College football winners and losers Week 9: Georgia domination tour rides on, Michigan chokes

Breaking down the college football winners and from Week 9, headlined by Georgia continuing to dominate everyone and a huge Michigan loss to Michigan State.

Nine weeks are down in the 2021 college football season, meaning we have just one month remaining in the year. Time has flown, the College Football Playoff rankings are finally about to drop on Tuesday and the contenders are truly starting to separate themselves.

Week 9 was a huge week for the sport with the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, the battle for the Paul Bunyan Trophy, Ole Miss-Auburn, Penn State-Ohio State, and a host of crucial conference matchups that had major postseason implications.

But now that the dust has settled, we’re highlighting some of the biggest winners and losers — and not just in terms of results — from the Week 9 action around college football.

College football Week 9 Winner: Georgia Bulldogs Domination, 2021 World Tour

It’s absolutely wild that we keep going through this song and dance with Georgia — the No. 1-ranked team in the country — time and again. Somehow, people forget on a seemingly weekly basis that this defense is a nightmare to face while the offense does its job and that’s enough to win every single game convincingly.

There were those talking about Florida and Dan Mullen keeping the Cocktail Party close and they weren’t even in that vicinity. Georgia crushed the life out of the Gators until they reached their breaking point, which turned out to be the end of the first half when the Dawgs came up with three touchdowns in two minutes, punctuated by a pick-six.

Alabama included, no team in college football is stopping the Georgia Domination World Tour.

College football Week 9 Loser: Cincinnati Bearcats

With ranked teams falling every week, the door is wide open ready for Luke Fickell and the Cincinnati Bearcats to run through it. All they would have to do would be perform the way they did prior to beating Notre Dame and, truth be told, even as they did in that game. Instead, they are missing their opportunity.

Yes, the Bearcats remain undefeated, but how impressed are we with a 19-point win over Tulane after a seven-point win over Navy? With the College Football Playoff rankings getting introduced on Tuesday, Cincinnati is giving the committee all the ammo they could want to leave the Group of 5 stud out of the top four.

College football Week 9 Winner: The Kenneth Walker III Heisman candidacy

Say what you will about Bryce Young or Matt Corral or even TreVeyon Henderson — if the Heisman Trophy voting were today (and I had a vote), mine would be going to Kenneth Walker III.

Part of that is probably recency bias as the Michigan State running back was instrumental in the come-from-behind win over Michigan with a monster 23-carry, 197-yard, five-touchdown performance in the win. But that could go down as his Heisman moment in a season in which he’s been dominating all year long.

This year’s Heisman race is as muddied as any in recent memory. And Walker is making the strong case that, in the leading role for the cinderella of the 2021 college football season, he’s as deserving as anyone of the honor.