnovers and had a pair of pick-sixes wiped out by penalty. For its part, LSU (2-1, 1-0) was pretty much equally incoherent. It had a punt blocked early in the second quarter, setting up a Raheim Sanders touchdown run a play later. It botched the placement of an extra point late in the first half, then failed to convert a two-point play to make up for it in the third quarter. It had a turnover on downs on a pass completion on fourth and goal at the Gamecocks 1 to begin the second half. And it was intercepted in the red zone with 5:58 left while trailing 33-29.”
Dan Wolken, USA Today: “When athletics directors feel like their reputation is on the line in a coaching search, they will often default to people they know. But sometimes, comfort and familiarity is actually a bad thing because it obscures the truth. And the truth is that no other college program in the country would have hired Jeff Lebby for a job the magnitude of Mississippi State. Zac Selmon did. And he did it largely because of a preexisting relationship from their overlapping time at Oklahoma when Selmon was the athletic department’s No. 2 and Lebby was offensive coordinator under Brent Venables. But the strange thing is, Lebby wasn’t the most popular guy in town for his two years in Norman. And his track record before that includes stints under Lane Kiffin and his father-in-law Art Briles, which is problematic for entirely different reasons. Point being, Lebby never really established offensive bona fides on his own. Now he's the head coach at Mississippi State who is 1-2 and just lost 41-17 at home to Toledo.”
Nick Bromberg, Yahoo! ÁńÁ«ĘÓƵ: “The Jayhawks lost 23-20 to UNLV on Friday night after losing at Illinois in Week 2. Kansas’ offense looks a lot different with former assistant coach Andy Kotelnicki now calling plays for Penn State. QB Jalon Daniels was the preseason player of the year in the Big 12 in 2023 but has six interceptions through the first three games of 2024 and has completed just 55% of his passes. KU scored 35 points a game last season even though Daniels was out for much of it because of a back injury. The Jayhawks have 37 total points in their two games against FBS opponents this season.”
MEGAPHONE
"I mean, ultimately when you play a certain way in this arena, you're going to be criticized. This is one of those places where there's history and tradition and expectations. There's been a lot of really good football teams that played in that stadium in the past. When you play ugly ball and maybe it doesn't look quite like we all want it to, then, hey, it comes with the territory. So I probably would've done the same thing, truth be known.”
Florida coach Billy Napier, on getting booed in The Swamp.