If you can only spare one window, make it Saturday Early. Its Avg. Game Rank of 4.0 is the best of the weekend by a wide margin, and all four of its games kick off at 11:00 AM: LSU at Auburn, Indiana at Michigan, Pittsburgh at Miami (FL) and Texas Tech at Cincinnati. Saturday Evening is next at 9.0, and it has the Game of the Week.

A quick note on the numbers. Every team rank in this guide comes from The Precedent Ratings, with the AP Poll used only for comparison. The number in front of each game is its Game Rank, which orders the weekend’s games using both teams’ ratings. In each window, a lower Avg. Game Rank means a stronger slate. Only FBS-vs-FBS games are included, and all kickoff times are Central.

Game of the Week

Ole Miss (#15) at Texas (#8), Texas -3.5, over/under 53.5, Saturday 6:30 PM, ABC

The top game on the weekend’s board, and the two rankings see it the other way around. The AP Poll has Ole Miss at #7 and Texas at #19, while The Precedent Ratings have Texas seven spots ahead. Both have lost to Florida: Ole Miss 52-28, Texas 27-24. Ole Miss has won two in a row, and Texas has lost two straight. Texas edge rusher Colin Simmons is doubtful with an ankle injury, and running back Hollywood Smothers is questionable. Ole Miss has two starting offensive linemen, Terez Davis and Brycen Sanders, listed as questionable, and running back Kewan Lacy is probable.

Army has won two in a row and Tulsa one. Duke has lost two straight, and UMass has lost three. UMass and UConn have both lost to Miami (OH), each by three points or fewer: UMass 20-19, UConn 24-21.

Air Force has won four in a row, even without quarterback Liam Szarka, who is out for the season with a lower-leg injury; Evan Medders has taken over. Wyoming has won two straight. The two have a pair of common opponents: both beat Northern Illinois, Air Force 28-7 and Wyoming 41-23, and both lost to North Dakota State, Air Force 38-32 and Wyoming 28-0. NC State and Stanford have both lost to Wake Forest, NC State 38-14 and Stanford 57-3.

Miami (FL) and Texas Tech are both unbeaten with six straight wins, and their opponents, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, have each lost two in a row. Pittsburgh is without starting quarterback Mason Heintschel, who is out for the season with a torn ACL. LSU tight end Trey’Dez Green is off the availability report for the first time since his knee injury at Ole Miss and is expected to play at Auburn, while linebacker Whit Weeks remains out. Indiana comes in off a loss, and Michigan off a win.

BYU, unbeaten and the top team in The Precedent Ratings, has won six in a row and goes on the road right after beating #25 Notre Dame. UCF has lost two straight and is not expected to start quarterback Alonza Barnett III, who is recovering from a hamstring injury, so Keyone Jenkins would make his fifth straight start. Both have beaten TCU, BYU 17-10 and UCF 21-13. Alabama has lost two in a row, and Texas A&M lists five players as questionable, including receiver Mario Craver and defensive end Anto Saka. Both have played Kentucky: Alabama won 45-17, Texas A&M lost 31-21. Mississippi State quarterback Kamario Taylor is questionable with a foot injury. Iowa and Minnesota have both beaten Michigan, Iowa 20-19 and Minnesota 20-14, and both beaten Washington, Iowa 41-24 and Minnesota 27-24. Kirk Ferentz has named Jeremy Hecklinski Iowa’s starting quarterback over a healthy Hank Brown.

Kentucky has won five in a row, and Vanderbilt has lost four straight. Arizona has won four straight and plays #11 Texas Tech next week. Arizona and Iowa State have two common opponents: both lost to BYU, Iowa State 24-10 and Arizona 28-17, and both beat West Virginia, Iowa State 45-42 and Arizona 52-31. USC has won two in a row, and Wisconsin comes in off a loss. Both have beaten Penn State, USC 31-23 and Wisconsin 24-20.

Utah is unbeaten with six straight wins, and Houston, #3 in The Precedent Ratings, has won four in a row, so one of those streaks ends Saturday night. New Mexico has won three straight and hosts North Dakota State.

By the Numbers

• Unbeaten teams: six teams are still unbeaten, and none of them play each other this weekend.

• Biggest line: Miami (FL) -19.5 over Pittsburgh.

• Closest lines: 1.5 points in three games, Duke at Virginia (Virginia -1.5), Army at Tulsa (Tulsa -1.5) and San Diego State at Colorado State (San Diego State -1.5).

• Highest total: 63.5, in North Texas at Navy and San Diego State at Colorado State.

• Lowest total: 39.5, Miami (OH) at Central Michigan.

• Longest active win streaks: James Madison has won seven in a row, the longest in the country. Among the games in this guide, Miami (FL), Texas Tech, BYU and Utah have each won six straight.

Sleeper of the Week

Tennessee (#22) at South Carolina (#65), South Carolina -2.5, over/under 50.5, Saturday 2:30 PM, ESPN, Disney+

This game sits 13th on the weekend’s board, buried in a crowded afternoon window. The Precedent Ratings put Tennessee 43 spots ahead of South Carolina, and the AP Poll has the Volunteers at #11 with the Gamecocks unranked, yet South Carolina is the home favorite.

Storyline to Watch

BYU (#1) at UCF (#62), BYU -6.5, over/under 43.5, Saturday 2:30 PM, Fox

BYU leads The Precedent Ratings and is #2 in the AP Poll after beating Notre Dame last week. Now it goes on the road to face a UCF team that has lost two straight. The Cougars have won six in a row, and they will be without running back LJ Martin. UCF is expected to go with Keyone Jenkins at quarterback again. The two have one common opponent, TCU, and both beat the Horned Frogs by seven or eight points.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

Eighteen years later, City has won eight Premier League titles and a Champions League. And on September 30, an independent commission ruled that for nine of those seasons, the club broke the league’s financial rules.

Most American leagues restrain spending with a salary cap. The Premier League doesn’t have one. Last November its clubs had a chance to adopt something close and turned it down. To understand what City did, and what could happen next, it helps to go back to the beginning.

Before the Money

City was never a small club. It won English league titles in 1937 and 1968 and has always had a loyal crowd in a city it shares with Manchester United. But the decades before the takeover were rough. City dropped all the way to the third tier for the 1998-99 season, climbed back, and by 2007 belonged to Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand. Thai authorities froze his assets back home, and the club’s money troubles soon became public. City finished ninth in 2007-08. It was a decent team owned by a man who couldn’t pay for it.

A Club Funded Like a Country

Then the money arrived, and it was different from what we typically see. Most owners eventually need a club to pay for itself. Sheikh Mansour didn’t. By the time City won its first Premier League title in 2012, sealed by Sergio Agüero’s goal in stoppage time on the final day, the club had spent nearly £500 million on transfers.

The early titles were only the start. Pep Guardiola arrived in 2016, and City became the best team in England. It was the first club to reach 100 points in a Premier League season, in 2017-18. From 2021 through 2024, City won four titles in a row, which no English club had done before. In the 2022-23 season, City won the Premier League, FA Cup, and Champions League, and that’s about as good as club soccer gets.

Other state-linked owners soon followed. Qatar Sports Investments, an arm of the Qatari state, bought Paris Saint-Germain in 2011. In October 2021, a group led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund bought Newcastle United for about £305 million, with the fund putting up 80% of the money. The Premier League approved that sale after receiving legally binding assurances that the Saudi state would not control the club.

These deals made sportswashing part of the soccer conversation. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, argue that governments buy famous clubs to improve their global image and draw attention away from their records at home. Many fans see it differently. Newcastle supporters, for example, got rid of an unpopular owner and finally had a club that could compete. Both views have a lot of support, and both have been loud.

Rules That Limit Losses

European soccer’s governing body saw the problem coming. UEFA introduced financial fair play rules in 2010, aimed at what its president, Michel Platini, called “financial doping.” The Premier League adopted its own version in 2013. Under what became the Profit and Sustainability Rules, a club could lose up to £105 million over three seasons, as long as its owner covered most of that amount. Anything beyond that brought punishment.

That’s where the NFL comparison helps. The NFL has had a salary cap since 1994. It’s a hard ceiling with a floor beneath it, and both are set by a formula tied to league revenue and the players’ share in the collective bargaining agreement. Every team gets the same cap. If the Chiefs signed the richest sponsorship in sports tomorrow, they wouldn’t gain any cap room on the other 31 teams. The money would go to the owner, not the roster.

The Premier League’s rules worked the other way around. Instead of capping what a club could spend, they capped how much it could lose, so more revenue meant more room to spend. A huge new sponsorship deal could pay for a star striker and keep the books within the rules. That’s why sponsorship deals sit at the center of the City case.

Baseball falls somewhere in between. MLB has no cap, but teams that go over a payroll threshold pay an escalating luxury tax. The Dodgers can spend whatever they like, as long as they’re willing to pay a steep tax on the money above the line.

The Premier League has already put something more like the NFL’s system to a vote. On November 21, 2025, its clubs voted on a proposal called top-to-bottom anchoring, which would have limited every club’s squad spending to five times what the last-place team receives in league payments. All 20 clubs would have faced the same ceiling, which is how a salary cap works. The proposal failed, with 12 clubs against, 7 in favor, and one abstaining.

In the same meeting, the clubs approved a replacement for the old loss limits. Starting this season, a squad cost ratio limits spending on wages, transfer fees, and agents’ fees to 85% of a club’s revenue, counting profit from player sales. Clubs can go over that line for a while by paying the league a fee, a bit like baseball’s luxury tax, but not indefinitely. The basic logic hasn’t changed, though. A club that earns more can still spend more. And City’s case will be judged under the rules that were in effect when the violations happened.

The Verdict

This isn’t City’s first fight over its finances. In 2020, UEFA banned the club from European competition for two seasons, saying owner money had been disguised as sponsorship income. City appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which overturned the ban and cut the fine from €30 million to €10 million. The court found that most of UEFA’s allegations were either not proven or too old to prosecute, and the fine that remained was for obstructing UEFA’s investigation. City won, and won big.

The Premier League’s case was larger. The league brought charges in February 2023, most of them covering every season from 2009-10 through 2017-18. The hearing ended in December 2024, and the decision took nearly two more years. Even the commission called the delay regrettable.

The findings were severe. The commission ruled that City set up sham contracts with commercial partners to inflate revenue and reduce costs by more than £900 million. The league said City was guilty of every charge involving its financial rules and three of the four alleged breaches of its duty to cooperate with the investigation. Reports put the total at 114 of the 115 charges.

City says the decision contains clear errors and filed its appeal on October 1. This time it can’t go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. A new three-person panel will hear the case, and the chair of England’s new independent football regulator expects that hearing by January. Sanctions will be decided in a separate hearing with no set date. The options include fines, transfer bans, points deductions, and, at the extreme, expulsion from the league.

What punishment fits a case like this? The Premier League has already answered smaller versions of that question.

The Deeper Dive

In November 2023, Everton became the first club in Premier League history to have points taken away for breaking the spending rules. It had gone £19.5 million over the £105 million loss limit. The commission took away 10 points, a record. Everton didn’t dispute the breach, only the size of the punishment, and won a reduction to six points on appeal in February 2024.

Weeks later, Everton was found in breach again, this time by £16.6 million for the next assessment period. A second commission set a starting point of three points for any breach, added two for the size of this one, and then reduced the penalty to two points, partly because the assessment years overlapped with the first case and the club had admitted the violation. That brought Everton’s total for the season to eight points. The club survived, but spent much of the season near the bottom of the table.

Nottingham Forest went over by more. As a recently promoted club, Forest had a lower limit of £61 million, because two of its three assessment years were spent outside the Premier League. It went over by £34.5 million. The commission started at six points and reduced that to four in March 2024 for an early plea and cooperation. Forest argued on appeal that a player sale shortly after the deadline should count in its favor. The appeal board disagreed, and the deduction stood. Forest stayed up anyway.

