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The Halloween version of college football Saturday has offered its fair share of treats despite a slim slate on paper with just two matchups between ranked teams.
In those, Texas Tech broke free late to keep its head afloat in the Big 12 over conference foe Arizona, and Georgia walloped rival Florida as the showdown formerly dubbed the "World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party" moved inside and north to Atlanta for a year.
SMU faltered to see its playoff hopes disintegrate, while the national champion Hoosiers needed some heroics and a 60-yard field goal to stay in the mix and keep Minnesota haunting their hopes at bay.
Utah and UCLA remained unbeaten, and plenty more headlines were worth recounting.
It's been an eventful day so far with more to come, so check back later. Here's your first wave of winners and losers from Week 9 action so far.
Winner: Castellanos the Catalyst
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Joey McGuire's Texas Tech Red Raiders expected to compete for a national championship this year with a transfer quarterback at the helm.
They still may – it just won't be the one they expected.
After Brendan Sorsby transferred from Cincinnati, he was ruled ineligible after getting caught up in a gambling scandal, leading the Red Raiders to start Will Hammond under center. Following an awful loss to Cincinnati last week, McGuire made a change to Thomas Castellanos.
It worked.
The fifth-year senior on his fourth school was dynamic in a top-25 showdown against Arizona, helping his team erase a 10-point first-half deficit and win a 34-26 showdown that is pivotal to their Big 12 and playoff hopes.
Castellanos was the catalyst with Red Raider resurgence, throwing for 144 yards and a pair of touchdowns. But his biggest boost came on the ground where he ran for 117 yards and a score, kick-starting an incredible showing by TTU's rushing attack.
They added 175 yards from J'Koby Williams on their way to a 328-yard rushing performance that grabbed them a pivotal conference win and helped them overcome Noah Fifita's 417-yard passing outburst.
Loser: Minnesota's Shot to Party Like 1956
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Indiana doesn't look like a national championship team so far this season, but the Hoosiers just keep winning like one.
On Saturday, they somehow survived in overtime 23-16 against Minnesota despite a barrage of miscues. The Golden Gophers did enough to beat back-to-back ranked teams for the first time since 1956, but they just couldn't halt heroics.
After Luke Drzewiecki's 60-yard field goal put the Gophers ahead by three with 19 seconds to go, Grant Wilson hit two chunk plays to gain 33 yards and give Hoosiers long-range kicker Paddy McAteer his own 60-yard attempt, which he drilled at the buzzer.
It took IU one play to score in overtime, and the defense stopped Minnesota to secure the win.
"This is entertainment, so we thought we'd put some entertainment value into this game," IU coach Curt Cignetti told CBS after the game. "It was really like, 'How many things you could do wrong?'"
This year's version of Indiana is doing very un-Cignetti-like things. Saturday, they shanked a field goal, got another one blocked, botched the snap on a field goal and shanked a pair of punts that led to 10 Gophers points.
Still, somehow, they found a way in a game where starting quarterback Josh Hoover got dinged up, pulled and the backup quarterback led them to the win. The Hoosiers are still in position to make the playoffs, and Minnesota is left hurting after somehow letting it slip away.
Winner: UCLA, Again
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Say what you want about UCLA's lack of style points, but the Bruins just keep on churning out Ws.
Saturday was never supposed to be a challenge with a home game against Nevada and a break from the grueling Big Ten schedule, but coach Bob Chesney's team still dominated the Wolfpack in a game that was never close.
The final score wound up being 27-0, but the Bruins were dominant, and the defense that has won them so many games this season was brilliant once again, keeping Nevada in check with just 176 total yards and 10 first downs.
Backup quarterback Ty Dieffenbach – who was thrust into the lineup with Nico Iamaleava's season-ending injury a few weeks ago – wasn't great, but he just keeps on being a steady field manager. He finished with 178 passing yards, a throwing score and a rushing score in the win.
Next week's road trip to Minnesota is intriguing, but UCLA's remaining schedule is navigable with Illinois, Michigan, USC joining the Gophers on the schedule. Chesney's team is one of three unbeatens and even has wiggle room for a loss.
What a turnaround for the Bruins.
Loser: Florida's Cocktail Collapse
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With Jacksonville's EverBank Stadium undergoing a massive renovation this year, the Georgia-Florida game – for years known as the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party – moved indoors this year to Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Maybe Florida's offense took too long to realize where the game was. The Gators struggled to get started, and even though the Bulldogs offense sputtered along once again, they had no issues in a 27-8 win.
