College football Week 11 takeaways: Michigan should embrace dark side with Jim Harbaugh’s replacement

College football Week 11 takeaways, including15 postponements/cancelations and Michigan hitting rock bottom with Jim Harbaugh and who should be the next coach of the Wolverines.

Notre Dame isn’t gonna pull a Notre Dame

We’ve seen Notre Dame football have great regular seasons under Brian Kelly only to see them wet the bed against legitimately great opponents. They looked like a bad JV team in the BCS National Championship Game loss to Alabama when that defense squeezed the life out of them like a boa constrictor to a gazelle. They looked just as feeble against Clemson in the playoff two seasons ago, losing 28-3.

This is a different team though and won’t go down easy if they make the playoff. Quarterback Ian Book is playing at the highest level of his career and seemingly getting better each week. He’s been using his legs to manipulate the pocket and pass off that. He’s shown great composure and leadership, and it helps to have arguably the best offensive line in the nation protecting him.

The defense, led by All-American candidate Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah is a difference-maker who can take over on any given play. The defensive front has been stout at the point of attack, shutting down Clemson’s Travis Etienne in their upset win last weekend. I’m not saying Notre Dame is going to win the national title this year, but this is the best Notre Dame football team we’ve seen since they did win it all in 1988.

Michigan hits rock bottom under Jim Harbaugh

Wisconsin hadn’t played since beating Illinois on Oct. 23 but went into the Big House and made Michigan look like a local high school team that won a content to play in a Big Ten stadium. Michigan didn’t belong on the same field as the Badgers and that’s the biggest indictment on Jim Harbaugh’s team this year.

The Wolverines have quit on their head coach and he looks like he may have quit on them too.

What made Harbaugh so effective as a coach was his enthusiasm unknown to mankind. He had an infectious competitive spirit that helped him win at San Diego, Stanford and with the San Francisco 49ers. It helped early in his Michigan tenure, but the toll of the losses has seen that enthusiasm wane.

It’s one thing to lose competitively as Harbaugh has done. It’s another to get blown out and not look competitive, despite good preparation, which he’s also done. It’s the worst possible outcome to look non-competitive and apathetic to the outcome on your home turf. The end is nigh for Harbaugh who will orchestrate his exit at season’s end and likely find a good spot in the NFL to resurrect his coaching career, but this was an absolutely pathetic showing by one of college football’s blue bloods in primetime.

Urban Meyer can make USC football great again

I tried to speak it into existence last year by linking Urban Meyer with USC all season with the expectation Trojans head coach Clay Helton would be fired. Of course, he wasn’t, which is still dumbfounding, but USC has settled for mediocrity and then wonders why they’re mediocre. If not for the heroics of Kedon Slovis on game-winning drives in the final minutes vs. Arizona State and Arizona, respectively, they’d be 0-2 instead of 2-0.

Helton has a robust buyout and the economy as a result of the pandemic isn’t going to leave the USC board flush with cash, but can we please give Meyer a blank check and let him do his thing to make USC football great again?

You know his FOX colleagues Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush would endorse Meyer and give him glowing remarks on his resume. Not that his three national titles during his time at Florida and Ohio State aren’t good enough, but considering what he’s also done at Utah and Bowling Green to build those programs, he’d be the perfect hire for the Trojans to recapture that Hollywood magic and stop the Pac-12 from being an afterthought in major college football.

Meyer is clearly enjoying his retirement and collecting checks from FOX, Big Ten Network and Ohio State but give him $10 million to coach USC and he’d have the Trojans in the playoff within two years. Heck, maybe USC and Michigan can engage in a bidding war for his services. Could you imagine? If the money is right, I sure can.

Be horrible for Howell

Could we go from Tank for Trevor to Be Horrible for Howell?

Trevor Lawrence will likely be the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft with the New York Jets and Jacksonville Jaguars best in position to draft the Clemson signal-caller. For teams who don’t get Lawrence or any of the other talented quarterbacks (Justin Fields, Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Kyle Trask, Mac Jones) in this class, they can position themselves for North Carolina’s Sam Howell.