Those cases are the best-known precedents for spending-rule deductions, and the scale difference is huge. Everton and Forest went over their limits by tens of millions of pounds. City was found to have distorted its finances by more than £900 million across nine seasons.

The kind of violation matters as much as the size. Everton and Forest spent too much, and they did it in the open, where the accounts showed it. Their cases were about how much. City’s case is about what the accounts didn’t show. The commission ruled that sponsorship money was really owner money and that some costs were hidden from the club’s accounts. City disputes those findings. So far, the league has shown what an overspend in plain view is worth. It hasn’t yet said what concealment is worth.

Readers can do the math several ways. One view says punishment should scale with the money, which points somewhere very large. Another says the penalty should match the damage to the competition, and the titles City won during those years are part of that picture. A third, the one City will argue on appeal, says the commission got it wrong. Whatever the panel decides will set a precedent for the cases that follow.

For the Curious

The Club by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg is the best starting point for an American reader trying to understand how the Premier League became the richest league in the world. The authors, two Wall Street Journal reporters, write for people who didn’t grow up with the sport, and the chapters on how foreign owners and global TV money arrived explain a lot of what led up to this case. The one caveat is that it was published in 2018, before the Premier League brought its charges, so it covers the background rather than the case itself.

Football Leaks by Rafael Buschmann and Michael Wulzinger is the inside story of the Der Spiegel reporting that led to UEFA’s case against City. It’s a gripping account of how the financial side of the sport actually works. Readers should know the book is based on leaked internal documents, that the self-described whistleblower behind the leaks was later convicted of related crimes in Portugal, and that City has disputed both how the material was obtained and how it was interpreted. It’s worth reading with that in mind.

Worth Watching

MLB’s labor deal expires December 1, and the bargaining will start in earnest almost as soon as the World Series ends. Owners are widely expected to push for a salary cap, which the players union has fought for decades. After an issue about the Premier League’s spending rules, it’ll be worth watching whether baseball moves any closer to the NFL’s system.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

A quick note on the numbers. Every team rank in this article comes from The Precedent Ratings, which count each team’s wins, losses and its opponents’ records, with the AP Poll used only for comparison. Teams with the same rating share a rank. Statistics use FBS-vs-FBS games only, and early in the season many teams are still tied, so read the lower ranks loosely.

Weekend Recap

Eight teams ranked in the AP Poll lost this weekend, including five of the top seven: No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Notre Dame, No. 5 Indiana, No. 6 Alabama and No. 7 Texas. It was the first time in the poll’s history that five of its top seven lost on the same regular-season day. Seven of the eight were in The Precedent’s top 25 entering the week, among them #1 Alabama, #3 Texas and #5 Indiana. Four of the eight lost as favorites to teams that won outright.

By the numbers

• 59 games played, the most of any week this season

• Home teams won 33 of 59 (56 percent), against a season average of 63 percent

• 27 one-score games (46 percent; the season average is 37 percent)

• 50.8 points per game, combined

• 6 unbeaten teams remain, down from 9 a week ago

• 2 teams are still winless

• 15 games were won by the team trailing at halftime, and 9 by the team trailing entering the fourth quarter

Auburn 27, Georgia 24

Georgia led 14-7 after the first quarter, then Auburn scored the next 17 points to lead 17-14 at halftime and 24-14 after three. Georgia tied it in the fourth, but Gunner Stockton fumbled with under a minute left and Alex McPherson won it with a 34-yard field goal as time expired. Auburn was a 19.5-point underdog, tied for the largest upset of the weekend by the line. Georgia fell from #7 to a tie for #17 in The Precedent Ratings and from #1 to #5 in the AP Poll. Auburn rose from #37 to a tie for #23 and has the fourth-toughest remaining schedule in the country.

BYU 28, Notre Dame 24

BYU led after every quarter: 7-3, 21-10 at halftime and 21-16 after three. Bear Bachmeier, who ran for two touchdowns and caught another, threw the go-ahead touchdown to Walker Lyons with 1:47 left, and Notre Dame’s last pass from the BYU 9 fell incomplete. BYU won outright as a 10.5-point home underdog. It moved from #9 to #1 in The Precedent Ratings, at 0.556, and from #8 to #2 in the AP Poll. Notre Dame slipped from #23 to #25 here and from #2 to #4 in the AP.

Ohio State 19, Indiana 15

Ohio State led 10-7 at halftime and 13-7 after three quarters in Bloomington. On fourth down in the final minute, Nick Marsh’s apparent go-ahead touchdown catch was ruled out of bounds, ending Indiana’s 22-game winning streak. Ohio State, a 3-point favorite, covered. Indiana moved from #5 to #4 in The Precedent Ratings, because its loss came against a 6-1 team, and fell from #5 to #6 in the AP. Ohio State rose from #30 to #19 here and from #4 to #3 in the AP.

Tennessee 26, Alabama 10

Tennessee led 9-0 after the first quarter and 12-10 at halftime, then shut Alabama out over the final two quarters. Tennessee was a 7.5-point underdog, and Alabama fell 23.5 points short of the line. It was Alabama’s second straight loss, and it dropped from #1 to #10 in The Precedent Ratings and from #6 to #13 in the AP. Tennessee rose from #37 to #22 here and from #14 to #11 in the AP.

Florida 27, Texas 24

Texas led 10-0 after one quarter and 17-10 at halftime. Florida tied it 17-17 in the third quarter and outscored Texas 10-7 in the fourth, winning as an 11.5-point underdog with its backup quarterback, Tramell Jones Jr., starting. It was Texas’s second straight loss. Texas fell from #3 to #8 in The Precedent Ratings and from #7 to #19 in the AP. Florida moved from #15 to #12 and into the AP Poll at #20.

Miami (FL) 43, Florida State 35 (2OT)

Florida State led 21-14 after three quarters, and the game was tied 28-28 at the end of regulation. Malachi Toney caught the winning touchdown in the second overtime, one of his two scores, and Darian Mensah threw for 326 yards. Miami was a 20.5-point favorite and fell 12.5 points short of the line. It stays #2 in The Precedent Ratings and moved from #3 to #1 in the AP Poll.

LSU 31, Mississippi State 0

LSU led 21-0 at halftime and 31-0 after three quarters, against a Mississippi State team playing without its starting quarterback and starting running back. Sam Leavitt threw four touchdowns. LSU covered a 17.5-point line, rose from #18 to #9 in The Precedent Ratings and from #22 to #18 in the AP. Mississippi State fell from #8 to #26 here and out of the AP Poll.

Ole Miss 31, Missouri 3

Ole Miss led 21-3 at halftime and did not allow a point after the first quarter. As a 5.5-point favorite, it covered by 22.5. Ole Miss jumped from #34 to #15 in The Precedent Ratings and from #9 to #7 in the AP. Missouri fell from #12 to a tie for #23 here and from #13 to #22 in the AP.

Other results: Houston led 28-17 after three quarters and held off Oklahoma State 35-32, moving from #14 to #3 in The Precedent Ratings. Kentucky trailed Oklahoma 13-7 entering the fourth quarter, scored the last 14 points and won 21-13 as a 6.5-point underdog. Kentucky is #5. UCLA beat Wisconsin 17-7 to stay unbeaten, and Texas Tech beat Arizona State 53-25. Utah won 27-24 at Colorado but did not cover a 14.5-point line. Charlotte beat Temple 38-31, also as a 19.5-point underdog.

The biggest deficits overcome, measured at the end of a quarter

• UAB over East Carolina, 30-17 (OT), after trailing by 11

• Appalachian State over Coastal Carolina, 35-32, after trailing by 10

• Florida over Texas, 27-24, after trailing by 10

• Kansas State over Kansas, 35-24, after trailing by 10

• New Mexico over Hawaii, 21-10, after trailing by 10

• Rutgers over Maryland, 37-30, after trailing by 10

Teams that trailed entering the fourth quarter and won

• Oregon over Nebraska (down 8)

• West Virginia over Cincinnati (down 7)

• Miami (FL) over Florida State (down 7)

• Kentucky over Oklahoma (down 6)

• UAB over East Carolina (down 5)

• Air Force over UNLV (down 4)

• New Mexico over Hawaii (down 3)

• San Diego State over Fresno State (down 1)

• Northwestern over Michigan State (down 1)

Of the 59 games with a line, favorites won 41 and covered 27, and three games pushed.

Underdogs that won outright

• Auburn over Georgia, 27-24 (19.5)

• Charlotte over Temple, 38-31 (19.5)

• Florida over Texas, 27-24 (11.5)

• BYU over Notre Dame, 28-24 (10.5)

• San Diego State over Fresno State, 26-23 (7.5)

• Tennessee over Alabama, 26-10 (7.5)

• Tulane over Memphis, 31-17 (7.0)

• Ball State over Bowling Green, 32-31 (6.5)

• Boston College over Pittsburgh, 27-21 (6.5)

• Kentucky over Oklahoma, 21-13 (6.5)

• Arkansas over Vanderbilt, 31-21 (6.0)

• Rutgers over Maryland, 37-30 (5.5)

• TCU over Baylor, 17-6 (5.5)

• UAB over East Carolina, 30-17 (5.5)

• Washington over Purdue, 38-26 (3.5)

• Missouri State over Kennesaw State, 24-21 (3.0)

• North Carolina over Duke, 24-20 (3.0)

• Middle Tennessee over Delaware, 33-30 (1.5)

Favorites that fell furthest short of the line

• Temple, favored by 19.5, lost by 7 (26.5 short)

• Alabama, favored by 7.5, lost by 16 (23.5 short)

• Georgia, favored by 19.5, lost by 3 (22.5 short)

• Memphis, favored by 7.0, lost by 14 (21.0 short)

• East Carolina, favored by 5.5, lost by 13 (18.5 short)

Favorites that beat the line by the most

• Army, favored by 2.5 over Florida Atlantic, won by 32 (29.5 better)

• Ohio, favored by 15.5 over Sacramento State, won by 41 (25.5 better)

• Texas State, favored by 14.0 over Colorado State, won by 39 (25.0 better)

• Louisiana, favored by 3.0 over Troy, won by 27 (24.0 better)

• Wake Forest, favored by 10.0 over California, won by 34 (24.0 better)

Rankings Talk

Biggest gap with the AP Poll

Utah is #10 in the AP Poll and #43 in The Precedent Ratings. It is 6-0 with an average scoring margin of +20.0 per game, seventh-best in the country, but its five FBS opponents are a combined 8-18: Arkansas, Utah State, Iowa State, Kansas and Colorado. That is the 111th-ranked schedule so far, and Utah’s 27-24 win at a 1-4 Colorado this week pulled its rating down.

Oregon is #5 in The Precedent Ratings and outside the AP top 25. It is 4-2, with an average scoring margin of just +2.8, but its five FBS opponents are a combined 23-6, the toughest schedule any team has played. Its losses came to Oklahoma State and unbeaten UCLA, and its wins include Boise State, USC and, this week, Nebraska.

The ratings keep spreading out. There are now 99 distinct ratings among 138 teams, up from 88 a week ago, and 10 teams remain at 0.000, down from 14. BYU leads at 0.556, with Miami (FL) at 0.500 and Houston at 0.495 behind it.

The week’s story is how many of the top teams lost, and to whom. Five of The Precedent’s top eight entering the weekend lost: #1 Alabama, #3 Texas, #5 Indiana, #7 Georgia and #8 Mississippi State. The ratings measure a team’s record against the records of the teams it played, so the losses landed very differently. Indiana lost to a 6-1 Ohio State and moved up a spot, to #4. Alabama lost to Tennessee and fell nine spots. Georgia lost at home to a 4-2 Auburn and fell ten. Even so, the AP and The Precedent now agree on 20 of their 25 ranked teams.

