Best of Week 7: Indiana is a genuine power on the national stage
Indiana Hoosiers vs. Oregon Ducks: Final Game Highlight (0:43)
So much of college football these past few years has been defined by what's new. There's the transfer portal, NIL money, revenue sharing, revamped rosters, realignment, private equity firms looking to do business with schools, and leagues eager to build up their cash reserves so they can finally afford to build those gold-plated lockers they've had their eyes on. If you fell into a coma in 2019 and awoke a week ago, the entirety of the sport would feel like some sort of fever dream.
And yet, for all this change, for all that's new in college football, one thing has remained steadfastly true: The biggest brands have continued to dominate the sport.
It has been nearly three decades since we've had a first-time national champion. It's been more than four decades since Florida State and Miami forced their way into the staid ranks of college football's blue bloods. It has been a lifetime since someone in the Big Ten could realistically be called "fun."
But here we are, halfway through the 2025 season, and Indiana has given us something unique, entertaining and truly new -- a program that had wallowed in obscurity for decades is now a genuine power on the national stage.
"We showed the country we're a real team," quarterback Fernando Mendoza said after Saturday's stunning 30-20 win over No. 3 Oregon.
It's true. Indiana has uniforms, a playbook and everything else.
Fernando Mendoza connects with Elijah Sarratt to take the lead against the Ducks.
The advent of NIL, revenue sharing and the portal was supposed to simply make the rich richer, but the opposite has largely been true, and Indiana is Exhibit No. 1. Until 2020, Taylor Swift had not been alive during a year in which the Hoosiers finished ranked in the AP Top 25, and stunningly she hadn't written a single song about how sad that was. Even that 2020 season was mostly a figment of COVID's artificial reality, and the program regressed to 2-10 a season later. It's almost impossible to overstate just how bleak Indiana's football history had been, so bad that even amid all the basketball program's malaise, no one ever thought, "Hey, maybe we could care about football instead." Indiana was cheerfully irrelevant, not even interestingly bad, but rather just unnecessary to any larger conversation. Like the protagonist of every John Mellencamp song, Indiana was a program destined to relive the indignities of every past generation, no matter how hard it fought against the crushing obviousness of it all. It was Jack and Diane and Gerry DiNardo.
Then Curt Cignetti arrived, overhauled the roster, brashly told the world to Google him, and after scrolling past 73 sponsored results selling military-grade generators, you learned that the Hoosiers coach had won everywhere he had ever been, and he wasn't about to change now.
"I felt this coming in," Cignetti said of Saturday's win.
Cignetti said he had "big road wins" at his past stops, and no matter that those stops were in places like IUP, Elon, James Madison and not the Big Ten, his intuition was right.
On Saturday, Mendoza slung the ball around, hitting star receiver Elijah Sarratt eight times for 121 yards and a score.
On Saturday, Aiden Fisher and the country's most underrated defense held Heisman Trophy favorite Dante Moore to just 5.5 yards per throw and picked him off twice.
On Saturday, it became entirely reasonable to ask if Indiana could win a national championship.
That is a patently absurd statement, like asking if a fish could be elected prime minister of Canada. Of course, Canada tried that with a particularly cogent salmon in the 1920s, and it worked out horribly. The Hoosiers, on the other hand, seem entirely at home atop the college football universe.
Then look around the rest of the Big Ten. Penn State is in shambles after a third straight loss. Michigan was upended by USC 31-13 in a game that was more about what the Wolverines are lacking than what USC might be capable of accomplishing. Of course, this could also all be part of Michigan's plan to lure Ohio State into a false sense of confidence only to beat Ryan Day again at the end of November, because it's way funnier when it happens that way.
Elsewhere, Nebraska narrowly escaped Maryland, UCLA now seems like a tough out, and things are so bleak at Wisconsin everyone has already moved on to ice fishing season.