The reasons were largely the things that have hamstrung first-year coach Jon Sumrall's team when it has been at its worst this year.
First, the Gators failed to get consistent quarterback play as starter Aaron Philo threw a pair of early interceptions. When he was yanked in favor of Tramell Jones Jr., he started strong but dropped a sack-fumble picked up by UGA linebacker Chris Cole and returned 66 yards for a touchdown.
Despite some third-down struggles and offensive inconsistency, Gunner Stockton and the Dawgs held a 24-0 halftime lead and never looked back. The 17th-ranked Gators never got its running game going, either, with just 48 total yards on the ground.
It was far from the rivalry renewal Gators fans hoped for.
Winner: Unstoppable Utah's Statement
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With Cincinnati hosting sixth-ranked Utah at Nippert Stadium on Saturday, the Bearcats had a shot at knocking off consecutive Big 12 opponents at home after last week's win over Texas Tech.
Instead, the Utes continued flashing that championship swag with a sterling start on their way to a dominant 49-25 win over the five-win Bearcats.
Cincinnati is a good team, and Utah just dismantled them, as Morgan Scalley's Utes remained one of just three unbeaten Football Bowl Subdivision teams.
Not only did the Utes offense pile up four first-half touchdowns, the defense rose to the occasion, too, in a near-perfect first half.
First, they held the Bearcats to a missed field goal in a red-zone opportunity, then they forced another field goal late in the first half to keep Cincy from building any momentum heading into halftime. They also got a 51-yard Rabbit Evans scoop-and-score to build the lead and a pick-six to close the half on their way to a 42-point first-half outburst. Things got sloppy in the second half, but it was still an easy win that included 534 yards and 27 first downs.
On top of that, Devon Dampier was nearly perfect, and the rushing attack cruised as well as the Utes had zero issues remaining undefeated and staying in the driver's seat in the Big 12.
Loser: SMU's CFP Resume
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Talk about an off-the-radar loss on an expectedly quiet college football Saturday without a lot of top-shelf matchups. The SMU Mustangs delivered a stunner. Or maybe "didn't deliver," is a better description.
The 19th-ranked Mustangs headed to sleepy Syracuse, got down early, retook the lead, then allowed an 11-play, 68-yard Orange scoring drive with 18 seconds left to lose 30-27.
Steve Angeli went 7-for-8 on the drive, leading Syracuse to another win after shocking North Carolina last week. For SMU, though, the loss has season-long ramifications. Now, not only do the Mustangs face an uphill battle to compete for the ACC title, the College Football Playoff hopes dwindle to a glimmer.
Again, offensive balance was the biggest issue for Rhett Lashlee's team. While star quarterback Kevin Jennings was scintillating, a Mustangs rushing attack that entered the game 66th nationally mustered just 70 yards.
Syracuse kept things close, then Angeli steadily surged the Orange downfield for a monster upset.
Winner: Notre Dame's Wake-Up Call
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Maybe Notre Dame was looking ahead to next week's crucial game against Miami. Maybe the Fighting Irish simply weren't ready to play, even coming off a bye following the heartbreaking loss at BYU.
Whatever the case, they clung to just a one-point halftime lead over two-win Navy at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Then, they suddenly came to life.
After the break, CJ Carr got the passing game going, and the Irish went on a 21-point barrage to wind up running away from the overmatched Midshipmen with a 35-13 win. This was the Notre Dame team everybody expected to see rather than the one that simply had sleepwalked through the past six quarters.
Defensively, they seemed to catch on to defending the option and got going, too. Whether or not the Irish regained enough of themselves to feel confident heading into next week's top-five showdown against the top-ranked Hurricanes, we'll see soon.
But the Irish are definitely clicking more than they were following a stellar second-half showing.
Loser: Northwestern's Momentum
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For a while, it appeared Northwestern was going to seize its opportunity to continue deep into the season's second half with an opportunity to make the College Football Playoff.
All that disappeared in multiple quick flicks of Dylan Raiola's arm as Oregon's backup quarterback erased a 14-point Wildcats lead with a flurry of terrific passes as the Ducks offense finally took flight in a 34-26 win.
Raiola punctuated a 21-point second-half outburst with a 75-yard scoring strike to Dakorien Moore, erasing Northwestern's hopes to continue rising in the rankings. The 20th-rated Wildcats have experienced a terrific season, but it won't be special.
The pass defense is the culprit, allowing Raiola to throw for 336 yards and a trio of scores where the Ducks had really been struggling.