Biggest risers

• BYU, #9 to #1: It beat a Notre Dame team that was 6-0, and its opponents’ combined record went from 8-10 to 15-12.

• TCU, #111 to #71: It beat Baylor 17-6 as a 5.5-point underdog, and its earlier opponents North Carolina and Arkansas State both won.

• SMU, #81 to #39: It beat Virginia 23-13, and its opponents’ combined record went from 5-13 to 11-17.

• Boston College, #107 to #70: It beat Pittsburgh 27-21 as a 6.5-point underdog.

• Rutgers and Ball State: Each picked up its first win that counts in the ratings and moved off 0.000.

Biggest fallers

• Alabama, #1 to #10: It lost its second straight game, 26-10 at Tennessee.

• Mississippi State, #8 to #26: It lost 31-0 at LSU.

• Nebraska, #15 to #36: It lost 17-14 at Oregon after leading entering the fourth quarter.

• Wisconsin, #11 to #26: It lost 17-7 at UCLA.

• Texas, #3 to #8: It lost its second straight game, 27-24 at home to Florida.

• Baylor, #25 to #51: It lost 17-6 to TCU as a 5.5-point favorite.

Clemson is #28 in The Precedent Ratings but #96 in scoring margin, at -6.4 points per game. New Mexico has the fourth-best scoring margin in the country, +22.4 per game, but sits at #93 because it has played the second-easiest schedule.

Oregon, James Madison and North Dakota State are all in The Precedent’s top 17, and none of them is in the AP top 25. The longest line on the chart belongs to Utah, #10 in the AP and #43 in The Precedent Ratings.

The Rankings

Teams with the same rating share a rank and are listed alphabetically.

The SEC is still the top-rated conference, though its rating slipped from 0.381 to 0.369. The Big 12 moved up a spot to tie the Big Ten for #2, both at 0.319.

The full Precedent Ratings, with every conference’s standings and every team’s schedule, are attached for subscribers.

Loose Ends

• Georgia, Alabama and Texas all lost on the same day for the first time since 1996, and the AP’s top two lost on the same day for the first time since 2012.

• Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin is expected to miss several weeks with a throwing-shoulder injury; true freshman Luke Fahey replaced him against Indiana.

• Four games went to overtime: UAB over East Carolina (30-17), Ball State over Bowling Green (32-31), Miami (FL) over Florida State (43-35, two overtimes) and Buffalo over UMass (25-18).

• The College Football Playoff is reported to be nearing a deal to expand to 24 teams starting in 2027, with a handshake agreement with ESPN on the broadcast. No formal approval has been announced, and conference championship games could be affected by the extra week the format needs.

• Oregon has played the toughest schedule so far. All five of the toughest remaining schedules belong to SEC teams, led by Vanderbilt, Ole Miss and Arkansas.

• James Madison is 7-0, #14 in The Precedent Ratings and has the second-easiest remaining schedule.

• Six teams are still unbeaten: BYU, James Madison, Miami (FL), Texas Tech, UCLA and Utah.

Looking Ahead

There are no unbeaten-versus-unbeaten games next week. Utah, one of the six, hosts #3 Houston.

Top games for next week by The Precedent Ratings:

• Ole Miss (#15) at Texas (#8), Saturday, 6:30 PM

• LSU (#9) at Auburn (#23), Saturday, 11:00 AM

• Indiana (#4) at Michigan (#34), Saturday, 11:00 AM

• Pittsburgh (#40) at Miami (FL) (#2), Saturday, 11:00 AM

• Houston (#3) at Utah (#43), Saturday, time not yet set

• USC (#13) at Wisconsin (#26), Saturday, 6:30 PM

• Texas Tech (#11) at Cincinnati (#32), Saturday, time not yet set

• BYU (#1) at UCF (#62), Saturday, time not yet set

• Texas A&M (#54) at Alabama (#10), Saturday, 2:30 PM

• Oklahoma (#36) at Mississippi State (#26), Saturday, 2:30 PM

All times are Central. Friday’s Weekend Viewing Guide will break the slate into time windows and list the top four games in each.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

If you can only spare one window this weekend, make it Saturday Evening (Avg. Game Rank 6.8). All four games kick at 6:30 PM: Kentucky at Oklahoma, Notre Dame at BYU, Wisconsin at UCLA and Oklahoma State at Houston. Saturday Early (Avg. Game Rank 7.2) is a close second, and it’s where you’ll find the Game of the Week, Florida at Texas at 11:00 AM.

A quick note on the numbers. Every team rank in this guide comes from The Precedent Ratings, with the AP Poll used only for comparison. The number in front of each game is its Game Rank, which orders the weekend’s games using both teams’ ratings. In each window, a lower Avg. Game Rank means a stronger slate. Only FBS-vs-FBS games are included, and all kickoff times are Central.

Game of the Week

Florida (#15) at Texas (#3), Texas -10.5, over/under 51.5, Saturday 11:00 AM, ABC

The weekend’s top game by Game Rank puts the third-rated team in the country against the 15th. The AP sees a wider gap, with Texas seventh and Florida unranked. The two have no common opponents yet. Texas comes in off a loss and Florida has dropped two in a row, and the Gators may be without starting quarterback Aaron Philo, who is questionable with a shoulder injury. If he can’t go, Florida would turn to a quarterback making his first career start.

Purdue has won two in a row while Washington has lost three straight, and both played Minnesota: Purdue won 41-13, Washington lost 27-24. Washington may also be without starting quarterback Demond Williams Jr., who is questionable with a rib injury and not expected to play, and starting linebacker Xe’ree Alexander is out with a high-ankle sprain. Memphis brings a three-game win streak to Tulane. Appalachian State, on a two-game skid, has a quarterback question of its own, with Malachi Singleton questionable with an ankle injury, and faces James Madison next week.

Two of the weekend’s hottest teams meet in Bloomington: Indiana has won six in a row and Ohio State four. Ohio State will be short-handed, with running back Ja’Kobi Jackson, who has started recent games, among several players ruled out. Mississippi State and LSU both come in off a loss, and Mississippi State starting quarterback Kamario Taylor is questionable with a foot injury. Cincinnati and West Virginia share a common opponent in Arizona, which beat Cincinnati 34-7 and West Virginia 52-31. West Virginia has lost three straight, and Cincinnati faces Texas Tech next week.

Georgia, now No. 1 in the AP poll after a 20-17 win at Alabama, has won six straight. The Bulldogs will be without running back Chauncey Bowens, their touchdown leader, while Auburn is missing sack leader Xavier Atkins to a suspension. Both beat Vanderbilt: Georgia 38-14, Auburn 21-15. Alabama, coming off that loss to Georgia, visits a Tennessee team that has won two in a row, and Tennessee starting quarterback Faizon Brandon is questionable with a shoulder injury; a backup is reportedly set to start. Missouri has won two straight and beat Florida 45-17, the same Florida team that beat Ole Miss 52-28. Missouri quarterback Austin Simmons, listed as probable, returns to Oxford, where he used to play. UNLV and Air Force each carry three-game win streaks, and both played North Dakota State: UNLV won 13-7, Air Force lost 38-32.

Notre Dame and BYU are the only unbeaten teams meeting this weekend, and Notre Dame’s six-game win streak ties for the longest in the country. BYU will play without starting running back LJ Martin, out with an ankle injury. Kentucky has won four in a row, but leading rusher CJ Baxter is questionable; Oklahoma’s key offensive tackle Michael Fasusi is also questionable and nearing a return. UCLA has won five straight, including a 17-15 win at Oregon, but reportedly lost starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava to a season-ending knee injury in that game. Wisconsin arrives with four straight wins. Oklahoma State (four straight) and Houston (three straight) both beat UCF, Oklahoma State 42-28 and Houston 27-17.

Nebraska and Oregon both come in off a loss. Oregon is still without starting quarterback Dante Moore, out with a concussion. Nebraska is without starting safety Jamir Conn. Utah has won five in a row while Colorado has lost three straight, and Utah faces Houston next week. Wake Forest brings a three-game win streak to California.

By the Numbers

• Unbeaten: 9 teams are still perfect, and only one game matches two of them: Notre Dame at BYU.

• Biggest line: Miami (FL) -21.5 against Florida State.

• Closest lines: three games at 1.5 points: UNLV -1.5 at Air Force, West Virginia -1.5 against Cincinnati, and Appalachian State -1.5 at Coastal Carolina.

• Highest total: 63.5, Cincinnati at West Virginia.

• Lowest total: 40.5, Northern Illinois at Wyoming.

• Longest win streaks: James Madison, Indiana, Georgia and Notre Dame have each won six in a row. None of them play each other; Indiana hosts Ohio State (four straight), and Notre Dame visits BYU (five straight).

Sleeper of the Week

UNLV (#46) at Air Force (#44), UNLV -1.5, over/under 48.5, Saturday 2:30 PM, CBSSN

Two teams two spots apart in the ratings, both on three-game win streaks, and neither in the AP poll. The road team is a slim favorite in one of the weekend’s three closest lines. They also share a common opponent: UNLV beat North Dakota State 13-7, while Air Force lost to North Dakota State 38-32.

Storyline to Watch

Notre Dame (#23) at BYU (#9), Notre Dame -10.5, over/under 46.5, Saturday 6:30 PM, ABC

The weekend’s only meeting of unbeatens comes with a split verdict. The AP has Notre Dame second and BYU eighth, but The Precedent Ratings flip it, with BYU ninth and Notre Dame 23rd. Even so, Notre Dame is a 10.5-point road favorite. Notre Dame’s six-game win streak ties for the longest in the country, BYU has won five straight, and BYU will be without starting running back LJ Martin.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

A quick note on the numbers. Every team rank in this article comes from The Precedent Ratings, which count each team’s wins, losses and its opponents’ records, with the AP Poll used only for comparison. Teams with the same rating share a rank. Statistics use FBS-vs-FBS games only, and early in the season many teams are still tied, so read the lower ranks loosely.

Weekend Recap

Twenty-seven of the weekend’s 58 games were decided by eight points or fewer. That is 47 percent, the highest share of any week this season; the average entering the weekend was 35 percent. Favorites lost 19 of those 58 games outright, and six of them were teams the AP had ranked going in.

By the numbers

• 58 games played

• Home teams won 32 of 58 (55 percent), against a season average of 65 percent

• 27 one-score games

• 51.1 points per game, combined

• 9 unbeaten teams remain, down from 15 a week ago

• 3 teams are still winless

• 15 games were won by the team trailing at halftime, and 13 by the team trailing entering the fourth quarter

Oklahoma 27, Texas 24

Texas led 17-7 at halftime and 17-10 after three quarters, and Oklahoma outscored it 17-7 in the fourth. Oklahoma, a 7.5-point underdog, scored on a blocked punt and on Peyton Bowen’s 42-yard interception return. Arch Manning threw for 260 yards and three touchdowns but was intercepted twice in the fourth quarter. Bowen’s return was one of those interceptions, and the other set up Tate Sandell’s 47-yard field goal as time expired. Manning said afterward that Texas “beat ourselves.” Texas fell from #1 to #3 in The Precedent Ratings and from #1 to #7 in the AP Poll. Oklahoma moved from #45 to #21.

Georgia 20, Alabama 17

EJ Crowell’s 1-yard touchdown just before halftime put Alabama ahead 14-10. Georgia tied it 17-17 in the third quarter, held Alabama to three points after halftime, and won on Peyton Woodring’s 23-yard field goal with 5:25 left. Gunner Stockton completed 18 of 22 passes for 249 yards, and Dwight Phillips Jr. ran for 120, with Georgia playing without its leading rusher. It was Kirby Smart’s first regular-season win over Alabama and Georgia’s first win in Tuscaloosa since 2007. Georgia rose from #38 to #7 in The Precedent Ratings and moved to #1 in the AP Poll with 66 first-place votes.