Amid all that mediocrity, Indiana is a breath of fresh air, the type of story movies are made about. We can picture it now: a lovable band of hardworking upstarts convinced by a coach brimming with confidence that they're just as good as the power players everyone thinks should win. They could call the movie "Hoosiers." It'd be an instant classic.
Of course, the story gets the storybook ending only if Indiana keeps winning, and although the remaining schedule is more than amenable, the Hoosiers' ultimate date with destiny will arrive eventually.
The Buckeyes are the defending champs, the standard by which everyone else in the Big Ten is judged. Ohio State dominated No. 17 Illinois on Saturday, too -- 34-16 -- but that win hardly warrants headlines because the Buckeyes are used to doing this. Ohio State is a story when it doesn't win, not when it lives up to all the advanced billing. The Buckeyes chug along, replacing bastions of NFL talent with a fresh cast, year after year.
Indiana is still a story because we couldn't have seen this coming. Indiana is a surprise. Indiana is new.
This is not a sport that welcomes anyone new to the party, which makes what Indiana is doing still an entirely precarious thing.
But if Cignetti and the Hoosiers can keep winning, can get to the Big Ten championship and upend the Buckeyes, can make the playoff and win there, too, if they can win so much that no one is surprised when it happens anymore, that would be a real story.
More: Trends Group of 5 updates | Big 12 hijinks Under the radar | Heisman five
Week 7 vibe checkEach week, the biggest games deliver thrilling results that shift the landscape of the college football world. Beyond those headlines, however, a host of other subtler shifts occur. We try to capture those here.
Trending down: Week 1 overreactions
Two things were clear after the first Saturday of the regular season: Florida State was back and Kalen DeBoer was being fitted for his membership jacket in the Alabama coaching bust club alongside Mike DuBose and Mike Shula. Mike Price would've been in, too, but he accidentally ended up at the wrong club entirely.
Well, six weeks later, things look a little different.
The Tide knocked off Missouri 27-24 -- the fifth straight team to be handed its first loss of the season by Alabama -- thanks to another brilliant performance by Ty Simpson, who threw for three touchdowns in the win. The Tide defense held Missouri's Heisman Trophy hopeful Ahmad Hardy to just 52 yards rushing, helping pave the way to a win for an offense that mustered just 325 total yards -- including 2 by center Parker Brailsford, 2 by left tackle Kadyn Proctor and none by star receiver Ryan Williams.
The win proved another résumé builder in Simpson's Heisman campaign, something that would've seemed patently absurd to say after the FSU loss. It was also another victory for DeBoer's famed "black hoodie of death," which is now the most successful bit of coaching attire since Dan Mullen's legendary "gray comfy pants of mediocrity."
Kalen DeBoer arrives in CoMo in the black hoodie of death pic.twitter.com/GHKS4GLcR4
— Nick Kelly (@_NickKelly) October 11, 2025
Meanwhile, Florida State lost for the third straight time, 34-31, to Pitt, and has now gone 386 days without an ACC win. The Noles allowed Pitt freshman QB Mason Heintschel to throw for 321 yards, and FSU has surrendered points on 17 of 33 complete drives during the three-game skid.
Since Sept 22, 2024, 46 different schools have more wins vs. the ACC than Florida State does.
That's truly incredible.
This leads us to some compelling evidence as we begin to discuss who'll be in the 12-team playoff. Florida State beat, arguably, the best team in the SEC. Florida State is 0-3 in the ACC. Therefore, the ACC is clearly far, far better than the SEC. That's just math.
Trending up: Interim coaching
UCLA continues to look exceptional after firing DeShaun Foster, as Tim Skipper and the Bruins walloped Michigan State 38-13 on Saturday.
After mustering just 57 total points amid an 0-4 start under Foster, the coaching change has provided a spark to UCLA that typically can't be achieved without drinking that lemonade from Panera that has so much guanine it allows you to travel through time.
