The Most Inexplicable Losses of the 2014 College Football Season
How did that happen?
That's pretty much been the consensus reaction to some of the strangest results from the 2014 college football season—outcomes that stood out greatly when they happened and look even stranger as the year has gone on.
Upsets are a part of the game, but many of them can be explained away quite easily. But not these dozen. Rather than getting chalked up as the standard shocker, these are results that still have us scratching our heads weeks (and even months) afterward. Some of them are even messing with the profiles of some teams that are in contention for the College Football Playoff.
Take a look at the 12 most inexplicable losses so far in 2014.
Virginia Tech at Ohio State
1 of 10
When: Sept. 6
Final score: Virginia Tech 35, Ohio State 21
Let's start with a game that still defies explanation. How in the world did Virginia Tech go into Columbus and not only become the first nonconference team to win there in years, but also to do it so convincingly?
First and foremost, it was the second career start of freshman quarterback J.T. Barrett, who had shown some good things in the opener against Navy but was still learning on the job. And he got a hard lesson from the Hokies, who sacked him seven times and intercepted three passes (the last was returned for a touchdown in the final minute).
"Just weeks ago, hopes for Ohio State's 2014 season were littered with College Football Playoff aspirations," Bleacher Report's Steven Cook wrote at the time. "Even after Braxton Miller went down for the season, the Buckeyes remained dark-horse candidates to make the final four. That's almost certainly an idea of the past now."
Since then, Barrett has thrown for 26 touchdowns and four interceptions, while also rushing for eight TDs and becoming a rising contender for postseason awards.
OSU appears to be headed for the Big Ten title game. At No. 6 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, it is also in the hunt for the semifinals. Without the Virginia Tech loss, there'd be little doubt the Buckeyes were playoff-bound.
Iowa State at Iowa
2 of 10
When: Sept. 13
Final score: Iowa State 20, Iowa 17
Iowa State heads into this weekend's home game against Texas Tech with a 2-7 record (its fifth straight losing season). This path was in the cards after the Cyclones opened 0-2, losing at home to an FCS team for the second straight year and then blowing a 15-point lead against Kansas State.
It was not exactly the best scenario to be heading on the road to play the in-state rival, but somehow Iowa State came out of Ames with its first win of 2014 after Cole Netten hit a 42-yard field goal at the buzzer.
Iowa had been 2-0 before that loss—albeit with neither of those wins looking too impressive. The Hawkeyes were clearly the better team (skill- and talent-wise), but they managed only 275 yards against a team that ranks 118th in total defense.
Iowa State has lost every road game since then, including at Kansas.
USC at Boston College
3 of 10
When: Sept. 13
Final score: Boston College 37, USC 31
Fresh off a surprisingly strong win at Stanford—one that featured an impressive defensive performance before we knew just how much trouble Stanford would have in the red zone this season—USC went across the country to play a Boston College team that had graduated nearly every offensive player of significance from 2013.
BC had just lost at home to Pittsburgh, getting run over and struggling to move the ball (except for when quarterback Tyler Murphy was able to scramble).
Murphy did plenty of scrambling against USC, running for 191 yards as part of a 452-yard rushing effort by the Eagles. Meanwhile, USC ran for only 20 yards—the result of an astounding 16 tackles for loss by BC.
Indiana at Missouri
4 of 10
When: Sept. 20
Final score: Indiana 31, Missouri 27
With the bad run the Big Ten had been on in nonconference play—and with the dominance that the SEC was showing so far in the season—there wasn't much attention being paid to this otherwise-throwaway game for Missouri right before it began its defense of the East Division title.
That changed by the end of the day, when the Tigers lost at home to a team that came in off a loss to Bowling Green. At home. While allowing 45 points.
It wasn't one of those games where Indiana came out of nowhere at the end, either. The Hoosiers were in it throughout, leading on three separate occasions before Missouri scored 10 straight points in the fourth quarter to lead 27-24.
Then Indiana went 75 plays in less than two minutes (against the No. 22 defense in the country) to score the game-winner with 22 seconds left, shocking the Tigers and leading to many a joke on Twitter.
We can thank the Hoosiers from knowing the ins and outs of the transitive property when it comes to college football.
Northwestern State at Louisiana Tech
5 of 10
When: Sept. 20
Final score: Northwestern State 30, Louisiana Tech 27
Inexplicable losses aren't just limited to the power conferences—they happen in the Group of Five leagues, too.
Just ask Louisiana Tech. The school is set to clinch the Conference USA West Division this weekend, but back in September it became one of the more surprising teams to drop a contest to an FCS school (especially since the Bulldogs were coming off back-to-back road wins, including at defending Sun Belt champ Louisiana-Lafayette).
Northwestern State hadn't beaten an FBS team since 2005. Two weeks before this game, it was crushed 70-6 by Baylor. Yet the Demons scored 13 points in the final 4:20, including a field goal as time expired, to beat the Bulldogs with the help of five turnovers.
Tech lost at Auburn the following week, but since then has won five in a row by an average of 27 points.