Kentucky 35, LSU 34 (OT)

For the second week in a row, Kentucky was tied 27-27 at the end of regulation and won the overtime 8-7. Adam Zouagui forced overtime with a 33-yard field goal after missing two earlier fourth-quarter tries. Will Stein again went for two after Kentucky’s overtime touchdown, and Kenny Minchey ran it in on a quarterback draw. Kentucky was a 9.5-point underdog and is the first FBS team to win consecutive overtime games by one point. It sits at #6 in The Precedent Ratings and #15 in the AP Poll.

UCLA 17, Oregon 15

Oregon scored six points through three quarters at home, and neither team scored in the third. UCLA forced seven turnovers, held Oregon to 272 yards and stopped two late two-point tries to win as a 10.5-point underdog. Oregon played without Dante Moore, who is in the concussion protocol, and Dylan Raiola started at quarterback. UCLA lost starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava to a lower-body injury during the game. Wayne Knight ran for 103 yards and scored both UCLA touchdowns, one rushing and one receiving. It was UCLA’s first win in Eugene since 2004, and Bob Chesney is the first UCLA coach to start 5-0. Oregon fell from #5 to #13 in The Precedent Ratings and out of the AP Poll. UCLA rose from #58 to #30.

Indiana 20, Nebraska 17

Indiana trailed at the end of each of the first three quarters (10-3 at halftime, 10-6 after three) and was down 17-6 early in the fourth. Josh Hoover then hit Nick Marsh for a 75-yard touchdown and a 44-yard touchdown on fourth-and-1. Indiana won but did not cover as an 8.5-point favorite. Its winning streak is now 22 games, the longest active streak in FBS. Nebraska was unbeaten against FBS opponents entering the game, which is why Indiana jumped from #54 to #5 in The Precedent Ratings.

South Carolina 38, Florida 19

South Carolina led 31-13 after three quarters and won by 19 as a 10.5-point underdog. It was Florida’s second straight lopsided loss, after a 45-17 defeat at Missouri. Florida was #1 in The Precedent Ratings after weeks 2, 3 and 4. It is now #15 and out of the AP Poll.

Houston 35, Kansas State 16

Houston led 35-9 after three quarters, in Manhattan, against a Kansas State team favored by 2.5. Kansas State’s only touchdown came in a fourth quarter Houston didn’t score in. Houston is #14 in The Precedent Ratings.

Missouri 27, Texas A&M 6

After Texas A&M took a 3-0 lead, Missouri outscored it 27-3. Jamal Roberts ran for a career-high 222 yards and two touchdowns, including a 54-yarder, and Texas A&M finished with 216 total yards and no offensive touchdowns. Missouri covered a four-point line by 17.

North Carolina 21, Pittsburgh 17

Pittsburgh came in 5-0 and ranked #25 in the AP Poll. North Carolina trailed 10-7 at halftime, led 14-10 after three and won as a 3.5-point underdog. It was Bill Belichick’s first win over a ranked team at North Carolina. Pittsburgh fell from #6 to #27 in The Precedent Ratings.

Other results: USC won 31-23 at Penn State in front of a Beaver Stadium record crowd of 114,419, with Jayden Maiava throwing for 301 yards and three touchdowns. Iowa beat Washington 41-24 on Friday as Kamari Moulton ran for a career-best 208 yards and two touchdowns. Notre Dame beat Stanford 58-7, Ole Miss beat Vanderbilt 52-17, Ohio State beat Maryland 45-16, Utah beat Kansas 41-24, and BYU beat Iowa State 24-10. Buffalo beat Toledo 23-8 as an 18.5-point underdog, the largest upset of the weekend by the line.

The biggest deficits overcome, measured at the end of a quarter

• Louisville over Florida State, 44-20, after trailing by 14

• Utah State over Washington State, 17-16, after trailing by 13

• Louisiana Tech over Louisiana, 32-31, after trailing by 11

• Oklahoma over Texas, 27-24, after trailing by 10

• Virginia over Syracuse, 28-25, after trailing by 10

• Indiana over Nebraska, 20-17, after trailing by 7

Teams that trailed entering the fourth quarter and won

• Louisiana Tech over Louisiana (down 11)

• Wyoming over San Jose State (down 7)

• Oklahoma over Texas (down 7)

• Utah State over Washington State (down 6)

• Navy over Tulsa (down 6)

• Indiana over Nebraska (down 4)

• Tennessee over Arkansas (down 4)

• Virginia over Syracuse (down 3)

• Army over Tulane (down 3)

• Jacksonville State over Kennesaw State (down 2)

• Eastern Michigan over Akron (down 1)

• Old Dominion over Appalachian State (down 1)

• California over Virginia Tech (down 1)

Of the 58 games with a line, favorites won 39 and covered 23, and one game pushed.

Underdogs that won outright

• Buffalo over Toledo, 23-8 (18.5)

• South Carolina over Florida, 38-19 (10.5)

• UCLA over Oregon, 17-15 (10.5)

• California over Virginia Tech, 25-20 (10.0)

• Kentucky over LSU, 35-34 (9.5)

• Old Dominion over Appalachian State, 10-3 (8.5)

• Oklahoma over Texas, 27-24 (7.5)

• Coastal Carolina over Marshall, 27-21 (4.5)

• Georgia Tech over Duke, 28-25 (4.5)

• Wyoming over San Jose State, 16-13 (4.5)

• North Carolina over Pittsburgh, 21-17 (3.5)

• UConn over Temple, 34-20 (3.5)

• South Alabama over Arkansas State, 56-49 (3.0)

• Georgia over Alabama, 20-17 (2.5)

• Houston over Kansas State, 35-16 (2.5)

• Iowa over Washington, 41-24 (2.5)

• Purdue over Minnesota, 41-13 (2.5)

• UNLV over North Dakota State, 13-7 (2.5)

• USC over Penn State, 31-23 (1.5)

Favorites that fell furthest short of the line

• Toledo, favored by 18.5, lost by 15 (33.5 short)

• Minnesota, favored by 2.5, lost by 28 (30.5 short)

• Florida, favored by 10.5, lost by 19 (29.5 short)

• Kansas State, favored by 2.5, lost by 19 (21.5 short)

• Washington, favored by 2.5, lost by 17 (19.5 short)

Favorites that beat the line by the most

• Oregon State, favored by 16.5 over San Diego State, won by 52 (35.5 better)

• Ole Miss, favored by 9.5 over Vanderbilt, won by 35 (25.5 better)

• Louisville, favored by 3.5 over Florida State, won by 24 (20.5 better)

• Wake Forest, favored by 3.5 over NC State, won by 24 (20.5 better)

• Western Kentucky, favored by 1.5 over Missouri State, won by 21 (19.5 better)

Rankings Talk

The ratings keep spreading out. There are now 88 distinct ratings among 138 teams, up from 78 a week ago, and 14 teams remain at 0.000, down from 20. The top three are separated by two thousandths of a point: Alabama 0.546, Miami (FL) 0.545 and Texas 0.544.

That is how Alabama lost and still moved from #3 to #1. Its loss came against an unbeaten Georgia, and Texas lost to Oklahoma. The Precedent Ratings measure a team’s record against the records of the teams it played, so who beat you counts as well as whether you lost.

That idea also explains this week’s biggest gap with the AP Poll. The two agree on 16 of their 25 ranked teams. Ohio State is #4 in the AP and #30 in The Precedent Ratings. It is 5-1 with the third-best average scoring margin in the country, +29.5 per game, but its opponents are a combined 12-18. SMU is #24 in the AP and #81 in The Precedent Ratings, with opponents a combined 5-13. Ole Miss is #9 in the AP and #34 here. The gap runs the other way too. Boise State is #4 in The Precedent Ratings and #23 in the AP, with its only loss at Oregon and opponents a combined 15-10. Oregon is #13 and out of the AP Poll, but its four opponents have gone a combined 18-3, the second-toughest schedule any team has played.

Biggest risers

• Indiana, #54 to #5: It beat a Nebraska team that was unbeaten against FBS opponents, and its opponents’ combined record went from 4-11 to 11-12.

• Georgia, #38 to #7: It won at an Alabama team that was 5-0, and its opponents went from 5-11 to 12-14.

• North Carolina, #70 to #26: It handed Pittsburgh its first loss.

• Navy, Buffalo and Old Dominion: Each picked up its first win that counts in the ratings and moved off 0.000.

Biggest fallers

• Florida, #4 to #15: It lost its second straight game, 38-19 at home to South Carolina.

• Duke, #19 to #54: It lost 28-25 to Georgia Tech, which had not won a game against an FBS opponent.

• Pittsburgh, #6 to #27: It suffered its first loss, 21-17 to North Carolina.

• Minnesota, #20 to #53: It lost 41-13 to Purdue as a 2.5-point favorite.

• Florida State, #35 to #72: It led Louisville by 14 and lost 44-20.

• Texas, #1 to #3: It suffered its first loss.

Kentucky is #6 in The Precedent Ratings but #64 in scoring margin, at +1.6 points per game, after two one-point overtime wins in a row. New Mexico has the fifth-best scoring margin in the country, +25.2 per game, but sits at #68 because of who it has played.

Wisconsin, Oregon, Florida and Nebraska are all in The Precedent’s top 15, and none of them is in the AP top 25. The longest line on the chart belongs to SMU, #24 in the AP and #81 in The Precedent Ratings.

The Rankings

Teams with the same rating share a rank and are listed alphabetically.

The SEC is still the top-rated conference, though its rating slipped from 0.397 to 0.381. The Independents moved up two spots to #6.

The full Precedent Ratings, with every conference’s standings and every team’s schedule, are attached for subscribers.

Loose Ends

• Both unbeaten-versus-unbeaten games went to the road team: Georgia at Alabama and Indiana at Nebraska.

• Three games went to overtime: Kentucky over LSU (35-34), Illinois over Michigan State (38-37) and Wyoming over San Jose State (16-13).

• Notre Dame freshman Jonaz Walton scored on a 97-yard run and finished with 181 rushing yards against Stanford.

• Texas Tech has the best second-half scoring margin in the country, +15.8 points per game. UCLA is next at +15.0.

• South Carolina has played the toughest schedule so far, and Oregon the second toughest.

• Four of the five toughest remaining schedules belong to SEC teams: Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Florida and Vanderbilt. Ohio State, at #3, is the only one outside the SEC.

• James Madison is 6-0 and has the fifth-easiest remaining schedule.

Looking Ahead

There is one unbeaten-versus-unbeaten game next week: Notre Dame (6-0) at BYU (5-0).

Top games for next week by The Precedent Ratings:

• Florida (#15) at Texas (#3), Saturday, 11:00 AM

• Kentucky (#6) at Oklahoma (#21), Saturday, 6:30 PM

• Mississippi State (#8) at LSU (#18), Saturday, 11:00 AM

• Nebraska (#15) at Oregon (#13), Saturday, time not yet set

• Alabama (#1) at Tennessee (#37), Saturday, 2:30 PM

• Notre Dame (#23) at BYU (#9), Saturday, 6:30 PM

• Ohio State (#30) at Indiana (#5), Saturday, 11:00 AM

• Wisconsin (#11) at UCLA (#30), Saturday, time not yet set

• Auburn (#37) at Georgia (#7), Saturday, 2:30 PM

• Missouri (#12) at Ole Miss (#34), Saturday, 2:30 PM

All times are Central. Friday’s Weekend Viewing Guide will break the slate into time windows and list the top four games in each.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

If you can only spare one window, make it Saturday Evening. Its Avg. Game Rank of 7.0 ties for the best of the weekend, and it brings LSU at Kentucky at 6:00 PM, followed by Georgia at Alabama and USC at Penn State, both at 6:30 PM. Saturday Afternoon matches it at 7.0, with Texas at Oklahoma and UCLA at Oregon both kicking off at 2:30 PM. The Game of the Week is in the Saturday Evening window.

