Winners and Losers from College Football's Week 11

It's the very foundation of competition in America. There is always a winner. Someone has to win the game. 

On the other side of the coin, there is always a loser. In most cases, the final scoreboard tally differentiates the winner from the loser. 

This particular story about winners and losers goes beyond the scoreboard, however. In college football's 11th week of the season some teams lost opportunities without losing games. Coaches won perception battles and some officials lost their marbles. 

Here are College Football's Week 11 winners and losers.

Winners: Everyone at Beaver Stadium on Saturday

Penn State University and its supporters have had a tough week. Granted, it has still been light years better than what the real victims of the Sandusky scandal had to endure.

In light of all the happenings at State College this week, Saturday’s game featured incredible class and dignity by all those involved.

Nebraska’s players and coaches were classy. Nittany Lions fans showed empathy for the victims by waving signs promoting help for child abuse victims. Over 100 former Penn State players showed their love and respect for the school, victims, and the university by showing up to support the current team.

Penn State might have lost on the scoreboard, but considering all that we have seen this week, not one person walked out of Beaver Stadium a loser on Saturday.

Losers: Boise State

Again, Boise State had its chance and, again, kicked it away. Facing a TCU team that hasn’t quite lived up to the recent success of its predecessors, Boise State choked on the Smurf Turf.

Giving up a seven play, 73-yard touchdown drive with just over two minutes remaining, at home, to an un-ranked opponent is completely inexcusable for a team that wants to be recognized as one of the nation’s best.

Any shot Boise State had at a BCS bowl has vanished. The Broncos already-slight hope of playing for all the marbles in New Orleans has vanished as well.

Winners: Houston Cougars

By virtue of Boise State’s choke-job on the blue turf, Houston will become the top non-BCS conference team in the nation when the new BCS rankings come out Sunday.

Led by all-everything quarterback Case Keenum, the Cougars are putting up sick offensive numbers on a weekly basis. A certain top-10 appearance in this week’s rankings will have everyone watching Conference USA’s most prolific team down the stretch.

If the Cougars win out and a couple more teams lose in front of them, a well-deserved BCS bowl matchup will await.

Losers: ACC Officials

It was a bad week to be an ACC official.

After officials seemingly refused to blow the whistle on an obviously dead play in the Georgia Tech-Virginia Tech game on Thursday night, Yellow Jackets linebacker Jeremiah Attaochu flailed at Hokies quarterback Logan Thomas and received a costly 15-yard penalty on what should have been a huge third down stop.

Virginia Tech would score on the drive and never look back in its eventual 37-26 victory in Atlanta.

Then on Saturday during the Florida State-Miami game, replay officials reviewed a call and confirmed it correct as called only to re-review it moments later and overturn the call. 

Winners: Oregon Ducks

Oregon had a golden opportunity to go into Stanford and put a stop to the Cardinal/Andrew Luck hype machine for 2011. The Ducks did just that.

Yes, Andrew Luck is still the best thing since sliced bread, but based on its big win at Stanford, Oregon is officially the best team in the Pac-12.

What’s even greater for the Ducks is the fact that Boise State’s loss opened the door for a wealth of one-loss teams to get back into the national title conversation. Oregon might just be at the top of one-loss heap after dismantling the Cardinal.

Losers: Andrew Luck

Stanford had a shot to be considered elite with a win over Oregon. The Cardinal could not get the job done and future No. 1 draft pick Andrew Luck looked only slightly better than ordinary in the process.

Luck’s Heisman hopes had to be damaged a bit in this one. The senior quarterback threw for less than 300 yards and had two costly interceptions, as well as a lost fumble in his only game against a top-ten opponent.

Heisman voters will not react kindly to Luck’s miscues against the Ducks. 

Winners: Trent Richardson

Now that the top two Heisman candidates each have a loss, the player whose team won on the same day the frontrunner’s team lost might have gained a slight leg up on all the competition with just a few weeks left in the season.

Andrew Luck’s three turnover performance against Oregon came on the same night Alabama running back Trent Richardson rushed for 127 yards on 32 carries in the Tide’s 24-7 win over Mississippi State.

Richardson performed well in Alabama’s only loss of the season against No. 1 LSU. If you want to compare Luck’s and Richardson’s performance in a loss, Richardson wins in a landslide. 

Winners: Georgia Bulldogs

The Georgia Bulldogs left no doubt about who should represent the SEC East in Atlanta on the first Saturday in December.

Needing a win over Auburn to further solidify its hold on first place in the division, Georgia defeated the Tigers in blowout fashion.