Skipper has been a revelation. On the flight to Michigan, he left a note on each seat on the plane reading, "Are you a one-hit wonder?" which served to motivate both his team and Dexys Midnight Runners who returned to the studio for the first time in 43 years in hopes of getting a second hit. Skipper also showed plenty of chutzpah by calling for a brilliantly executed fake punt that led to a UCLA touchdown.
FAKE PUNT ‼️ @UCLAFootball
📺: BTN pic.twitter.com/S3O57VVF20
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) October 11, 2025
UCLA has put up 80 points against Penn State and Michigan State the past two weeks with Jerry Neuheisel calling the plays and, we assume, stealing Kelly Kapowski's heart in the process.
The key to the offensive turnaround has been the legs of QB Nico Iamaleava, who ran for 128 yards and three touchdowns in Saturday's win, leading his agent to immediately demand a trade back to the SEC.
Trending up: Changes in Happy Valley
Penn State opened the season No. 2 in the country. The Nittany Lions have now lost three in a row, after falling to Northwestern 22-21 Saturday. The passing and ground game struggled, and after Penn State scored a go-ahead TD with 10:50 to play in the game, the Jim Knowles-led defense surrendered a 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that, until that moment, the folks working at Northwestern's physics department had only hypothesized was theoretically possible.
All of this leaves Penn State in a bleak position. Hopes for the playoff are over, and Drew Allar suffered a season-ending injury. Penn State would owe James Franklin a boatload of cash to fire him, and the world's best bioengineers are still months away from developing a microchip that would allow Franklin to experience emotions during a loss. And the next three games for the Nittany Lions: at Iowa, at Ohio State, vs. Indiana.
There might be serious rumblings about now that Penn State could be this year's 2024 Florida State, except 2025 Florida State seems to have dibs on that title already.
Trending up: Hugh Freeze's anger
Two weeks ago, Auburn might've toppled Oklahoma, but a pair of officiating decisions doomed the Tigers. The SEC apologized later for one blown call involving a Sooners player who feigned leaving the game, but it did little to change the outcome.
Saturday, Auburn looked to be on the verge of taking a significant lead against Georgia in a game that might've been a turning point for Freeze's program, and again, the officials intervened.
Jackson Arnold appeared to be in the end zone for a touchdown that would've put Auburn up 17-0, but he was ruled down at the 1-inch line. On the next play, Arnold again appeared to cross the goal line before having the ball punched out, and again, the official disagreed. The play was ruled a fumble recovered by Georgia, which went on to score its first points of the game. Auburn never came close to cracking the scoreboard again, and the Dawgs won 20-10.
So many near misses in back-to-back big games all going against Auburn is hard to believe. What, after all, has Freeze ever done to deserve such things? Wait, don't answer that.
Trending down: Nussmeier injury worries
Garrett Nussmeier, who is definitely not hurt, threw two picks as LSU struggled to find pay dirt yet again, but the Tigers' defense proved good enough to lead the way to another win, 20-10 over South Carolina.
Nussmeier is fine, really. No reason to assume otherwise. Brian Kelly is so sure his QB is fine that his face is red with delight, and he's slamming his fist on tables just to drive home the point that there is definitely nothing wrong with Nussmeier.
Still, LSU has played five games vs. FBS competition so far this season, and it has yet to score more than 23 points. Which is fine. Everything is fine. Stop asking.
Trending down: A Petrino turnaround
If Week 7 was a crowning moment for Curt Cignetti and his "Google me" catchphrase, it was a slightly less impressive coaching performance for Bobby Petrino, and his famous catchphrase, "Please, whatever you do, don't Google me."
Petrino, in his first game as Arkansas' interim head coach after Sam Pittman was fired two weeks ago, did have the Hogs ready for Tennessee, even leading midway through the second quarter. But Tennessee reeled off 24 straight points before a late Arkansas comeback attempt fell short.
Will a close loss to the No. 12 team in the country do much for Petrino's quest to regain the job he was once fired from in disgrace? He should probably brace for the reality that it's not, or boy would his face be red when he doesn't get it.
