College football winners and losers from Week 11: Oklahoma blows their shot, Texas hits rock bottom
College football winners and losers from a wild Week 11 as Oklahoma and Texas made the SEC question future plans while Michigan kept hopes high.
Just another ho-hum day in college football in Week 11, right? Oh, you mean an FCS team put a 50 burger on Florida? Two future SEC teams in pretty crucial spots for their programs absolutely crapped the bed in those spots? New Mexico State was up 3-0 on Alabama and then the Crimson Tide still covered a 52-point spread?
Suffice it to say that the second weekend in November saw things get pretty damn nuts throughout the college football landscape. And as always, the best way to try and recap some of the biggest stories throughout the country — and have some fun with it — is to hand out some winners and losers.
There’s no other place to start except for Austin. Rock Chalk.
College Football Week 11 Loser: Texas ever being back
The season was already all but lost for the Texas Longhorns in the first year under Steve Sarkisian. With multiple second-half leads squandered already and coming into Saturday on a four-game skid, things weren’t great.
Yet, somehow, they managed to make it monumentally worse with a legitimately unprecedented loss to Kansas in Austin. (Seriously, the Jayhawks had literally never won in Austin previously.)
Now, Texas has lost five consecutive games for the first time in 65 years and there is no sign of relief. Sark might already be on the hot seat and his first season isn’t even over yet. On a day where there was plenty of embarrassment to go around in college football, the Longhorns somehow managed to set the bar at a new low. Being back has never felt so far away.
College Football Week 11 Loser: Oklahoma’s CFP chances
Even with the egregious poo-pooing of Oklahoma in the first two CFP rankings of the year with the Sooners coming in at No. 8, it was pretty much unanimously agreed upon that Lincoln Riley’s team had a simple task in front of them. If they could pull themselves together over the final three weeks against Baylor, Iowa State, and Oklahoma State, then a playoff spot was all but theirs, assuming they won the Big 12 Championship Game.
Good thing the Sooners saved arguably their worst performance of the season for Step 1 of that plan.
In a game in which Caleb Williams got benched after multiple turnovers and a horrible performance, Oklahoma laid an egg when they absolutely could not afford to. It might not be as bad as losing to Kansas, which they should thank their biggest rivals for in terms of taking heat off of them in the Big 12/future SEC, but it was still an abysmal effort that all but takes the playoff out of their reach.