After breaking Lawrence’s freshman record with 38 touchdowns last year, Howell has had an up-and-down sophomore season, but he was as high (legally-speaking) as he’s ever been on Saturday after throwing for 550 yards and six passing touchdowns (seven total) in the win vs. Wake Forest. He’ll be the first pick in the 2022 NFL Draft. In fact, he joined last year’s No. 1 pick Joe Burrow and Lawrence, the presumptive No. 1 pick this spring, with his 13th game with three or more touchdown passes since last season, the most in college football. He hopes to join them as top picks in April of 2022.

The week college football got knocked down but bounced back up

Not gonna lie, this week was a terrible one for college football. 15 out of 59 scheduled games were either postponed or canceled, including the No. 1, No. 3 and No. 5 teams getting the weekend off. In total six ranked teams had games called off but it was the SEC that was hit especially hard with four games called off, including Alabama vs. LSU.

In any other year would have carried with it significant College Football Playoff implications. With LSU riding shotgun in the struggle bus this year, it won’t come back to haunt Alabama for not playing the game if it’s not able to be rescheduled in December, but it was another reminder that we have to take this season day-by-day and not even week-by-week. The coronavirus isn’t going away no matter how hard we think positively.

Before you interject and accuse me of rooting for the season to fail, put a mask on and stop yourself. I want nothing more than for every single college football game to get played and for players, coaches, support staff and students to be safe and healthy. But after Halloween parties on campus and a nationwide spike in cases that are setting record-highs seemingly every day that 200,000 is within our reach, it’s frightening that we’ve come this far.

Will we be able to even finish the season? It’s a legitimate question that’s on the minds of college football fans and casual observers. Thanksgiving is effectively canceled in our country but we’ve still got a few more weeks of the regular season to go to see who will be picked to play in the playoff, who will win the Heisman and who wins their conferences.

As much as I’d love to put blinders on and not think about that stuff, it’s creeping more and more to the forefront of my mind. It feels like we’re building a house on quicksand.

Heisman watch

I have a new leader atop my Heisman ballot. It’s Florida quarterback Kyle Trask who is in line to join Steve Spurrier, Danny Wuerffel and Tim Tebow as Gators Heisman winners.

1. Kyle Trask, Florida, QB
2. Justin Fields, Ohio State, QB
3. Mac Jones, Alabama, QB
4. Trevor Lawrence, Clemson, QB
T5. Zach Wilson, BYU, QB
T5. Ian Book, Notre Dame, QB

College Football Playoff picture

Barring a total wiping out of schedules in the coming weeks, it doesn’t look like the playoff committee will push the start of the playoff back at all. As of now, the four teams will be picked on Sunday, Dec. 20 and the first rankings will be revealed on Tuesday, Nov. 24. With most of the top teams of this week, there’s no change in my top four, but for fun, let’s see how an eight-team playoff format would look like. Since the NFL is expanding their postseason and MLB did the same, and college is likely to in the future, why not see what it would look like in a year where two outsiders could crash the party.

1. Notre Dame vs. 8. BYU

4. Clemson vs. 5. Florida

2. Alabama vs. 7.  Texas A&M

3. Ohio State vs. 6. Cincinnati 

Even in an eight-team format, the Pac-12 and Big 12 can’t find a pathway to get in. But we do get BYU and Cincinnati in by virtue of their undefeated records. A rematch between Alabama and Texas A&M is the least appealing of the games while Clemson vs. Florida would be the most appealing. However, the Battle of Ohio between Ohio State and Cincinnati led by former Buckeyes, head coach Luke Fickell and defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman is a sneaky-good matchup.

With this grouping, I’d pick Notre Dame, Clemson, Alabama and Ohio State, so we’d still arrive at my four-team field. From there, I’d pick Clemson over Notre Dame and Ohio State over Alabama to set up a rematch of last year’s Fiesta Bowl between the Tigers and Buckeyes.

Fields and Lawrence have been linked since their high school days in Georgia and will be forever linked in the NFL so it only makes sense their final college games are against each other in what should be an instant classic of a game. I just don’t know who I’d pick in that one right now without knowing how Lawrence responds to his return from the coronavirus.

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