Leading 35-7 at halftime, the ‘Dawgs cruised in the second half of their 45-7 victory over the young Auburn squad. Now all that separates Georgia from the Dome is a matchup with the beleaguered Kentucky Wildcats who lost by 30 to Vanderbilt on Saturday.  

Losers: South Carolina Gamecocks

Even though South Carolina defeated Florida this week, it lost what was likely its last chance to play the SEC West champion for the conference championship in the Georgia Dome come December.

If you want to be be completely honest, the Gamecocks lost that title shot, for all intents and purposes, last month when running back Marcus Lattimore went down with a knee injury. It just became nearly official this weekend when Georgia throttled Auburn giving the ‘Dawgs a stranglehold on the SEC East title.

The Gamecocks will still probably get an invite to a post-New Year’s Day bowl, but that pales in comparison to claiming back-to-back SEC East titles on your resume. 

Winners: Bill Snyder

Kansas State continues to over-achieve. After surprising pretty much everybody with their 7-0 start, the Wildcats gave then-No. 3 Oklahoma State all it wanted last week, and dispatched Texas A&M in four overtimes on Saturday.

Bill Snyder continues to work wonders in Manhattan during his second tenure as the program’s head coach.

Snyder resurrected the program his first time around (1989-2005) and he has already clinched the Wildcats third straight .500 or better season. 

Losers: The Ohio State University

Just when it looked like the Big Ten Leader’s division race was going to come down to a Penn State-Ohio State battle in Columbus next week, the Buckeyes traveled to Purdue and lost to a 4-5 Boilermakers team that was coming off of back-to-back blowouts at the hands of Michigan and Wisconsin.

Ohio State did not even make it to the 300 offensive yard mark against the defensively inept Boilermakers.

On the bright side, the Buckeyes are still bowl eligible and I hear Houston, TX is lovely in late December. 

Winners: James Franklin

Vanderbilt (5-5) head coach James Franklin is making a ton of money for himself. He has the Commodores playing really good football considering this was supposed to be another three-wins-or-less season for Vanderbilt.

Vandy pounded Kentucky 38-8 on Saturday to get to its fifth win of the season. Now, all that stands between the Commodores and a bowl game is Tennessee (4-6) and Wake Forest (5-5).

There’s no way this kind of success can be sustained for more than a couple years at Vanderbilt. The sooner Franklin understands that, the better. There’s better than a decent chance he’ll have the opportunity to capitalize on year one’s Vandy success with a fat, juicy paycheck to coach a real football program.

Losers: The Pac 12 South

Believe it or not, UCLA has a chance to win the Pac-12’s south division. Unfortunately for the Bruins, that chance was slightly hampered by becoming Utah’s third consecutive Pac-12 win in Salt Lake City Saturday. It was hampered less when Arizona State lost to Washington State later Saturday night.

UCLA dropped to 5-5 overall and 4-3 in the conference. Arizona State fell to 6-4 and 4-3 in the conference as well. By virtue of their head-to-head victory over the Sun Devils, UCLA holds the tiebreaker.

The race is not officially over with Arizona State still having to play rival Arizona and California. UCLA gets Pac-12 doormat Colorado next week before finishing up with USC. 

No matter who wins the division, the conference loses in year one of divisional play.

Winners: West Virginia Mountaineers

West Virginia rebounded from its loss to Louisville last week by defeating No. 23 Cincinnati at Nippert Stadium on Saturday. It was only the Bearcats first Big East loss this season, but it leaves Cincy no more room for error if they want to represent the conference in a BCS bowl game.

We won’t get into potential championship scenarios for the conference because it is quite confusing at the moment. West Virginia’s win over Cincinnati keeps the Mountaineers alive in the conversation for a BCS bowl. If that’s not considered a “win” tell me what is. 

Losers: Ole Miss Football Program

An already bad situation got even worse in Oxford this week. Beginning with Houston Nutt’s firing early Monday and culminating with a 20-point loss to the WAC’s Louisiana Tech Bulldogs, this was one of the worst weeks at Ole Miss in a long time.

Former Ole Miss great Archie Manning has been tasked with finding a new athletic director and a new head coach for the Rebels. 

Losers: Mike Sherman

Texas A&M had a 10 point lead with just over six minutes remaining at No. 14 Kansas State on Saturday. What could possibly go wrong for the Aggies? Well, if you have watched A&M play this season, you know exactly what can go wrong and chances are you expected it to go wrong in the final few minutes of play.

Kansas State tied the game and sent it into overtime.

The game went four overtimes to be exact. And, of course, Texas A&M ended up losing another game in which it had a double-digit lead.

Very few people will disagree that Mike Sherman is on the hot seat. A preseason top-ten team must do better than five losses with the amount of talent this Aggies team has on the roster.