Even so, the Wildcats are a program on the rise. In a year where they opened a sparkling new stadium, enjoyed a resurgence with coordinator Chip Kelly calling plays for quarterback Aidan Chiles and turning into a tough out for everybody, Northwestern is a terrific story.
But the Ducks ripped out pages of any storybook finish Saturday.
Winner: Wake's Complete-Game Victory
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Jake Dickert is the biggest rising coaching star nobody is talking about.
And Wake Forest just quietly continues to run roughshod through the season with a 13-point loss to top-ranked Miami the only blemish on an otherwise-spotless record that has them ranked 14th and climbing.
Saturday's complete-game, 51-7 wipe-out of Virginia was the latest speedbump in an ACC romp, and it just may have been the Demon Deacons' best showing of the season. Winston-Salem is rocking, and you'd better begin to pay attention.
Wake Forest scored on its first nine possessions until punting late in the fourth quarter of the laugher, but it wasn't just quarterback Gio Lopez and the offense that was brilliant.
The Demon Deacons played lights-out defense throughout, and Kam Sparks added a pair of punt returns for 94 yards to set up two of the scores, as well.
This Wake team is very good, and that shouldn't be a surprise with Dickert leading the way. After Dave Clawson stepped down, Wake grabbed Washington State's head coach, and he promptly won nine games last year. With Lopez in the fold, he's got a field general who can distribute the ball everywhere.
The Deacs are a machine right now.
Loser: Wisconsin's Offensive Impotency
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Colton Joseph has experienced his ups and downs leading Wisconsin's offense in his first year as the Badgers starting quarterback. Saturday, it did not go well for him or his team on either side of the ball.
The former Old Dominion signal-caller accounted for just 96 total yards and a fumble and was pulled from the game in favor of backup Ryan Hopkins. He didn't do any better as Iowa got off to a fast start and never looked back, smothering coach Luke Fickell's team in a 30-0 Hawkeyes victory in Iowa City.
Iowa made sure rival Wisconsin would build no momentum after it was ranked for the first time since Week 2 of the 2023 season. Total Hawkeyes domination took care of that.
The good news for the Badgers and hot-seat coach Fickell is the remaining schedule is navigable with Rutgers, Maryland, Purdue and Minnesota remaining and already five wins on the ledger.
But this was the opportunity for the Badgers to reannounce their place in the Big Ten hierarchy, a rugged road game a week after handling USC 24-7 in Camp Randall. Instead, it never really was close.
Winner: The Bye-Bye Head Coach Boost
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Maryland has to feel pretty badly after leading much of the game but falling in a last-second home loss by three to Illinois.
Out of the three Power Four programs who let go of their head coaches this week, the Terrapins were the only ones that didn't come out victorious, despite looking better than they have all year.
Baylor and North Carolina State – which parted ways with Dave Aranda and Dave Doeren, respectively – cruised to lopsided victories.
The Bears got things started under interim coach Joe Klanderman on Friday night by whipping a UCF team coming off a win over BYU in Orlando. The Bears treated their trip to Central Florida like a Disney World vacation, getting 319 yards and four touchdowns from DJ Lagway in a 41-9 win.
The Wolfpack handled Cal without issue, trouncing the Bears 31-10.
The Bears are now 5-3, and the Wolfpack moved to 4-4 with the victories. Maybe all they needed was a change in leadership? The coming weeks will tell us.
Loser: Billy Napier's Game Management
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A week and a half ago, then-unbeaten James Madison was in the driver's seat for the Group of Six College Football Playoff spot until losing in overtime at Appalachian State.
Thursday, the Dukes' wheels came off against Troy at home in yet another overtime loss that knocked them out of the playoff picture altogether. JMU coach Billy Napier deserves ample blame for the 24-21 setback with a clock management gaffe for the ages.
The Dukes seemed to be cruising toward a game-winning field-goal attempt in regulation, sitting pretty with a 1st-and-10 from the Troy 37 with 31 seconds left and two timeouts. They proceeded to go 1-yard run, timeout, back-to-back negative rushes, timeout, incomplete pass, Hail Mary, overtime.
In OT, Napier eschewed a chip-shot field goal after getting the ball first, electing to go for it and falling short. When the Trojans got the ball back, their own short field goal won the game.
It was just a colossal coaching blunder that will take Napier from a Harrisonburg honeymoon to heartburn. The Dukes deserve plenty of blame for not playing well, but their coach flubbed up the ending.
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