Saturday Night Five: Oregon tumbles, USC rises, UCLA rolls and the Big Ten goes off the rails
Instant reaction to Week 7 developments …
EUGENE — Indiana flew across the country, endured the din of Autzen Stadium, took Oregon’s best shot and did much more than whack the home team around for 60 minutes.
The Hoosiers’ 30-20 victory on Saturday afternoon added propellant to a remarkable transformation unfolding before our eyes.
The Big Ten is turning into the Big 12.
The makeover isn’t complete. Not yet. The Big Ten still has mighty Ohio State holding down the last remnants of a caste system that has defined the conference for eons.
But below the top-ranked Buckeyes, there is chaos — glorious chaos — and it carries more than a faint resemblance to the new Big 12.
Without Texas and Oklahoma, the Big 12 is devoid of blue bloods. As such, it offers both weekly stunners and an open road to the top of the conference, as we saw with Arizona State last year.
The new Big Ten showed no signs of descending into mayhem early in the season, as the heavyweight programs, Ohio State, Penn State and Oregon rolled through the competition and presumptive bottom-feeders took on loss after loss.
But everything we thought we knew all the way back on Sept. 27, when Oregon outlasted Penn State in overtime, has been turned on its head. The race for a berth in the conference championship is open for all.
Who figured Northwestern would be 2-1 in conference play after the Wildcats opened the season with a 20-point loss at Tulane.
Who expected Penn State to be tied for last place with Rutgers, Purdue and Wisconsin.
And who could have imagined UCLA would win two of its first three Big Ten affairs after losing all three games outside of conference play.
2. Roll call
What should we make of Indiana? The Hoosiers aren’t merely a contender, hoping to sneak onto the top tier. They looked like the team to beat (along with Ohio State) on Saturday. The victory at Autzen was more decisive than the 10-point margin suggests, thanks to dominant performance on the lines of scrimmage.
Yep, the Hoosiers (6-0) were more physical than Oregon, a fairly surprising development for anyone who watched the teams for the prior season-and-a-half. If not for a Pick Six by the Ducks early in the fourth quarter (on an under-thrown pass by Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza), it would have veered toward blowout status.
Penn State? The season is over in State College. Since the pulsating loss to Oregon late last month, the Nittany Lions (3-3) have collapsed with losses to UCLA (road) and Northwestern (home). And they lost quarterback Drew Allar to a season-ending injury.
They are the first team in history to lose back-to-back games when favored by at least 20 points, according to Fox Sports.
Forget the College Football Playoff. Forget the Big Ten race. The preseason No. 2 team is playing for a mid-level bowl game in what increasingly looks like coach James Franklin’s final season.
UCLA? The Bruins (2-4) were the laughingstock of major college football a month ago today after losing at home to New Mexico and dismissing coach DeShaun Foster.
But under interim coach Tim Skipper, with an assist from new playcaller Jerry Neuheisel, the Bruins have beaten Penn State and Michigan State and morphed into a dangerous team performing at a level that equates more closely to their personnel.
Put another way: The Bruins looked like a four- or five-win team before the season, then played far below their talent level under Foster.
The events of the past two weeks have turned UCLA’s date with Indiana on Oct. 25 into a big game.
Who had that on their 2025 Big Ten bingo card?
3. What of the Ducks?
Yes, the win at Penn State has lost its shine.
And the Ducks (5-1) were beaten soundly by Indiana in every respect, particularly at the line of scrimmage.
And yes, their purportedly high-powered offense scored just 17 points in regulation against Penn State and only 13 against the Hoosiers.
But every goal remains within reach.
It’s the middle of October. Teams without flaws at this point are teams peaking at the wrong time.
There is no better point of reference, in fact, than a result produced on the same field exactly one year ago: Oregon’s 32-31 victory over Ohio State.
The Ducks were sensational in every regard — they were too good, you could argue.
That’s not a problem this time around, which means there is plenty of room for growth and enough cushion for comfort. The Ducks will be heavily favored in their next four games (Rutgers, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota) before the fascinating finish against USC and Washington.
They can afford one more loss, but not two.
“They recognize what’s in front of them,” Lanning said after the game. “And it’s about improvement. It’s about going on the attack.”
4. USC pushes back
Another development not on the aforementioned Big Ten bingo card: USC pushed Michigan around.
That’s right. The Trojans (5-1), pillowy soft and forever lacking in resolve, recorded their most impressive Big Ten victory in one-and-a-half seasons as they clobbered the Wolverines 31-13 in the Coliseum.
USC averaged 6.2 yards-per-rush, gobbled up 489 total yards and played stellar third-down defense, handing Michigan its second loss of the season.
It was exactly the performance coach Lincoln Riley needed, both in the manner it unfolded and the timing. The Trojans head to Notre Dame next weekend in what stands as a College Football Playoff elimination game for both teams.
USC has no chance to remain relevant unless it runs the ball consistently and successfully. Against a Michigan defense that was allowing just 77 yards per game on the ground (No. 7 nationally), the Trojans churned for 224.
“A gritty, tough performance,” Riley said.
That wasn’t just coach-speak. The Trojans were the tougher team.
5. One final twist
The following statement of fact will come as a surprise across the Big Ten except, perhaps, in the highest reaches of the footprint’s upper left corner: Oregon and Washington have the same conference record: 2-1.
How long that shared existence holds, we cannot begin to guess — it could be only a few days. The Ducks visit Rutgers next weekend and should win handily while the Huskies (5-1) venture to Michigan for a challenge of the highest order.
But for the moment, they are dead even. And the Hotline can offer some insight after seeing both teams play in person this weekend. (We were in Seattle on Friday night and Eugene on Saturday afternoon).
The disparity in quality is clear but also not nearly as wide as we expected it to be when the season began.
If the old Pac-12 schedule format were in place and the bitter rivals were scheduled to meet in Husky Stadium next weekend, not at the end of the season, we would install Oregon as a 6-point favorite.
Ultimately, the Ducks probably would prove too much at the line of scrimmage. We suspect they would disrupt UW quarterback Demond Williams Jr. more frequently and significantly than UW would disrupt Oregon’s Dante Moore. But it would be a highly competitive and entertaining game into the fourth quarter.
Put another way: the Huskies are a tad better than we envisioned and the Ducks are not quite as good as we expected.
Between today and their Nov. 29 showdown, that dynamic could shift three times over.
This is, after all, the wild and wacky Big Ten.
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