A quick note on the numbers. Every team rank in this guide comes from The Precedent Ratings, with the AP Poll used only for comparison. The number in front of each game is its Game Rank, which orders the weekend’s games using both teams’ ratings. In each window, a lower Avg. Game Rank means a stronger slate. Only FBS-vs-FBS games are included, and all kickoff times are Central.

Game of the Week

LSU (#12) at Kentucky (#7), LSU -8.5, over/under 51.5, Saturday 6:00 PM, ESPN

No game this weekend pairs two higher-rated teams, yet the AP Poll barely notices one of them. LSU sits at #10 in the AP, and Kentucky, #7 in The Precedent Ratings, is not ranked there at all. Both teams have already beaten Texas A&M, LSU by 35-6 and Kentucky by 31-21. Kentucky has won three games in a row and LSU has won two. LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt is off the availability report and said Tuesday he expects to be 100 percent after a hamstring injury limited him the last two weeks.

Florida State arrives on a two-game winning streak, and Louisville has lost two in a row. Both have played SMU: Florida State lost 27-24, while Louisville won 41-31. Louisville quarterback Lincoln Kienholz is probable after playing through a lower-leg injury, and Florida State has no quarterback concerns. Florida State plays #2 Miami (FL) next week.

BYU has won four games in a row and plays #25 Notre Dame next week, but it will be without running back LJ Martin, who is expected to miss four to six weeks. Iowa quarterback Hank Brown is questionable with a sprained AC joint in his throwing shoulder, and Kirk Ferentz said Wednesday that Jeremy Hecklinski has the job in practice and Brown’s chances of playing are “not great at this point.” Washington has lost two in a row. Wyoming and San Jose State have both beaten Hawaii, Wyoming 27-10 and San Jose State 20-16. Washington State and Utah State have both lost to Washington, by scores of 24-10 and 16-14, and Washington State has lost two in a row.

Pittsburgh has won five games in a row but lost starting quarterback Mason Heintschel for the season to a torn ACL. Holden Geriner, who came off the bench to throw the game-winning touchdown in last week’s 35-33 win over Virginia Tech, gets the start. North Carolina has lost two in a row. Oklahoma State has won three straight, and UCF receiver Duane Thomas Jr. is questionable but could make his first appearance of the season. Florida comes in off a 45-17 loss at Missouri and plays #1 Texas next week. South Carolina has lost three in a row, and Shane Beamer would not commit to edge rusher Dylan Stewart playing after his one-game suspension.

Texas and UCLA have each won four games in a row, and Texas plays #4 Florida next week. Oregon has won two straight and plays #24 Nebraska next week, but quarterback Dante Moore is out with a concussion, so Nebraska transfer Dylan Raiola makes his first start for the Ducks. Houston has won two in a row and plays #22 Oklahoma State next week. Ole Miss plays #10 Missouri next week. Vanderbilt has lost two in a row, but freshman quarterback Jared Curtis is probable after sitting out at Georgia, and Clark Lea said he had a full week of practice.

Georgia and Alabama have each won five games in a row. Hurricane Isaias has Tuscaloosa expecting a 90 percent chance of showers and possible thunderstorms Saturday, though the kickoff time and site are unchanged and the SEC says it is monitoring the storm. College GameDay has already moved indoors to Coleman Coliseum. Georgia will be without running back Chauncey Bowens, its leading scorer. Penn State has lost two in a row and lists 12 players out. Minnesota has won three games in a row.

Boise State and Fresno State have each won four games in a row, and one of those streaks ends Saturday night. Utah has also won four straight, and Kansas will be without backup quarterback Cole Ballard. Hawaii has lost two in a row. Arizona State is coming off a 55-19 loss to Baylor and plays #16 Texas Tech next week.

By the Numbers

• Unbeaten teams: 15 teams are still unbeaten, and two games put unbeaten teams against each other: Georgia at Alabama and Indiana at Nebraska.

• Biggest line: Notre Dame -38.5 over Stanford.

• Closest lines: 1.5 points in two games, Georgia at Alabama (Alabama -1.5) and USC at Penn State (Penn State -1.5).

• Highest total: 61.5, Arizona at West Virginia.

• Lowest total: 39.5, Texas at Oklahoma.

• Longest active win streaks: Ten teams have won five games in a row: Texas Tech, Alabama, North Dakota State, James Madison, Miami (FL), Pittsburgh, Indiana, Nebraska, Georgia and Notre Dame. Two of those streaks end this weekend, because Georgia plays at Alabama and Indiana plays at Nebraska.

Sleeper of the Week

Iowa (#18) at Washington (#58), Washington -3.0, over/under 41.5, Friday 8:00 PM, TV not yet listed

The Precedent Ratings put Iowa 40 spots ahead of Washington, and the AP Poll has Iowa at #20 with Washington unranked, yet Washington is the favorite. Iowa’s quarterback situation is unsettled. Hank Brown has started all five games but is questionable with a shoulder injury, and Kirk Ferentz said, “Right now, our mindset is that Heck’s got it.” That would mean the first college start for Jeremy Hecklinski, who replaced Brown in the second half of the Ohio State loss and completed all five of his passes. Washington has lost two in a row.

Storyline to Watch

Georgia (#38) at Alabama (#3), Alabama -1.5, over/under 51.5, Saturday 6:30 PM, ABC

Both teams are unbeaten with five straight wins, and the two rankings could hardly disagree more. The AP Poll has Georgia at #2 and Alabama at #6, while The Precedent Ratings have Alabama at #3 and Georgia at #38. The 1.5-point line ties for the closest of the weekend. Georgia will be without leading scorer Chauncey Bowens, and Alabama tight end Josh Ford is questionable after breaking his arm last week. Hurricane Isaias is bringing rain and possible thunderstorms to Tuscaloosa, but as of Thursday the 6:30 PM kickoff stands.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

It’s tempting to watch the A’s fade out of Sacramento and think this is just what happens to bad teams in bad stadiums. But franchises don’t drift out of cities. They leave along a fairly well-worn path, and once you’ve seen it once, you start noticing it everywhere. A team lets its stadium and sometimes its roster slide. It goes looking for a new building somewhere else, usually with public money attached. And somewhere in the middle, a rival city offers something the current one won’t, or can’t, match.

The A’s followed that path almost exactly. Oakland spent years negotiating a waterfront ballpark project at Howard Terminal, with the city eventually putting around $375 million toward infrastructure while the price tag kept climbing. In April 2023, Oakland’s mayor ended those talks days after the team announced a deal in Las Vegas instead. Nevada had authorized up to $380 million in public assistance. Baseball’s other owners approved the move unanimously that November, and MLB reportedly waived the roughly $300 million relocation fee the league would normally have collected, since the fee exists to compensate the other clubs for a market opportunity, and in this case the other owners apparently didn’t need much convincing.

Oakland has actually lost three professional teams this way since 2019, counting the Warriors and the Raiders, and the Raiders are worth sitting with for a moment because their story runs the opposite direction of almost everyone else’s. Al Davis wanted a better stadium deal in the early 1980s, the NFL said no, and Davis sued. He won. A jury and later the Ninth Circuit found that the league’s own relocation rule was an unreasonable restraint of trade, and the Raiders played in Los Angeles from 1982 until Davis brought them home to Oakland in 1995 on a deal built around bond-financed stadium upgrades. Twenty years later his son Mark did what his father once fought the league to do himself, asking for a way out, and this time the NFL just said yes. Nevada put up $750 million, the owners approved the Las Vegas move 31-1, and the Raiders started over there in 2020. When Oakland later tried to sue the NFL over losing the Raiders a second time, the courts dismissed it. The city’s claim that it would have kept the team, or landed a replacement, without the league’s approval process was called too speculative to count as real injury. The Ninth Circuit agreed, and the Supreme Court wouldn’t even hear it.

That’s the split that shows up again and again. An owner with a grievance against the league has real legal tools. A city that loses a team it feels it deserved almost never does.

Baltimore found that out the hard way in 1984, when Colts owner Robert Irsay had his team’s belongings loaded into moving vans in the middle of the night and driven to Indianapolis, which had already built a stadium with no tenant. Maryland’s legislature was moving to let the city seize the franchise through eminent domain, and Irsay got out ahead of it. A federal court later ruled that Baltimore couldn’t condemn a team that had already left the state, a narrow jurisdictional finding rather than a statement that a city could never claim a franchise as its own. The Colts were just gone before the law could reach them, and Baltimore spent twelve years without a team before Art Modell moved the Browns there in 1995.

Montreal’s Expos ended differently but landed in the same place. A downtown ballpark plan died without provincial backing, and Major League Baseball itself bought the team from owner Jeffrey Loria in 2002, then picked Washington as the new home. Some of the Expos’ minority partners believed something had gone wrong in how that sale was handled and took it to arbitration. A New York panel ruled against them in November 2004, reportedly finding that Loria hadn’t committed fraud. The Nationals played their first game in 2005, and Montreal never got a hearing that said otherwise.

Cleveland’s reaction to losing the Browns is the one case here where a city got something close to a happy ending, and it’s worth understanding exactly why. When Modell announced the move, Ohio’s congressional delegation didn’t wait around. Within weeks, senators were drafting legislation aimed squarely at pro sports leagues, including proposals tied to the kind of antitrust protection the NFL depends on, the same lever Missouri’s Stuart Symington had pulled against baseball three decades earlier when Kansas City lost the A’s. Facing that kind of fast-moving political heat, the NFL had every reason to settle Cleveland’s situation quickly, and it did, inside of three months. Modell kept his personnel and moved to Baltimore, where the new team would legally be considered an expansion franchise. Cleveland kept the Browns name, colors, and history, and the league promised a new team by 1999. It delivered, and that new team cost the league nothing. Al Lerner paid a then-record $530 million expansion fee for the right to own it, money that went straight to the other owners. Cleveland’s fix was fast, political, and actually profitable for the NFL. St. Louis’s situation wouldn’t be any of those three things.

The Rams’ Long Goodbye

The Rams’ 1995 lease with St. Louis promised the team a stadium ranked in the top 25 percent of the league for 30 years. When an arbitration panel found in 2013 that the Rams’ own improvement plan would meet that standard and the city’s would not, the local stadium authority had to decide whether to fund roughly $700 million in work the Rams wanted. It never did. Part of that was simple math: St. Louis was still paying off $720 million in bonds from building the original stadium, and the county pulled its share of a later financing plan in 2015. But by then, city officials increasingly doubted the money would even matter. Kroenke and his COO had privately begun working on a Los Angeles stadium as early as the summer of 2013, more than a year before the public task force that was supposed to keep the Rams in St. Louis was even formed, and one account of that period has Kroenke telling the league he could give notice to leave as soon as 2015 if the dome wasn’t upgraded. St. Louis was negotiating against a decision that may have already been made.

Through those same years, Kroenke and Demoff told St. Louis over and over that the team was staying. “I’m going to attempt to do everything that I can to keep the Rams in St. Louis,” Kroenke said in April 2010. Demoff called the odds of a move “one-in-a-million” in 2014 and said the California land Kroenke had just bought was “not a piece of land that’s any good for a football stadium.” Court filings later alleged that behind those statements, Kroenke had told Commissioner Roger Goodell and two fellow owners as early as 2013 that he intended to build in Los Angeles and wanted to stay “under the radar” while he did it, with Goodell reportedly answering that the league would “respect your confidentiality.” When the Inglewood land purchase became public in 2014, one former NFL executive wrote that pressing Kroenke for a straight answer would make it “harder to play dunce,” and discovery reportedly showed Demoff supplying Goodell talking points the commissioner used at a Super Bowl press conference to deny knowing what the land was for. The day before the January 2016 vote, Rams staff were reportedly drafting a farewell letter to St. Louis fans. Demoff referred to it internally as the AMF letter. AMF, according to testimony at a later hearing, stood for Adios, motherf-ers.

