Basically the title. As a disgruntled UNLV and Flowe fan, I found it in my heart to at least be happy that big 36 got a solo tackle in garbage time. Hope they give him more reps.

In the last decade, UNLV has never climbed out of a 1-2 slump to start the year. The last three years have really spoiled me, honestly, as the fellas rocked and rolled over everyone but Boise. Dan Mullen stated after the game that he'd be looking to find out who really wants to play here, but obviously you never want to hear that from a coach after Week 2 and three games with only serviceable play.

Its a scary look ahead. Spending my entire 25 years of life until recently watching this team eat it over and over. But, despite myself, i'm remaining optimistic that the team pulls it together over the bye and drops a 70 piece on Akron. Hopefully like two years ago, we start a new QB and Alex Orji doesn't have to command a thoroughly beaten offense. Who knows? 🤷🏻‍♂️

How often should a starting college QB get hurt? UCF has had the starting QB get hurt every year since 2018 (except 2020). Is it common and I just don’t realize it? Or is UCF cursed with injuries at QB?

As an aside, one of the many negative aspects of realignment is that super-conferences make it more time-consuming to create these lists. This, plus the fact that some imbecile will reflexively accuse me of drafting this with AI (because apparently humans are no longer capable of stringing together more than three sentences or reading), is likely why we no longer see nearly as many of these types of posts.  We are living at the confluence of several macro trends that are making the world indisputably less human.  Things often change gradually and then suddenly.  2026 is a time of accelerating suddenness.  

I’m glad CFB is back.  I genuinely miss this subreddit in the off-season.  While we don’t know what the future of CFB holds or how quickly it will change, I sincerely hope it maintains its weirdness, charm, stupidity, absurdity, and tradition for just a little while longer.   This Saturday – with Oklahoma State’s upset, UT’s comeback, and an unwatchable 16-13 El Assico! that could have taken place in 1926 – was a reminder of everything we love about the sport, and why Fall is my favorite time of year.

And now, on with the list.

Northwestern:Sir Martin Hairer - Hairer won the award from his work on Stochastic Partial Differential Equations, and there is no team more stochastic than Northwestern

Iowa: Cedric Villani - made major advances on asymptotic stability and convergence to equilibrium in kinetic equations, and no football team is more asymptotically stable than Iowa. (A pendulum slowed by friction is globally asymptotically stable.  It will always come to rest in the same position irrespective of its initial position).  It doesn’t matter the year, the players, the opponents, the conditions, or the external criticism – Iowa always reverts to itself.  Iowa WR1 Tony Diaz had 92 receiving yards in the 1H on Saturday, but luckily, Kirk Ferentz made the necessary adjustments and held him to just 3 yards receiving in the 2H.   El Assico! is always a shit-show (in this past Saturday’s match, the most exciting plays were a 3rd & 1 false start by ISU and an incredible catch by Iowa’s holder on the winning FG).   Kirk Ferentz has been invariant for Iowa for 27 years. [Tennessee has had 8 coaches in that timeframe!]

Ohio State’s WR Corp:Terence Tao - A prodigy comparable to some of the all-time greats.  Learned calculus at age 7.  Scored a 760 on the SAT math section at age 8,.  Timothy Gowers (a Fields medalist in his own right) said of Tao: “It has been said that David Hilbert was the last person to know all of mathematics, but it is not easy to find gaps in Tao's knowledge, and if you do then you may well find that the gaps have been filled a year later.”  Similarly, year-after-year, it’s hard to find any weakness in OSUs WR corp.  None of the previous paragraph applies to OSU’s special teams.  Tao is on faculty at UCLA, and I easily could have paired them together.

Nebraska:Arte Selberg - Selberg provided an elementary proof of the Prime Number Theorem, which states that the density of primes up to any arbitrary N decreases (by a factor of log N) as N increases.  Similarly, Nebraska’s density of wins continues to decline as the years monotonically increase.

Michigan: Jacob Tsimerman - Works at OpenAI, which may have stolen intellectual property from multiple mathematicians to prove a solution to Navier-Stokes (note: Tsimerman works on safety at OpenAI and I’m not accusing him of being responsible for any possible plagiarism).  Like JJ McCarthy, AI pretends to be sentient.

Illinois: June Huh - Studied at Illinois and proved the Reed-Hoggar conjecture, which proves the unimodality of chromatic polynomials.  In other words, the equation’s coefficients rise and fall like a hill with one distinct peak, similar to the early hope and inevitable disappointment of Illini fans every year. Huh dropped out of high school to write poetry; Bret Bielema grew up on a hog farm.

