Clank! Clank! Clank! … For those that don’t follow college football all that closely, that’s the sound emanating from the Texas and Penn State programs this morning as the top two rated teams in the country coming into the season find their post-season playoff hopes on life support with still over half the season to go after upset losses yesterday. Texas dropped to 3-2 on the year after losing 29-21 in Gainesville to a 1-3 Florida team that had lost three straight. And the Longhorns still have to play Oklahoma (this coming week), Georgia and Texas A&M. For its part, Penn State suffered the upset of the year and maybe the decade and maybe even of the century when they lost 42-37 to 25-point underdog UCLA. And yes UCLA is a Power-5 team, but they were were 0-4 and not just any 0-4 as the Bruins had yet to lead at anytime in any of their games to date and had lost their previous home game to New Mexico by 25 points. In fact, its been 40 years since a top ten team lost to an 0-4 team.
There’s also a certain draft implication to all this (and no, it doesn’t have anything to do with Texas QB Arch Manning whom most of the league has written off as a 2026 prospect). While the Penn State loss can hardly be blamed on QB Drew Allar; after all his team did score 37 points and he was a respectable 19 for 26 for 200 yards and 2 scores with no picks (although he did lose a fumble), the sense one gets is that while he has prototype size for an NFL QB along with decent athleticism and quality arm talent, he just doesn’t seem to make the special plays or lift his team the way one would like to see from a potential top 10 QB pick.