The application Kroenke’s team ultimately filed with the league didn’t hide the ball on how it felt about St. Louis. It argued the city wasn’t a viable market for three professional teams, cited studies ranking St. Louis near the bottom of the country in population and economic growth, and concluded that any team that stayed there would be, in its words, “well on the road to financial ruin.” NFL owners voted 30-2 to let the Rams go.

St. Louis, St. Louis County, and the region’s stadium authority sued the Rams, the NFL, and its other owners in 2017, alleging breach of contract, fraud, and interference with the city’s business dealings. The case never went to trial. Weeks before it was scheduled to start in January 2022, the NFL and Kroenke agreed to pay St. Louis $790 million, with no admission of wrongdoing on either side. There was no team attached to the deal. The league had never promised St. Louis an expansion franchise, and despite years of speculation that one might be part of a settlement, the agreement contained no such commitment.

That settlement is the rarest outcome on this list. Nobody else who lost a team to a league vote walked away with anything close to it, and nobody got there the way Cleveland did.

The Deeper Dive

Why did Cleveland get a team back and St. Louis get a check? The simplest answer is timing and leverage. Cleveland’s leverage was political and immediate: a furious congressional delegation threatening the league’s antitrust standing within weeks of the announcement, the same threat that had moved baseball to expand into Kansas City in 1969. The NFL could make that problem disappear fast, and reactivating the Browns cost the league nothing, since Al Lerner’s $530 million expansion fee covered it. St. Louis’s leverage took years to build and came from a courtroom, not Congress. By the time it mattered, in 2021, giving St. Louis a team wasn’t free. It would have meant real league expansion, which dilutes every other owner’s share of a fixed pie, or taking a franchise from somewhere else and creating a brand new aggrieved city. Cash was simply the cheaper problem to solve.

The legal mechanics matter too. The NFL’s relocation policy exists specifically because the league lost the Raiders antitrust case in the 1980s and wanted a documented, objective process that would hold up in court if challenged again. But violating your own internal policy isn’t automatically illegal. St. Louis needed an actual legal theory, and it built two. The first was breach of contract: St. Louis argued the relocation policy functioned as a binding agreement the Rams and league owed obligations under, and that the city and its stadium authority were legitimate third parties entitled to enforce it, even though they’d never been NFL members themselves. The second, and the one that did the real damage, was fraud. St. Louis alleged Kroenke and Demoff knowingly made false public statements to keep the city spending money on a stadium plan it wouldn’t have pursued otherwise. That’s a straightforward fraud claim: a false statement, relied upon, causing real financial harm. The emails and call records that surfaced in discovery, the 2013 phone call, the coordinated talking points, the farewell letter, made that fraud theory look credible enough that the NFL chose to pay rather than let a jury see the rest of it, with team owners’ financial records also headed for disclosure. The settlement doesn’t mean a court found the Rams or the league guilty of anything. It means the league decided the risk of trial was worse than $790 million, which is its own kind of answer.

The A’s departure from Oakland followed the same basic shape as every case here, minus the fight. Nobody sued over Las Vegas. The city gave up before it ever got that far, and by baseball’s own quiet math, that turned out to be the cheapest way for everyone involved to get exactly what they wanted.

For the Curious

Who Killed the Montreal Expos? (Netflix, 2024) traces how a franchise with genuine history slipped away from a city that couldn’t get a new ballpark built, and it’s a useful companion piece if you want to see the Expos side of this story in full rather than the two-paragraph version above. For the St. Louis side, the sports-law podcast Conduct Detrimental covered the lawsuit obsessively while it was actually unfolding in 2021, including a two-part “St. Louis Rams Town Hall” recorded live with fans and local officials, a sit-down with veteran litigator Jim Quinn on both the St. Louis and Raiders relocation cases, and a November 2021 fireside chat with longtime NFL writer Howard Balzer that walks through the whole dispute from the 1980s Cardinals-to-Arizona move up through the pending settlement. Neither the documentary nor those episodes are an easy listen if you were rooting for either city, but both stick to what the record actually shows.

Worth Watching

Keep an eye on Sacramento and Las Vegas over the next two years. The A’s foundation work in Las Vegas is reportedly complete, with a 2028 opening still the target, and every step between now and then is one more chance to see whether this particular version of the playbook ends the way it’s supposed to.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop.

Weekend Recap

Florida was one of seven teams to lose its unbeaten record this week, and the number of unbeaten teams dropped from 22 to 15. Cincinnati, Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi State, South Florida and Virginia Tech all took a first loss. Winless teams slipped from four to three.

By the numbers

• 56 FBS-vs-FBS games were played, up from the season average of 53.8 per week through week 4.

• 22 of those 56 games (39%) were decided by one score, compared with 33% last week and a season average of 33%.

• Home teams won 30 of 56 (54%), against a season average of 68%. The weekly home win rate has gone 82%, 67%, 70%, 53% and now 54%.

• The average combined score was 52.8 points, up from 50.9 last week and just above the season average of 52.4.

• Favorites won 40 of the 56 games with a betting line and covered 27, with one push. Sixteen underdogs won outright.

• Favorites by fewer than 7 points won only 14 of 27 games and missed the number by 4.6 points on average. Favorites by 14 to 24.5 points won all 14 of theirs.

• 11 games were won by the team trailing at halftime, 4 by a team trailing entering the fourth quarter, and 3 went to overtime.

Missouri 45, Florida 17. Florida arrived in Columbia unbeaten, first in the ratings and favored by 5.5 points. Missouri won by 28, which beat the line by 33.5. The game was tied 3-3 after one quarter. Missouri led 20-10 at halftime and 30-10 after three, and outscored Florida 15-7 in the fourth. Jamal Roberts ran 24 times for 211 yards and three touchdowns, including an 80-yard score in the fourth quarter, and Austin Simmons threw for 340 yards and two touchdowns. Missouri finished with 560 yards and snapped a nine-game losing streak against ranked opponents. Florida’s rating fell from 0.750 to 0.529, which moved the Gators from first to fourth. Their four FBS opponents are a combined 12-5 against FBS teams, which kept the rating in the top five. Missouri’s rating rose from 0.371 to 0.450, a jump from 22nd to 10th. The AP poll moved Missouri from 25th to 14th and Florida from 8th to 16th. Missouri’s only loss this season came a week earlier, 31-24 at Mississippi State, a game the Tigers led 24-17 after three quarters.

Alabama 56, Mississippi State 23. Both teams entered unbeaten, and Alabama scored 14 points in every quarter. Mississippi State turned the ball over three times, and Alabama turned all three into points, including a 30-yard interception return by Dijon Lee Jr. Keelon Russell threw for 285 yards and three touchdowns and ran for another score, and Alabama outrushed Mississippi State 179 yards to 18. Alabama has now scored at least 45 points in all five of its games (48, 45, 50, 49 and 56). It was favored by 5.5 and covered by 27.5. Its rating rose from 0.417 to 0.550, a jump from 14th to 3rd. Mississippi State went from 14th to 8th even with the loss, because its opponents’ combined FBS win percentage rose from .417 to .571 once 5-0 Alabama joined its record. Alabama’s 33-point win came in the same stadium where Missouri lost by 7 the week before.

Pittsburgh 35, Virginia Tech 33. Both teams were 4-0 on Friday night, and Pitt won as a 2.5-point underdog, beating the line by 4.5. The 68 total points cleared the 54.5 over/under by 13.5. Virginia Tech led 14-0 early, Pitt took a 28-24 lead into the fourth, and Virginia Tech was held scoreless in the third quarter. Ethan Grunkemeyer threw for a career-high 434 yards and Virginia Tech outgained Pitt 499-295, but the Hokies had four turnovers to none, and Pitt scored 14 points off them. On the final drive, Virginia Tech went from its own 20 to the Pitt 18, and John Love’s field goal try missed wide left as time expired. Pitt (5-0) sits 6th in the ratings and Virginia Tech (4-1) is 49th.

Northwestern 34, Penn State 13. Northwestern led after every quarter (10-0, 24-7, 31-7) and ran for 413 yards, with Caleb Komolafe rushing for 188 and Joseph Himon II for 162 on just 10 carries. Aidan Chiles threw for 93 yards. Penn State was a 2.5-point favorite and lost by 21, its largest loss of the season, so Northwestern beat the line by 23.5. Northwestern’s rating moved from 0.334 (27th) to 0.410 (15th), and Penn State’s went from 0.273 (47th) to 0.266 (55th). Northwestern’s only loss was 29-23 at Indiana on Sept. 25. Indiana led that game 12-0 at halftime, and Northwestern outscored the Hoosiers 16-14 in the fourth quarter. Northwestern’s 23 points are the most any team has scored on Indiana this season. The next most is 16, and Indiana’s other three FBS wins came by 36, 38 and 32 points.

Kentucky 35, South Carolina 34 (OT). Kentucky trailed 14-0 after one quarter and 20-10 at halftime, and it was a 2.5-point underdog. Kenny Minchey threw for 272 yards and three touchdowns, and a 66-yard drive ending in a 29-yard field goal with 4:13 left tied the game at 27. South Carolina scored first in overtime. Kentucky answered with a 6-yard touchdown pass and went for two rather than kick the extra point, and Minchey’s pass to Willie Rodriguez won it. LaNorris Sellers ran for 147 yards for the Gamecocks. Kentucky is 7th in the ratings at 0.458, and South Carolina is 86th.

Houston 27, UCF 17. UCF led 10-0 at halftime and 17-0 late in the third quarter, and then Houston scored the game’s last 27 points. Conner Weigman, who was sick, ran for three touchdowns, all in the second half, and Houston held UCF to 48 yards in the fourth quarter. UCF’s rating fell from 0.445 to 0.344, dropping it from 7th to 29th. Houston is 13th at 0.422.

Bowling Green 24, Miami (OH) 20. This was the week’s largest line upset. Bowling Green came in 0-4 and won as a 10.5-point underdog on Leo Kemp’s 2-yard touchdown run with seven seconds left. Miami (OH) led 20-17, and Bowling Green went 75 yards in 10 plays over the last 1:47. Jay Kastantin threw for 305 yards. Bowling Green’s rating went from 0.000 to 0.156 (95th), and Miami (OH) fell from 54th to 102nd.

Other results. Minnesota beat Michigan 20-14 after trailing 14-10 entering the fourth quarter. Notre Dame won 37-26 at North Carolina to move to 5-0, with all five wins by at least 11 points. San Diego State came back from 14 down to beat Texas State 31-29 as a 9.5-point underdog, and Purdue won 24-17 at Illinois as a 10-point underdog. Baylor won 55-19 at Arizona State, a 36-point margin that left Arizona State, a 3.5-point favorite, 39.5 points short of the line, the largest miss of the week. Miami (FL) beat Clemson 41-13, Georgia beat Vanderbilt 38-14 (the Commodores covered the 25.5-point line by 1.5), Ohio State beat Iowa 31-14, Wisconsin beat Michigan State 31-3, and Wake Forest beat Stanford 57-3. USC beat Washington 25-21, Arizona beat Cincinnati 34-7, Iowa State beat West Virginia 45-42, and N.D. State shut out Wyoming 28-0. Fresno State beat Washington State 26-6 for its first Pac-12 win. North Texas beat Tulsa 45-44 and Syracuse beat Connecticut 42-41, both in overtime.