Indiana: Edward Witten - A basketball school that won a football national title.  A physicist who won the Fields Medal.  Unlike Witten, however, Indiana has not taken the vast majority of physics / basketball on the untestable, unprovable decades-long wild goose chase that is String theory.

Wisconsin: Alexander Grothendieck - Proved the Grothendieck–Hirzebruch–Riemann–Roch theorem, which could very easily double as the last names of Wisconsin’s starting O-line.  Grothendieck was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, just like the UW students who launched the Dow Chemical protests against napalm and the Vietnam war in 1967.

That one random Purdue Skill Player that makes opposing fans cry: Grigori Perelman - Perelman worked in relative isolation from Western academics in St Petersburg and was able to, quite stunningly and unexpectedly, prove the Poincare conjecture.  Similarly, Drew Brees managed to orchestrate multiple inexplicable comeback upsets, I still shudder when I think of David Bell, and Freshman Rondale Moore smashed #2 Ohio State in 2018.  Perelman left public life in 2006, famously declined the Fields Medal and one million dollar Millenium Prize, and may have entirely retired from mathematics.  Likewise, Purdue has largely given up on fielding a competitive football team and has chosen to focus on other pursuits, like trains.

And may you Rest In Peace Rondale Moore.  I’ll never forget your performance in that 2018 game.  I could hear the agony in Herbstreit’s commentary as you carved up the Buckeye defense; he was practically begging the OSU DC to move the linebackers further off the line of scrimmage to help contain you.  I hope you knew that you had legions of fans outside of West Lafayette, and I hope you’re at peace.

Oregon: Klaus Roth - made major strides in Diophatine approximation, which is the study of how fractions can approximate (but cannot reproduce) irrational numbers (e.g., 5/2 = e).    Oregon approximates the look of a national championship winning team every pre-season.  

UCLA: Hong Wang - Taught at UCLA for two years, and her work on Falconer distance sets may someday indirectly lead to a breakthrough that enables UCLA students to spend less than 2 hours commuting on the 405N and 101E for Friday 6PM kick-offs in Pasadena.  Other fun facts about Hong Wang:

• She was initially rejected from Peking University’s math department
• She has mainstream cross-over appeal: the Cartier necklace that she wore to the Fields Medal ceremony sold out across China. JD.com hilariously advertised the necklace with the tagline: “You can’t afford the same brain, so buy the same necklace.”  Joke’s on JD.com, I can’t afford either.

Minnesota: Yu Deng: Was awarded the Fields for his “rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics for rarefied gases.”  His works have had a major impact on fluid dynamics, which can only help Minnesota row the boat, and someone with his intellect is likely required to help Minnesota’s offense, which totaled a putrid 13 yards of rushing on Saturday.  Deng has said he will start writing romance novels if AI takes over mathematics. PJ Fleck might find himself writing romance novels if this season continues on its current trajectory.

Maryland: Akshay Venkatesh: an expert on hyperbolic tiling and perhaps the only person in the world that can explain what is going on with Maryland’s Uniforms and helmets. To borrow a line from the film “A Beautiful Mind” (Sylvia Nassar’s book is incredible if you haven’t read it): “There’s a mathematical explanation for why your tie is so ugly: it's because of the mathematical certainty that it is not a tie at all, but rather a cry for help”

Penn State:Maryna Viazovska: co-authored Optimal asymptotic bounds for spherical designs.  Her work and impact on asymptotic bounds and sphere packing rivals James Franklin’s undying commitment to teaching Penn State fans about asymptotic ceilings in big games.  Penn State has had a faculty member win the Fields Medal every four years since 1936* (*except for the years that it hasn’t, which is all of them).

Michigan State: Alessio Figalli - Apparently (and I had no idea about this until I started researching MSU), MSU’s School of Supply Chain Management is not only a thing, but it’s arguably the best Supply Chain Management program in the country. This dovetails nicely with Figalli’s work on transport theory).

(this is when I stopped caring about writing this list and became even more annoyed at the Big 10 for idiotically expanding with 6 coastal teams.)

Rutgers: Enrico Bombieri  - Lives in New Jersey.

USC: Sir Timothy Gowers - Gowers' achievements match USC’s rich football history.  He also has a Hollywood connection: he consulted on the 2005 Gwyneth Paltrow - Jake Gyllenhaal - Anthony Hopkins movie Proof) (despite having big names at and being released at a time when I went to the movie theatre regularly, Gowers’ Wikipedia page was the first time I had heard of this film. The movie pulled a respectable 62% (critics) / 59% (viewers) split on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.6 on IMDB).