Trending down: Colorado's petty cash
Deion Sanders got his first win over a ranked foe since his first game at Colorado by knocking off No. 22 Iowa State 24-17. The crowd then stormed the field, marking the most excited anyone has ever been about something involving the state of Iowa. Afterward, Sanders was utterly flabbergasted to learn a field storming comes with a $50,000 fine. Thankfully no one told him how much eggs cost now.
Colorado fans storm the field after the Buffaloes upset Iowa State, and Deion Sanders shares his thoughts on the victory.
Trending up: The Tar Heels
North Carolina was off this week, thus going seven full days without an on-field embarrassment. Instead, the only facepalms UNC faced in the past week were the cancellation of a Hulu documentary, the suspension of an assistant coach for recruiting violations, reports of a divided locker room, reports that Bill Belichick and the school were working on a buyout after just five games, and, of course, Belichick using a winch he stole from Roy Williams' shed to remove the statue of Charlie Justice from in front of Kenan Stadium so he could get a better parking spot.
Big 12 hijinksBecause the Big 12 is essentially college football's Mad Libs, Week 7 was once again wild in the conference.
Down to its fourth-string kicker, Iowa State rolled out a 310-pound freshman to boot kickoffs, which must have given Kadyn Proctor some ideas.
— no context college football (@nocontextcfb) October 11, 2025
Things are bleak in Stillwater, but Oklahoma State fans still know how to have a good time.
Guys being dudes https://t.co/rWHi3VPx8y pic.twitter.com/tNhY2CdGSm
— Oklahoma State Athletics (@OSUAthletics) October 11, 2025
If Mike Gundy was not among those shirtless fans, we question what he's even doing with his free time now.
Texas Tech dominated Kansas in a 42-17 win despite the loss of starting QB Behren Morton thanks to tailback Cameron Dickey, who ran for 263 yards and a pair of touchdowns. It was the most rushing yards by a Red Raiders player since Byron Hanspard had 287 in 1996.
Arizona State's hopes to repeat as Big 12 champs took a big hit in Week 7 without starting QB Sam Leavitt. Instead, the Sun Devils turned to journeyman Jeff Sims, who has had stints at Georgia Tech, Nebraska and, we assume, spent a year living off the land and finding his inner truth in Joshua Tree. The result was predictably bad, as Utah dominated in a 42-10 win.
And then there was BYU, which was on the verge of losing its first game of the season, trailing by a touchdown with 2:46 to play. That final drive included seven plays inside the Arizona 8, a fumble, two replay reviews and two penalties that gave BYU a fresh set of downs before Bear Bachmeier dove into the end zone for a game-tying score. The game went to a second overtime before Noah Fifita's final pass on fourth down bounced off a receiver's hands in the end zone, and the Cougars won 33-27 to remain undefeated.
Midseason Group of 5 conference rundownA playoff team, no Bull
The best team in the Group of 5? It sure looks as if it might be USF.
South Florida Bulls vs. North Texas Mean Green: Full Highlights
The Bulls already have wins over Boise State and Florida, and on Friday, they used a third-quarter scoring barrage to rack up a dominant 63-36 win over previously undefeated North Texas.
USF scored four touchdowns in the span of just 3:37 of game clock, turning a 21-14 deficit just before the half into a 42-21 lead with 11:35 to play in the third quarter.
Combined with the hot start by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL ranks, football has proven to be a saving grace for the local area.
Rebels hit the jackpot
Six games into his tenure as the head coach at UNLV Dan Mullen has yet to lose, the Rebels are in the mix for a playoff berth, and no one has thrown a shoe at a critical time.
UNLV survived an onslaught from Air Force on Saturday, 51-48, as Anthony Colandrea accounted for 423 yards and three touchdowns, including the game winner with 36 seconds to go.