Biggest deficits overcome by the winner, after any quarter

• Kentucky over South Carolina, 35-34 in overtime, trailed by 14

• San Diego State over Texas State, 31-29, trailed by 14

• Houston over UCF, 27-17, trailed by 10

• Nebraska over Maryland, 48-23, trailed by 9

• Florida State over Virginia, 38-7, trailed by 7

• Minnesota over Michigan, 20-14, trailed by 7

Teams that trailed entering the fourth quarter and won

• Minnesota over Michigan (down 4)

• Western Michigan over Buffalo (down 4)

• Louisiana over Arkansas State (down 3)

• Houston over UCF (down 3)

Underdogs that won outright (largest line first)

• Bowling Green over Miami (OH), 24-20, line 10.5

• Purdue over Illinois, 24-17, line 10.0

• San Diego State over Texas State, 31-29, line 9.5

• Eastern Michigan over Massachusetts, 38-14, line 6.0

• Minnesota over Michigan, 20-14, line 6.0

• Missouri over Florida, 45-17, line 5.5

• Temple over South Florida, 17-13, line 5.5

• Baylor over Arizona State, 55-19, line 3.5

• N.C. State over Louisville, 31-28, line 3.0

• Fresno State over Washington St., 26-6, line 2.5

• Kentucky over South Carolina, 35-34, line 2.5

• North Texas over Tulsa, 45-44, line 2.5

• Northwestern over Penn State, 34-13, line 2.5

• Pittsburgh over Virginia Tech, 35-33, line 2.5

• San Jose State over Hawaii, 20-16, line 2.5

• Florida State over Virginia, 38-7, line 1.5

Favorites that fell furthest short of the line

• Arizona State lost to Baylor by 36 with a line of 3.5, 39.5 points short

• Florida lost to Missouri by 28 with a line of 5.5, 33.5 short

• Virginia lost to Florida State by 31 with a line of 1.5, 32.5 short

• Massachusetts lost to Eastern Michigan by 24 with a line of 6.0, 30.0 short

• Penn State lost to Northwestern by 21 with a line of 2.5, 23.5 short

Favorites that beat the line by the most

• Wake Forest beat Stanford by 54 with a line of 14.5, covering by 39.5

• Kansas beat MTSU by 55 with a line of 21.0, covering by 34.0

• Memphis beat Charlotte by 51 with a line of 20.5, covering by 30.5

• New Mexico beat UTEP by 54 with a line of 23.5, covering by 30.5

• Georgia State beat Old Dominion by 32 with a line of 2.5, covering by 29.5

Rankings Talk

The ratings spread out this week. There are now 78 distinct rating values, up from 52 a week ago, and the number of teams sitting at 0.000 dropped from 30 to 20. Several of the biggest risers got there by leaving that pile after a first FBS win.

At the top, Texas (off this week) leads at 0.647, which is a win percentage of 1.000 times opponents’ win percentage of 0.647. Miami (FL) follows at 0.579, then Alabama at 0.550, Florida at 0.529 and Oregon at 0.513. Florida’s drop of 0.221 was the largest of any team this week.

Three unbeaten teams show the widest gap between record and rating. Here are the plain resume facts.

Georgia is 5-0 (4-0 against FBS teams) and second in the AP poll, but 38th in the ratings. Its FBS opponents, Western Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Vanderbilt, are a combined 5-11 against FBS teams, which gives Georgia a rating of 0.313. Georgia leads all 138 teams in scoring margin per FBS game at +32.5, a number the rating does not use.

Indiana is 5-0 (4-0 against FBS teams), seventh in the AP poll and 54th in the ratings. North Texas, Western Kentucky, Northwestern and Rutgers are a combined 4-11 against FBS teams, which gives Indiana a rating of 0.267. Its scoring margin of +28.0 per FBS game ranks seventh.

UCLA is 4-0, 21st in the AP poll and 58th in the ratings. California, San Diego State, Purdue and Maryland are a combined 4-12 against FBS teams, which gives UCLA a rating of 0.250. Its scoring margin of +26.0 per FBS game ranks ninth.

Each opponent’s record includes its games against the team itself, and those records are still taking shape.

Biggest risers

• Louisiana Tech, 109th to 73rd (0.000 to 0.212), won 31-29 over Army for its first FBS win, lifting its win percentage from 0.000 to 0.333

• Purdue, 109th to 77th (0.000 to 0.195), won 24-17 at Illinois, lifting its win percentage from 0.000 to 0.250

• San Diego State, 109th to 80th (0.000 to 0.188), beat Texas State 31-29, lifting its win percentage from 0.000 to 0.250

• Syracuse, 109th to 91st (0.000 to 0.167), beat Connecticut 42-41 in overtime, lifting its win percentage from 0.000 to 0.333

• Bowling Green, 109th to 95th (0.000 to 0.156), beat Miami (OH) 24-20, lifting its win percentage from 0.000 to 0.250

• Temple, 109th to 95th (0.000 to 0.156), beat South Florida 17-13, lifting its win percentage from 0.000 to 0.250

Biggest fallers

• Florida, 1st to 4th (0.750 to 0.529), took its first loss, so its win percentage fell from 1.000 to 0.750, and its opponents’ win percentage slipped from 0.750 to 0.706

• UTSA, 17th to 49th (0.400 to 0.281), won at Rice but saw its opponents’ combined win percentage drop from 0.600 to 0.375, as Texas State, Colorado State and Rice each added a loss

• Miami (OH), 54th to 102nd (0.259 to 0.141), lost to Bowling Green, dropping its win percentage from 0.333 to 0.250, and its opponents’ win percentage fell from 0.778 to 0.563

• Arkansas, 41st to 80th (0.296 to 0.188), lost 34-7 at Texas A&M, dropping its win percentage from 0.333 to 0.250, and its opponents’ win percentage fell from 0.889 to 0.750

• UCF, 7th to 29th (0.445 to 0.344), lost 27-17 at Houston, dropping its win percentage from 0.667 to 0.500

• Army, 55th to 99th (0.250 to 0.152), lost 31-29 at Louisiana Tech, dropping its win percentage from 0.500 to 0.333

Rating rank is higher than margin rank

• Stanford (2-3), rating rank 64, margin rank 125 (average margin -20.8 over 5 FBS games)

• Marshall (3-2), rating rank 58, margin rank 118 (-16.2 over 4)

• Clemson (3-2), rating rank 37, margin rank 91 (-6.4 over 5)

• Kentucky (4-1), rating rank 7, margin rank 60 (+1.8 over 4)

• Oregon (3-1), rating rank 5, margin rank 56 (+4.3 over 3)

• Michigan State (2-3), rating rank 39, margin rank 86 (-5.0 over 5)

• Arizona State (2-2), rating rank 78, margin rank 123 (-19.0 over 3)

• Central Michigan (3-2), rating rank 58, margin rank 102 (-10.5 over 4)

Rating rank is lower than margin rank

• Georgia State (4-1), rating rank 111, margin rank 26 (+13.2 over 4)

• Nevada (1-3), rating rank 115, margin rank 41 (+8.3 over 3)

• Massachusetts (4-1), rating rank 113, margin rank 46 (+7.0 over 3)

• Kansas (2-2), rating rank 99, margin rank 37 (+10.3 over 3)

• New Mexico (4-1), rating rank 65, margin rank 10 (+25.2 over 4)

• Connecticut (2-3), rating rank 118, margin rank 67 (+0.0 over 4)

• UCLA (4-0), rating rank 58, margin rank 9 (+26.0 over 4)

• Indiana (5-0), rating rank 54, margin rank 7 (+28.0 over 4)

Nineteen of the AP’s 25 teams are also in the top 25 of the ratings. Here is where the two lists disagree most.

AP ranks the team higher than the ratings do

• SMU (4-1), 24th in the AP, 74th in the ratings, a gap of 50

• Indiana (5-0), 7th in the AP, 54th in the ratings, a gap of 47

• UCLA (4-0), 21st in the AP, 58th in the ratings, a gap of 37

• Georgia (5-0), 2nd in the AP, 38th in the ratings, a gap of 36

• Ole Miss (3-1), 9th in the AP, 34th in the ratings, a gap of 25

• Notre Dame (5-0), 3rd in the AP, 25th in the ratings, a gap of 22

• Utah (4-0), 12th in the AP, 31st in the ratings, a gap of 19

• Ohio State (4-1), 5th in the AP, 23rd in the ratings, a gap of 18

The ratings rank the team higher than the AP does

• Kentucky (4-1), 7th in the ratings and outside the AP top 25, a gap of 19 or more

• Pittsburgh (5-0), 6th in the ratings and 25th in the AP, a gap of 19

• Wisconsin (4-1), 10th in the ratings and outside the AP top 25, a gap of 16 or more

• Florida (4-1), 4th in the ratings and 16th in the AP, a gap of 12

• Northwestern (3-1), 15th in the ratings and outside the AP top 25, a gap of 11 or more

• USC (5-1), 9th in the ratings and 19th in the AP, a gap of 10

• Houston (4-1), 13th in the ratings and 22nd in the AP, a gap of 9

• Mississippi State (4-1), 8th in the ratings and 17th in the AP, a gap of 9

The Rankings

Teams with the same rating share a rank and are listed alphabetically.

Top 25 Teams

1. Texas (SEC), 4-0, 0.647

2. Miami (FL) (ACC), 5-0, 0.579

3. Alabama (SEC), 5-0, 0.550

4. Florida (SEC), 4-1, 0.529

5. Oregon (Big Ten), 3-1, 0.513

6. Pittsburgh (ACC), 5-0, 0.467

7. Kentucky (SEC), 4-1, 0.458

8. Mississippi St. (SEC), 4-1, 0.457

9. USC (Big Ten), 5-1, 0.451

10. Missouri (SEC), 4-1, 0.450

10. Wisconsin (Big Ten), 4-1, 0.450

12. LSU (SEC), 4-1, 0.441

13. Houston (Big 12), 4-1, 0.422

14. BYU (Big 12), 4-0, 0.417

15. Northwestern (Big Ten), 3-1, 0.410

16. Boise State (Pac-12), 4-1, 0.400

16. Texas Tech (Big 12), 5-0, 0.400

18. Iowa (Big Ten), 4-1, 0.397

19. Duke (ACC), 4-0, 0.385

20. James Madison (Sun Belt), 5-0, 0.375

20. Minnesota (Big Ten), 4-1, 0.375

22. Oklahoma State (Big 12), 3-1, 0.364

23. Ohio State (Big Ten), 4-1, 0.360

24. Nebraska (Big Ten), 5-0, 0.353

25. Cincinnati (Big 12), 4-1, 0.350

25. Notre Dame (Independents), 5-0, 0.350

25. Tennessee (SEC), 4-1, 0.350

CFB Ratings 2026-27 Week 5

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Conferences

1. SEC (0.397)

2. Big Ten (0.342)

3. Big 12 (0.306)

4. ACC (0.283)

5. Pac-12 (0.224)

6. American (0.216)

7. Mountain West (0.197)

8. Independents (0.196)

9. Sun Belt (0.177)

10. Mid-American (0.156)

11. Conference USA (0.124)

Loose Ends

• Alabama beat Mississippi State, which beat Missouri, which beat Florida, which beat Ole Miss, which beat LSU. The scores in order were 56-23, 31-24, 45-17, 52-28 and 32-24.

• Pitt quarterback Mason Heintschel tore the ACL in his right knee against Virginia Tech and is out for the season. He was hurt on the fourth play of the second half, and he had entered the weekend tied for the ACC lead with 14 touchdown passes.

• Mississippi State quarterback Kamario Taylor was sacked five times, threw two interceptions and lost a fumble, and was pulled early in the fourth quarter. He was later seen in a walking boot.