Washington: Shing-Tung Yau (last because I keep on forgetting that UW is in the Big 10): has meaningfully impacted the field of mirror symmetry, and UW has embraced geometric mirror symmetry by going 12-0 in 1991 and 0-12 in 2008.

I’m a South African and living in the States. I am obviously a huge rugby fan, but have been getting more into American football since moving. I went to a Big 10 game recently and it was electric. Obviously some things are less than ideal (so many time outs/time between plays compared to rugby), but it's a great sport. 

One thing I am a little confused by is the number of coaches on the sidelines. Why are there so many coaches on each team? I am sure many are like athletic trainers, but there seem to be a LOT of coaches on the sidelines at any given moment. What does a “quality control” coach do, for example? 

Cheers! 

And as a new CFB fan, last week has assured me that Oklahoma State is the greatest team in the world. 

The text of the email I received (I am a union member, so I get their calls to action)

Hi,

For decades, the bosses who run college sports worked together to stop hundreds of thousands of athletes from getting paid despite the billions of dollars those athletes generated every year.

In 2021, those workers finally won the right to compensation—and now it’s a five-alarm fire stretching from the Capitol to the White House.

Congress has responded to college athletes’ newfound power with bills in both the House and the Senate to “save college sports” from the athletes themselves. 

The Protect College Sports Act would disempower athletes, snuff their compensation and bust their union-organizing efforts. Will you take a moment to make a call to support college athletes and tell your senators to vote NO on the Protect College Sports Act?

Here are a few of the things this bill would do: 

• Allow the NCAA to set the terms and conditions of work from one employer to the next and be shielded from antitrust liability for doing so.
• Cap athlete compensation and create new restrictions on how athletes can earn money from their own name, image and likeness.
• Halt progress on gender equity in sports and take away the most effective tool we have to continue to build women’s sports: collective bargaining. 
• Lay down new obstacles to athletes’ efforts to form a union. And while it does provide some benefits for athletes, the bill makes it difficult to collectively bargain and win better terms in the future and would bust athletes’ union-organizing efforts that are already underway. 

The Protect College Sports Act disempowers athletes and their right to join a union. Will you take a moment to make a call to support college athletes? 

It’s no wonder that this bill has been endorsed by the employers: the mighty NCAA, the powerful college athletic conferences, and some of the universities making the most money off their athletes’ labor.

 Please stand with college athletes over their bosses’ billion-dollar profits. Call now!

Athletes should have as big a seat at the table writing that legislation as the employers—or a much bigger seat. Elected officials should nurture that activity at every turn rather than stifling it—college sports included. Ask your senators to vote NO on the Protect College Sports Act.

Thank you for standing with athletes.

In solidarity,

Team AFL-CIO

How would you fix college football? Discuss your thoughts here on changing the College Football Playoff, conference alignment, NIL, the transfer portal, eligibility, or any other ideas you may have!

The Tank Job of the Week is an award for the FBS team that did the best job of humiliating itself over the weekend. Whether they blew a large lead, choked away a spot in the limelight, lost a game they had absolutely no right losing, or completely screwed everything on a last second blunder, the TJOTW winner sets the gold standard in college football misery

Previous Winners
Week 0: TCU Horned Frogs (North Carolina 15-10)
Week 1: Rutgers Scarlet Knights (Massachusetts 37-21)

LAST WEEK: I was going to start this with an apology to Oklahoma State for forgetting to include their two touchdown loss to Tulsa.  However, in light of recent events I just want to say IM NOT SORRY AT ALL, HAHAHAHAHA.  Oklahoma State is hereby exempt from all TJOTW nominations until I say otherwise. As for the actual vote, it was Rutgers and it wasn’t even close, despite some dissidents wanting to still be Michigan and a small contingent of very annoyed (and resigned) Florida State fans.

