Opinion: College Football's Week Nine Heroes

Another weekend of college football is in the books, so let’s go through who was great on the gridiron with my Week Nine Heroes:

Boise State: scored 55 points to put the cleaners through Brigham Young University on Friday night in Boise, and the Broncos look to be the best team in the Mountain West Conference at the moment. One thing is for certain: QB Grant Hedrick had his best game as a Bronco, throwing for 410 yards and four touchdowns. About the only blemish all night was Hedrick’s pick-6. Other than that, everything he touched turned to gold.

Lane Kiffin: the always-controversial Alabama offensive coordinator returned to the scene of his infamous one-year run as Tennessee head coach (before taking the USC job) and had the last laugh, masterminding an offensive that rolled up 469 yards against a hapless Volunteer defense. More about the Tide’s impressive offensive performance below.

Texas Christian University: Well, the Horned Frogs sent a message – and what a message, absolutely throttling Texas Tech 82-27 behind a school-record seven touchdown passes from QB Trevone Boykin. On a good day for records, TCU scored the most points in program history – and announced themselves as the best team in the Big XII conference – as Boykin connected on big play after big play against a Horned Frogs defense that had no answers for what they were seeing, including a 92-yard touchdown strike to Deante’ Gray. An ominous performance.

Connor Halliday: No running game up at Washington State, so the Cougar quarterback is routinely asked to throw the ball more times per game than some quarterbacks throw it in three games. He had 79 passing attempts on Saturday and completed 56 of them for 489 yards and four scores. Of course, without some semblance of ground offense, it’s hard to win football games, and the Cougars fell to Arizona. Halliday’s numbers have been immense all season, though.

Louisiana State: The Tigers, with a ferocious home environment to lean on, pulled out a surprise 10-7 victory over Ole Miss on Saturday night and undoubtedly played for their coach, Les Miles, whose mother died less than twenty-four hours earlier. The Tigers rolled up 264 rushing yards (including 113 to star back Leonard Fournette) against an Ole Miss defense giving up, on average, just 97.1 per game. Big win for LSU after a few weeks in the national wilderness.

Ameer Abdullah: the Nebraska running back seems to get better as the season gets older and during Saturday’s 42-24 victory over Rutgers in Lincoln, accounted for a school-record 341 all-purpose yards, including 225 yards and three touchdowns(of 53, 48 and 23 yards respectively) on the ground. The performance has pushed Abdullah back into the frame as far as Heisman Trophy candidates go.

Elijah McGuire: Probably the best performance of the day that no one noticed on a national level. Nor did I, until a friend in Louisiana pointed it out, and it deserves highlighting: McGuire, the Louisiana-Lafayette running back did his best imitation of Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon, carrying the ball just nineteen times for a whopping 265 yards and five touchdowns in a 55-40 win over Arkansas State. That’s 19.3 yards per carry, and it sounds like the Ragin’ Cajuns needed every single yard they got from their workhorse.

J.T. Barrett: the Ohio State quarterback was thrust into the starting spot when Braxton Miller went down with a year-long injury before the season began, and after a slow start to his career in Columbus, Barrett is ensuring that the Buckeyes offense isn’t missing a beat these days. They’re back in the AP National Top 25 rankings and will remain there this weekend after a double-overtime victory against Penn State, one that included two Miller touchdown runs. Impressively, he did it whilst hobbled by a knee injury. That takes a fair amount of guts. The Buckeyes eventually prevailed 31-24.

Amari Cooper: the Alabama wide receiver broke a school record on Saturday night hauling in nine passes for two touchdowns and 224 yards as the Crimson Tide flexed their offensive muscle for the second week in a row, rolling through, across and around Tennessee for a 34-20 win in Neyland Stadium.

Michigan State: Remember when the Spartans were the so-called ‘little brother’ in their rivalry with the University of Michigan? Well, not anymore. Sparty pulled away late to record a 35-11 win over the flailing Wolverines, for their sixth victory in the last seven games against Big Blue.

Impressively, the Spartan defense held the offensively anaemic Wolverines to just 186 yards of total offense. No, you didn’t read that wrongly. Yes, the balance of football power in Michigan has definitely shifted from Ann Arbor to East Lansing.