The Falcons -- electric on offense and utterly dismal on D -- are an adventure on a weekly basis, with nearly any outcome possible, the college football version of a 2 a.m. trip to Waffle House. It's invigorating and terrifying, satisfying and a little dangerous, and when it's over, you're often confused about why everything is so sticky. And Saturday's affair was no different. Air Force racked up 603 yards of offense, erased six different UNLV leads, and despite coughing up the late score, still had a chance to tie it after going 52 yards on six plays, but missed a 40-yard field goal as time expired.
Air Force Falcons vs. UNLV Rebels: Full Highlights
The win gets UNLV bowl eligible at 6-0, but the Rebels are thinking bigger -- a Mountain West title and a playoff bid, and burgeoning rumors of Mullen being a candidate for the soon-to-be-vacant Florida job.
Who, who, who is leading Conference USA?
Thursday's action featured a showdown between Conference USA powers rivaled in stature only by a Battle of the Bands competition involving Creed and Sugar Ray. Kennesaw State drubbed Louisiana Tech 35-7 behind a four-TD performance from QB Dexter Williams.
Believe it or not, the Owls are now 4-2 on the season, doubling last year's win total already. That's a massive success for a football program that was founded just 10 years ago by 22 guys at the back of an Atlanta security line that had reached all the way to Kennesaw's campus, and the sky is the limit for where the Owls might go.
Of Kennesaw State's remaining schedule, only New Mexico State (3-2) has a winning record. If the team can run the table and make it to the conference title game, it's likely no more than a couple years away from getting an official invitation to join the American, so that conference can properly create a separate parliament of owls division with FAU, Temple and Rice.
MAC-tical jokers
It was either Leo Tolstoy or Frank Solich who said, "All good teams are alike; each bad team is bad in its own way."
This was certainly true for Saturday's pillow fight between MAC doormats Kent State and UMass. The Golden Flashes hadn't won a FBS game since 2022, but at least there is some history of success there. It's a program in search of leadership and direction, finding its place in the new world of college football in 2025. UMass's failures, however, can best be described as the football equivalent of that Ben Affleck picture where he's wearing a towel at the beach and staring out toward the horizon pondering his own insignificance in an infinite, uncaring universe. The Minutemen are 4-57 vs. FBS since the start of the 2019 season and 26-127 overall since becoming an FBS team in 2012.
And so it was that Kent State proved that, on the ladder of success, it has at least climbed one rung, while UMass continues to dig deeper into its own grave Saturday. The Golden Flashes cruised to a 42-6 win, behind four touchdown passes from Dru DeShields.
Bonus: Beavers hopes damned
Things are bleak for Oregon State. The Beavers fell to 0-7 on the year after Wake Forest backup QB Deshawn Purdie threw four touchdown passes in a 39-14 win. The Beavers have now lost 13 of their past 14 games, with the lone win coming against the only other team currently in their conference, Washington State.
Meanwhile, those Cougars had Ole Miss on upset alert, as the Rebels faltered early when QB Trinidad Chambliss was replaced by his far less successful twin Tobago Chambliss, who struggled in the red zone early, and the Rebels trailed 14-10 midway through the third quarter. Chambliss recovered, however, and finished the game with three total touchdowns and a 24-21 win.
Since the breakup of the old Pac-12, Washington State and Oregon State are now a combined 3-10 vs. Power 4 competition, while George Kliavkoff wallows on his couch staring at an old photo of the Oregon Duck.
Herd QB revival
When last we saw Carlos Del Rio-Wilson, he was benched at Syracuse in favor of a tight end in a season that ultimately got Dino Babers fired. But as anyone in Syracuse knows, when life deals you 43 feet of snow, you pick yourself up, grab your shovel and start digging again.
And so it is that Del Rio-Wilson has found new life at Marshall, accounting for four touchdowns in a dominant 48-24 win over a suddenly surging Old Dominion on Saturday. Del Rio-Wilson threw for 219 yards and a pair of scores and ran for 95 and two more touchdowns. It's the type of shocking success that makes one wonder whatever happened to other infamously unsuccessful Syracuse QBs such as Rex Culpepper, Zack Mahoney, Terrel Hunt, Greg Paulus, AJ Long, Clayton Welch ... and we're sorry we're being told we do not have space for a complete list.