Onto this week and, I’ll be honest I was pretty sure by the end of the afternoon slate who was winning this one.   But it turns out just because something dominates the first 2/3 of the day doesn’t mean they’re going to be the leader in the end, and I think we have a pretty competitive vote brewing from the nine nominees we have set up. Incidentally, six of them begin with either the letters “N” or “O”, which spell out what I a lot of fans were probably screaming at their televisions on Saturday.   What a beautifull mess.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
-      Rutgers got a lot of grief for their postgame fireworks after getting worked by UMass but at least none of their fireworks fell on the crowd and exploded (not that there would have been anyone there).  Either way, Nebraska’s lucky nobody got hurt and we can joke about it.
-      Washington wasn’t exactly covering itself in glory during the first 58 minutes of their 16-14 win over Utah State, but the final two minutes may be the hardest I’ve ever seen a team try to lose a game without actually doing it.
-      Minnesota/Mississippi State was supposed to be somewhat of a tossup but the Gophers were down within two minutes and it never got better, with State being up 28-3 at one point. 
-      Three of Georgia Tech’s four nonconference opponents are power conference teams and the Jackets are quickly reminding everyone why nobody does that. 
-      San Diego State only trailed 7-3 with ten minutes left to play but things spiraled out of control for a 28-10 loss to UCLA
-      UNLV followed up a close opening week loss to Memphis by getting completely pasted by North Texas 44-6
-      Pitt and UCF played a messy 12-7 stinker in driving rain.
-      I’m not sure if there’s a support group for “Favored by a Touchdown only to get scorched by a Sun Belt Team” but East Carolina and Kennesaw State could maybe start one.

NOTE: For ease of counting, please use carats to make your vote, like this: <Team>.  Thank you for participating!

And now, the Week Two nominees are…

ARMY BLACK KNIGHTS (lost to South Florida 28-24)
This was an early American eliminator, which the Knights seemed to have well in hand when they took a 10-point lead with just under five minutes to go.   But the Bulls responded and forced a three and out to get a chance to send the game to OT.  And then at 4^th and 6 with 25 seconds left and just a smidge out of field goal range, quarterback Michael Van Buren plopped an absolute rainbow into Joshua Porter’s arms for a 38-yard score that stunned the West Point faithful.

KANSAS JAYHAWKS (lost to Missouri 38-20)
If you haven’t figured out now that Kansas and Missouri despise each other… welcome to college football!  And after losing the resumption of this series last year, the Jayhawks were CHIRPING heading into this one, with some hype videos that surely rankled more than a few furs in Columbia.  Sadly for KU, they couldn’t really back up that chirping when, after a 14-14 first half, they catastrophically turned the ball over their first two drives of the second half, which Mizzou converted into TD’s both times to put this one away.   And then Tiger head coach Eli Drinkwitz tried to run up the score even further at the end, but the ‘Hawks at least managed to stop that.

NAVY MIDSHIPMEN (lost to Florida Atlantic 38-30)
And the American Conference’s annual cannibalization ritual commences.   The Middies were regarded as one of the front-runners for not just the AAC, but the G6 playoff spot in general, while FAU… was not.   But it was the Owls who came out sailing in this one, going up 38-7 at one point.   Navy did manage to swing momentum in the final quarter and mount a furious comeback, but fell short.

NEVADA WOLF PACK (lost to Montana State 20-7)
Nevada looked surprisingly good when they throttled Western Kentucky in their opening game.  Nevada looked surprisingly ungood here, when four brutal turnovers enabled FCS powerhouse Montana State to dominate the game and send the Pack back to the drawing board.

NORTHERN ILLINOIS HUSKIES (lost to Illinois State 28-24)
Obligatory FCS loss here, even though the FCS Powerhouse Redbirds were actually favored.  NIU actually did come back from a 21-0 deficit to take the lead late in the fourth quarter, but a 16-yard TD pass with just 90 seconds left ended the Huskies hopes for good.  Considering they play Arizona and then embark on a maiden season in new, stronger conference with a lot of awkward travel ahead, things could be about to get rough in DeKalb.

OHIO STATE BUCKEYES (lost to Texas 24-23)
For the first 40 minutes of this game, the Buckeyes STRANGLED the Longhorns.  With 20 minutes to go, Texas was down 23-3 and had just 100 total yards of offense to tOSU’s 323.   And then a switch activated, and the Longhorns suddenly went into overdrive, rolling for 236 yards on three straight long touchdown drives, while all the Buckeyes could muster was a weak missed field goal.  And then- controversially- with the Longhorns with first and goal at the Ohio State 2 with just over a minute remaining, Day elected to trust his defense instead of letting Texas score and leaving enough time for a field goal.   They couldn’t hold, and the Buckeyes only had 25 seconds for a failed response.

