Opinion: College Football's Week Ten Heroes

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

Mississippi State: It wasn’t pretty, but the Bulldogs survived a plucky Arkansas team with a last-gasp end zone interception to struggle to a 17-10 victory over the Razorbacks. This is a squad, you remember, that hasn’t won an SEC game since 2012. The question now is whether this win is enough for the Playoff Committee to keep the Bulldogs as the top-ranked team in the second round of standings that’ll be released on Wednesday morning.

Florida State: Like the only team above them in the inaugural College Football Playoff rankings, the Seminoles escaped more than dominated in Week Ten. They were down 21-0 to a keyed-up Louisville team but managed to come back and steal a 42-31 victory, despite QB Jameis Winston throwing the first three-interception game of his Seminole career.

It’s incredible to see the sort of adversity hurdles that the reigning National Champions are overcoming – not to mention Winston himself, on and off the field – to win games this year, but as long as they keep putting ticks in the ‘W’ column, you know they’re going to be at or near the top of the national rankings. To me, the scariest thing is that we haven’t seen the Seminoles play to their absolute best this year. You assume they’re going to get healthy and click sooner rather than later, so watch out.

Oregon: The 45-16 victory over Stanford is more than another impressive win for the Ducks, it’s something of an exorcizing of some pretty stubborn demons who’ve hung like a suffocating blanket over the program in Eugene for years. There will be a collective sigh of relief around Autzen Stadium tonight.

For the last two years, we’ve watched Stanford win at home and on the road against a more-fancied Ducks team. In both of the last two meetings, it hasn’t just been about the final score line, but the way in which Stanford has won. They won with suffocating defense, grinding offense and, seemingly, a stronger will to win the game. Not so this year. Led by QB Marcus Mariota (356 total yards and four touchdowns), Oregon were the more determined team.  A huge win for the program.

Florida: The Gators shocked everyone – including, I’m sure, themselves – in Jacksonville, taking Georgia out to the woodshed for a 38-20 victory that’ll relieve a little of the pressure that’s been on head coach Will Muschamp for all of this season and much of 2013, too. It was a shockingly good performance from a Florida outfit who’ve been shockingly bad for most of the season.

The change from ineffective QB Jeff Driskell to former backup Treon Harris wasn’t the spark Florida needed (Harris completed 3 of 6 passes for a paltry 27 yards), but the running game came alive like we haven’t seen this year, gashing Georgia for a whopping 418 yards on the ground. Kelvin Taylor carried for 197 yards and two touchdowns, Matt Jones for 192 yards and two scores and Harris ran it six times from the quarterback position for 37 yards.

It was a comprehensive win against a defense that had no answers for the ground onslaught, and made bigger because of the persistently swirling rumours that, if the Gators had lost, Muschamp would be fired immediately after the game. The big test for this inconsistent squad is next week. The Gators and their coach aren’t out of the woods just yet.

Texas Christian: Down nine points on the road against a good West Virginia team in the fourth quarter and it looked bad for the Horned Frogs. They went from putting 82 points on Texas Tech last week to their worst offensive performance of the season – 30 points and 389 total yards of offense – but, like Mississippi State and Florida State, they managed to win, thanks to a 37-yard field goal from Jaden Oberkrom as time expired in Morgantown. 

By no means a pretty win, but an important one from the Horned Frogs, who forced 5 Mountaineer turnovers. Good teams find a way to come back from the brink of defeat to snatch a victory even when things haven’t gone their way.  They led for only 2:36, in the third quarter, and then again as time expired. Sure, it was an escape-type win, but one that came through perseverance and making big plays when it mattered most.

Duke: The Blue Devils are 7-1 in an ugly ACC Coastal Division. They’ve won 15 of their last 16 regular season games over the last two seasons, and face a relatively easy stretch run to a likely berth in the ACC Championship Game against Florida State: Syracuse, Virginia Tech, North Carolina and Wake Forest. None of those teams have winning records, so you’d favour Duke, but in the ACC, you never know.

Auburn: Ole Miss thought they had it. Thought that receiver Laquon Treadwell had gotten across the goal line for the winning touchdown with 90 seconds to play. Turns out , he fumbled as he was dragged down and broke his leg – the footage is horrible – in the process.

The ball was recovered in the end zone by an Auburn defender. So close yet so far for the Rebels, but Auburn find another ridiculous, impossible and outrageous way to win a football game. Gus Malzahn’s team has a knack for winning football games in the most improbable fashion. If they happen to win the National Championship, the fumble might yet go down as one of the greatest moments in the history of Auburn football.