Washington State at Utah
6 of 10
When: Sept. 27
Final score: Washington State 28, Utah 27
On a rainy afternoon in Salt Lake City, Utah had a commanding 24-7 halftime lead against a Washington State team that was capable of scoring points but not of making stops. Or so we thought.
Two quarters later, the Cougars handed the Utes their first loss by scoring two touchdowns in the final eight minutes and somehow managing to only allow three sacks to the FBS leader in that category. WSU held Utah to three points and 135 yards after halftime. Connor Halliday threw for 417 yards against a defense that hasn't allowed more than 283 passing yards against any other opponent.
"We stopped making plays for whatever reason," Utah coach Kyle Whittingham told Mike Sorensen of the Deseret News.
Maybe the most hard-to-fathom part of this result, though, was how Utah responded to the loss. But that's a story for another slide.
Arizona at Oregon
7 of 10
When: Oct. 2
Final score: Arizona 31, Oregon 24
Arizona made a statement in 2013 when it blew out Oregon at home, but hardly anyone figured the Wildcats could win in Eugene. Their last time there—in 2012—they lost 49-0.
And even after holding the Ducks to just seven points in the first half, the people thinking Arizona had a chance to continue that and pull out a road victory were likely limited to those associated with (and fans of) the program. Yet Arizona scored touchdowns on all three of its third-quarter possessions to take a 24-14 lead. After Oregon tied it midway through the fourth quarter, the Wildcats marched right down and scored again.
They also threw off Marcus Mariota's flow more than any other team has this season—sacking him five times and forcing him to fumble twice. That's what happened on Oregon's final drive, as Scooby Wright stripped the Heisman contender and scooped up the loose ball to seal the upset.
Arizona was a 21.5-point underdog, according to Vegas Insider.
Though it came before the playoff selection committee started releasing its rankings, the loss was considered a major blow to Oregon's postseason hopes, according to Tim Daniels of Bleacher Report.
"Ultimately, the reason for the loss is insignificant to the playoff committee," he wrote. "It's a loss to an unranked team, which means Oregon now becomes fans of Arizona with hope both teams can run the table and meet again for the conference title."
What did Arizona do after that? It lost at home to unranked USC.
Utah at UCLA
8 of 10
When: Oct. 4
Final score: Utah 30, UCLA 28
The sixth week of the 2014 college football season will go down as one of the craziest in history, with amazing finishes and shocking results all over the country. The upsets began with Arizona's win at Oregon on Thursday and continued all through Saturday, as 11 ranked teams lost (including five in the top 10).
And after a day full of these shockers, it surely wasn't going to continue through the night—not with Utah (having come off a home loss to Washington State) and UCLA (fresh off a 35-point drubbing of Arizona State on the road).
In one of the many wild, late-night games in the Pac-12 Conference this season—contests that Twitter (and the league itself) have come to refer to as #Pac12AfterDark—Utah sacked UCLA quarterback Brett Hundley 10 times while building a 24-14 lead after three quarters.
UCLA came back to take the lead with five minutes left, only to see Utah win it on an Andy Phillips field goal with 34 seconds remaining. The Bruins became just another one of the many ranked teams to go down on that upset-filled Saturday.
Florida vs. Georgia (in Jacksonville)
9 of 10
When: Nov. 1
Final score: Florida 38, Georgia 20
In most situations, upsets in rivalry games don't need much explaining. Teams that have a longstanding hatred of each other tend to bring out the best (and worst) in each other, regardless of their records.
Still, what Florida did to Georgia in this year's version of the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party transcended the standard anything-can-happen rules of rivalries. The Gators flat out whooped a Georgia team that had won five straight (including back-to-back impressive performances on the road that seemed to have given it a stranglehold on the SEC East Division).
Florida, meanwhile, was coming off two straight home losses—the last of which saw the Gators hold Missouri to 119 yards, yet lose 42-13 because of six turnovers and four defensive or special teams touchdowns.
Lost offensively most of the season, Florida ran for 418 yards—including 21 on a faked field goal that led to a touchdown to start a run of 31 straight points—with 197 of those coming from Kelvin Taylor.
"We knew we were going to pound them and pound them and were going to keep pounding them," Taylor told the Associated Press (h/t ESPN.com). "We weren't going to be denied."
It was the kind of effort that looked—at the time—like it might end up saving coach Will Muschamp's job.
Virginia Tech at Duke
10 of 10
When: Nov. 15
Final score: Virginia Tech 17, Duke 16
Virginia Tech sits at 5-5 entering the final two weeks of the season. It has lost four times at home and is in jeopardy of missing out on a bowl game for the first time since 1992. Oh, and the Hokies also have a pair of road wins against teams that are a combined 17-3 (and both of those wins could end up costing their opponents far more than it's helped Tech).
In addition to the September win at Ohio State, Tech went to Durham last week and halted the momentum of a Duke team that was well on its way to a second straight ACC Coastal Division title. It did so by forcing three turnovers to help rally from nine points down late in the third quarter.
Duke now has to win out to avoid losing the division to Georgia Tech. Its chances of being the ACC's representative in the Orange Bowl (which will take the highest-ranked team from the league after the semifinal entrants are selected) also took a major hit.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