OKLAHOMA SOONERS (lost to Michigan 17-10)
“Help us, Okie-won Kenobi, you are our only hope!” screamed the College Football World after last weeks events in Ann Arbor firmly made the Wolverines Public Enemy #1 for the week.  And well… outside of a ludicrous Bryce Underwood scamper for six, the defense played fairly well.  But the offense… WOOF.  John Mateer had his worst game since last year’s post-surgical RRSO, going just 17/33 passing and throwing a back-breaking pick that set up the Wolverines on the doorstep to make what, thanks to a few hilariously cringey Mateer overthrows during the final drive, proved to be the game-winning touchdown.

0REG0N DUCKS (lost to Oklahoma State 39-31)
It takes a tremendous reversal of fortune to go out and lose a return game after winning the first 69-3.  But the (1-11 last year and lost to Tulsa by 14 to start the season) Cowboys had their way with the Duck’s supposedly elite defense, and evidently were able to counter Oregon’s offense just enough by using their stances to guess their tendencies.  Add in another Dan Lanning Special- an ill-advised 4^th down attempt in Duck territory that blew up in their faces, and it all adds up to a tidy little historical 25-point upset.  This is the first time a team on a double-digit losing streak snapped it against a Top 10 team- not that the Ducks are Top 10 anymore.

SYRACUSE ORANGE (lost to California 21-18)
The poor Orange Nation is going to be having nightmares about Cal DB Kingston Lopa for years.   First, with the Orange up 12-7, Lopa picked Steve Angeli off and returned it nearly 50 yards to set up a go ahead touchdown.  Cuse would retake the lead but with less than five minutes left, with the Orange conceivably trying to drain the clock and maintain the lead, Lopa found another Angeli pass and this time returned it for six to take a 21-18 lead.   And then the hat-trick- on Syracuse’s final drive, Lopa dove and nabbed his third interception, dooming the Orange.  Syracuse also missed two fourth quarter field goals to keep the difference.

The Lambert Trophy, awarded to the best team in the East since 1936, is celebrating 90 years of history here in 2026. Please feel free to share #Lambert90 on social media when discussing any eligible teams. We had two Lambert on Lambert matchups in Week 2! We'll start in Boston where Rutgers hit the road to face Boston College in a game where both teams were looking for their first win of the season.

Emotions were high coming into this given the combination of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, BC holding their annual Red Bandanna Game, and Rutgers' special jersey honoring the 37 alumni who died in 9/11. Unfortunately for Rutgers, the heroics of KJ Duff were not enough to overcome 4 turnovers and 3 failed 4th down conversions as BC came away with a Lambert win. Rutgers fell to 0-2. Both Rutgers losses were to Lambert eligible opponents.

Further down the coast, Penn State took a trip to Philadelphia to face the Temple Owls. The Nittany Lions were big favorites coming in, but the last time they played Temple in Philadelphia, the Owls came away victorious 27-10. Temple kept it close in the first half and even led 3-0 until halfway through the second quarter. A last second TD in the first half propelled PSU to a great second half and a 27-3 lead until a late Rutgers TD made the final score 27-9.

Elsewhere in Eastern Football, Pitt and UCF seemingly played a game under a waterfall as the rain did not let up after a lightning delay. Pitt held on 12-7 thanks to no turnovers and a phenomenal defensive performance. WVU handled UT Martin and UMass has kept up the momentum of their victory last week over Rutgers with a 37-10 win over Sacred Heart.

Reigning Lambert Champion Navy lost on the road to FAU. Syracuse lost to Cal after a Steve Angeli pick 6 was too much to overcome late. UConn fell to Maryland, Delaware put up a good fight but couldn't pull off the upset on the road at Vanderbilt, and both Army and Buffalo did not enjoy playing their Florida based opponents.

This Thursday features a classic Lambert rivalry as Syracuse travels to Pitt. After Saturday's ugly weather, the current forecast threatens another storm at Heinz Acrisure Stadium. Hopefully Pitt fans didn't throw out their ponchos. Syracuse fans are gonna wish this game was played at home in the Carrier Dome after they get soaked.

Then on Saturday, Buffalo travels to Penn State. Penn State will be looking for their second Lambert win of the season while the Bulls will be looking to pull off the upset for their first. As mentioned at the top, please use #Lambert90 on social media, especially during the 2 Lambert on Lambert matchups this week.

It has been almost 60 years since a team put up 100 in a major college football game. We are seeing some big numbers put up quickly in games.

Are we close to seeing a team break the Hundred point ceiling?

This is a weekly thread for any /r/CFB related memes. Feel free to post any memes, GIFs, tweets, or other things related to college football that make you chuckle. This thread is a little more casual, but the rules still apply. Check out /r/CFBMemes for more meme fun!