Under-the-radar play of the weekAs if football wasn't hard enough for the guys at Stanford right now, SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings upped the degree of difficulty by a sizable margin Saturday, dishing a behind-the-back pass to tight end RJ Maryland midway through the first quarter.
KEVIN JENNINGS GOES BEHIND THE BACK 😱 pic.twitter.com/GIKmZj0PuB
— The CW Sports (@TheCW_Sports) October 11, 2025
Nine plays later, Jennings connected with Derrick McFall for a 19-yard TD pass, giving the Mustangs their first points of the game in what would eventually be a 34-10 win over the Cardinal.
It wasn't all good news for SMU, however. Jennings' ball distribution was so pretty that, by Dallas law, the Dallas Mavericks had to immediately trade him to the Los Angeles Lakers after the game.
Under-the-radar game of the weekBowling Green is feline good after a frisky 28-23 come-from-behind win Saturday over Toledo.
For most of the game, Bowling Green simply seemed to be toying with the Rockets like so many balls of yarn, but during a wild four-play stretch midway through the fourth quarter, the Falcons proved they weren't kitten around, scoring on a 73-yard pass, recovering a fumble Toledo coughed up like a hair ball two plays later, then attacking the end zone like a laser pointer from 1 yard out on the next play.
Eddie George picked up his first MAC win as Bowling Green's coach, though honestly no one cares. Bowling Green has a team cat. Everyone loves the cat.
Heisman fiveThis is Major Pudge to Ground Control ...#AyZiggy pic.twitter.com/ZTHyDwA7BT
— BGSU Football (@BG_Football) October 11, 2025
1. Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza
In the past calendar year, Mendoza is completing 71% of his throws with 29 total touchdowns and five interceptions, and that's despite half those games coming while playing in the ACC, which as we all know isn't supposed to have nice things.
2. Alabama QB Ty Simpson
Since the opener against Florida State, Simpson is completing 76% of his throws, averaging 9.7 yards per pass, and has thrown 14 touchdowns with just one pick. Honestly, it feels really strange to list off a bunch of good stats while adding, "if you don't count the Florida State game."
3. Miami DE Rueben Bain Jr.
Most people have Carson Beck as the Heisman front-runner because it is, by and large, a QB award. But no one at Miami has made a bigger impact on the Hurricanes this year than Bain, who has been an absolute wrecking machine off the edge. But, of course, the odds of a defensive player winning the Heisman are long, and the only path to it happening is for Bain to have an undeniably captivating narrative that voters can embrace. So, for as long as he remains Miami's best player, we'll work on building that narrative by sharing a little-known fact about the Canes' star defensive end. For example, did you know Bain was born on Sept. 8, 2004, and on Sept. 10, 2004, he drove his mom home from the hospital and assembled his own crib?
4. Cincinnati QB Brendan Sorsby
A quick blind comparison:
QB A: 87.3 Total QBR, 9.8 yards/pass, 14 TD, 1 INT QB B: 88.4 Total QBR, 10.8 yards/pass, 14 TD, 0 INT
QB A represents Simpson's stat line since an opening-week loss. QB B is Sorsby's numbers after Cincinnati's opening-week loss. The country's most underrated QB is slinging it and has the Bearcats in contention in the Big 12.
5. Notre Dame QB CJ Carr
Carr threw for 342 yards and a pair of scores in a 36-7 win over NC State. The performance helped Notre Dame avoid losing a second straight game to an ACC foe for the first time since 2014. Since then, the Irish are 49-10 vs. the ACC. Only Clemson (80) and Miami (50) have more wins vs. the ACC in that span than Notre Dame, despite the fact that Notre Dame does not play in the ACC.
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