• South Carolina played without defensive end Dylan Stewart, who was suspended by the school and the SEC for throwing a punch in a prior game. The Gamecocks are 0-3 in the SEC and have lost eight straight conference games.

• Michigan has scored fewer than 20 points in four of its five games (13, 17, 19 and 14) and is 0-2 in the Big Ten.

• Minnesota beat Michigan for the first time since 2014 and raised the Little Brown Jug at home for the first time in 49 years.

• Penn State is 3-2 and 0-2 in the Big Ten in its first season under head coach Matt Campbell, and it lost 24-20 to Wisconsin the week before after leading by 17. Penn State and Texas A&M share 55th place in the ratings at 0.266.

• John Love had made 42 of his 44 career field goal attempts from inside 40 yards before the miss against Pitt.

• Missouri’s 28-point margin was its largest against a top-10 team, ahead of a 21-point win at USC in 1976.

• Georgia had outscored opponents 63-0 in the first quarter through four games before Vanderbilt scored on a 60-yard touchdown pass.

• Before Houston’s comeback, FBS teams were 130-3 this season when leading by 17 or more in the second half.

• Northwestern’s win was the first game at the new Ryan Field, listed at $875 million, and it marked the first time since 2012 the Wildcats had two 150-yard rushers.

• Notre Dame’s win at North Carolina was its 15th in a row.

• Notable individual games: Roberts ran for 211 yards for Missouri, Simmons threw for 340, Grunkemeyer threw for 434 for Virginia Tech, Kastantin threw for 305 for Bowling Green, and Sellers ran for 147 for South Carolina.

• The best second-half scoring margins per game this season belong to UCLA (+19.2), LSU (+17.0), Nebraska (+16.2), Texas Tech (+15.8) and Alabama (+15.2). The worst are UTEP (-23.8), Western Kentucky (-14.8) and Arizona State (-14.0).

• The toughest remaining schedules belong to LSU (0.428), Oklahoma (0.415), Texas A&M (0.412), Vanderbilt (0.409) and Ole Miss (0.400), all SEC teams.

• The easiest remaining schedules belong to Jacksonville State and Liberty (tied at 0.054), Massachusetts (0.075), Bowling Green (0.081) and James Madison (0.083).

• Among Power 4 teams and Notre Dame, the easiest remaining schedules belong to Wake Forest (0.200), Clemson (0.223), Pittsburgh (0.228), Syracuse (0.231) and Stanford (0.234), all ACC teams. Wake Forest’s 0.200 ranks 77th of 138 teams (1 = hardest). Notre Dame’s remaining schedule (0.249) is the ninth easiest in that group.

• The toughest schedules played so far belong to Oregon (0.405), South Carolina (0.392), Texas State (0.353), Florida (0.335) and Alabama (0.323). The easiest belong to Massachusetts (0.060), Georgia State (0.086), Liberty (0.121), UAB (0.122) and Connecticut (0.124).

Looking Ahead

Two games next Saturday put unbeaten teams against each other. Indiana (54th in the ratings) visits Nebraska (24th) at 11:00 AM, and Georgia (38th) visits Alabama (3rd) at 6:30 PM. Fifteen teams are still unbeaten, and one team in each of those games will take a first loss.

These are the top games of the week by rating (all times Central).

• LSU (12) at Kentucky (7), Saturday 6:00 PM

• Texas (1) vs. Oklahoma (45), Saturday 2:30 PM, neutral site

• Georgia (38) at Alabama (3), Saturday 6:30 PM

• UCLA (58) at Oregon (5), Saturday 2:30 PM

• UCF (29) at Oklahoma State (22), Saturday 11:00 AM

• Iowa State (42) at BYU (14), Friday 9:15 PM

• USC (9) at Penn State (55), Saturday 6:30 PM

• Texas A&M (55) at Missouri (10), Saturday 11:00 AM

• Houston (13) at Kansas State (52), Saturday 2:30 PM

• Boise State (16) at Fresno State (57), Saturday 9:30 PM

On Friday, the Weekend Viewing Guide will lay out the top four games in each TV window.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

If you can only spare one stretch of Saturday, make it the early window. Alabama and Mississippi State, both unbeaten and both rated 14th, meet at 11:00 AM, with Michigan State at Wisconsin, Michigan at Minnesota, and UCF at Houston filling out the morning. Those four games average a Game Rank of 4.5, the best of any window this weekend. Saturday afternoon is close behind at 5.8, and it has the Game of the Week.

A quick note on the numbers. Every team rank in this guide comes from The Precedent Ratings, with the AP Poll used only for comparison. The number in front of each game is its Game Rank, which orders the weekend’s games using both teams’ ratings. In each window, a lower Avg. Game Rank means a stronger slate. Only FBS-vs-FBS games are included, and all kickoff times are Central.

Game of the Week

Florida (#1) at Missouri (#22), Florida -5.5, over/under 57.5, 2:30 PM, ABC

Florida has won three in a row and ranks first in The Precedent Ratings, where the AP Poll has the Gators eighth. Missouri, 22nd in the ratings and 25th in the AP, is coming off a loss and hosts as a 5.5-point underdog. The two have no common opponents yet, so there is no shared yardstick to hold them against. A total of 57.5 is among the higher numbers on the weekend’s board.

Friday Evening (Avg. Game Rank 18.7)

• #11 - Penn State (#47) at Northwestern (#27), Penn State -3.0, over/under 45.5, 7:00 PM, FOX

• #15 - Pittsburgh (#21) at Virginia Tech (#66), Virginia Tech -2.5, over/under 54.5, 6:00 PM, ESPN

• #30 - Liberty (#66) at Delaware (#94), Liberty -6.5, over/under 49.5, 6:00 PM, CBSSN

Friday brings three games and a lower profile than Saturday, but Pittsburgh at Virginia Tech puts two unbeaten teams on the field. That game and Liberty at Delaware kick off at 6:00 PM, with Penn State at Northwestern following at 7:00. Put all three in your multiview and the night is covered.

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Saturday Early (Avg. Game Rank 4.5)

• #2 - Alabama (#14) at Mississippi St. (#14), Alabama -6.0, over/under 60.5, 11:00 AM, ABC

• #4 - Michigan State (#24) at Wisconsin (#7), Wisconsin -10.0, over/under 43.5, 11:30 AM, BTN

• #5 - Michigan (#25) at Minnesota (#17), Michigan -5.5, over/under 43.5, 11:00 AM, FOX

• #7 - UCF (#7) at Houston (#41), Houston -11.5, over/under 51.5, 11:00 AM, ESPN2

Three of these games kick off at 11:00 sharp and Michigan State at Wisconsin follows at 11:30, which makes the window a natural four-game multiview. Alabama sits seventh in the AP poll but 14th in the ratings, while Mississippi State is 16th in the AP and 14th here. Two games, Michigan State at Wisconsin and Michigan at Minnesota, share the lowest total of the weekend at 43.5. UCF at Houston has a twist of its own. UCF is rated 7th and Houston 41st, and Houston is still the 11.5-point favorite.

Saturday Afternoon (Avg. Game Rank 5.8)

• #1 - Florida (#1) at Missouri (#22), Florida -5.5, over/under 57.5, 2:30 PM, ABC

• #5 - Ohio State (#25) at Iowa (#17), Ohio State -14.5, over/under 45.5, 2:30 PM, CBS

• #8 - Auburn (#11) at Tennessee (#51), Tennessee -7.0, over/under 54.5, 2:30 PM, ESPN

• #9 - Kentucky (#13) at South Carolina (#49), South Carolina -3.0, over/under 54.5, 3:15 PM, SEC Network

The afternoon is deep, with three games at 2:30 and the SEC Network game right behind at 3:15. The lines, the ratings and the AP Poll see a few of these differently. Ohio State is fifth in the AP and 25th in the ratings, and the 14.5-point favorite at Iowa, which is 14th in the AP and 17th in the ratings. Auburn, rated 11th, is a 7-point underdog at 51st-rated Tennessee, which is 17th in the AP.

Saturday Evening (Avg. Game Rank 11.2)

• #3 - Miami (FL) (#3) at Clemson (#35), Miami (FL) -16.5, over/under 47.5, 6:30 PM, ABC

• #12 - Washington (#66) at USC (#17), USC -8.5, over/under 58.5, 6:30 PM, NBC

• #14 - BYU (#4) at TCU (#86), BYU -6.5, over/under 47.5, 6:00 PM, ESPN

• #16 - Utah State (#66) at Boise State (#22), Boise State -18.5, over/under 51.5, 6:30 PM, CBSSN

Miami (#3) and BYU (#4) are the two highest-rated teams in this window, and both are on the road. Miami is also third in the AP poll, the two lists in close agreement, while BYU is 10th there. Boise State carries the biggest line of the evening at 18.5, just ahead of Miami’s 16.5 at Clemson.

Saturday After Dark (Avg. Game Rank 29.0)

• #18 - Cincinnati (#10) at Arizona (#86), Arizona -6.5, over/under 56.5, 10:00 PM, FOX

• #25 - Baylor (#41) at Arizona State (#86), Arizona State -3.5, over/under 49.5, 9:30 PM, ESPN

• #34 - San Jose State (#79) at Hawaii (#105), Hawaii -3.0, over/under 51.5, 10:59 PM, MW+

• #39 - Fresno State (#55) at Washington St. (#109), Washington St. -1.5, over/under 45.5, 8:30 PM, USA Net

This is the lowest-rated window of the weekend, but it has its own curiosities. Cincinnati sits at #10 and Arizona at #86, and the line still makes Arizona the 6.5-point favorite. Fresno State at Washington State carries one of the two closest lines of the weekend at 1.5. San Jose State at Hawaii kicks off at 10:59 PM, the last start on this list.

By the Numbers

• 22 teams are still unbeaten. Four of them play each other in two head-to-head games, Pittsburgh at Virginia Tech on Friday and Alabama at Mississippi State on Saturday, so two unbeaten teams will lose their zero by Saturday afternoon.

• The biggest line of the weekend is 25.5, Georgia over Vanderbilt. After last weekend I said this would be Georgia’s first real test, and with a line that size it may not be much of one. Georgia is second in the AP poll and 38th in the ratings, and Vanderbilt is rated 27th.

• The closest lines are 1.5, in Fresno State at Washington State and Georgia Southern at Coastal Carolina.

• The highest totals are 62.5, in Oregon State at Colorado State and Purdue at Illinois. The lowest are 43.5, in Michigan State at Wisconsin, Michigan at Minnesota, and Bowling Green at Miami (OH).

• Alabama, Mississippi State, Notre Dame, Texas and UCLA have each won four straight, the longest active streaks on the board. Alabama and Mississippi State play each other, so one of those streaks ends Saturday.

Sleeper of the Week

Pittsburgh (#21) at Virginia Tech (#66), Virginia Tech -2.5, over/under 54.5, Friday 6:00 PM, ESPN

This game sits 15th on the weekend’s board with a line of just 2.5, which is how a good one slips past people. Both teams are unbeaten and both have won three in a row, so a streak and an unbeaten record are on the line Friday night. Pittsburgh is rated 21st and Virginia Tech 66th, and the oddsmakers still have the Hokies as the home favorite. Neither team is ranked in the AP poll.

Storyline to Watch

Alabama (#14) at Mississippi St. (#14), Alabama -6.0, over/under 60.5, Saturday 11:00 AM, ABC

Two unbeaten teams, tied at 14th in the ratings, each carrying a four-game win streak into Starkville. One of those streaks ends Saturday. Their only common opponent so far is South Carolina, which lost to Alabama 49-18 and to Mississippi State 41-34, a 31-point margin against a 7-point one. The AP poll has Alabama seventh and Mississippi State 16th, and the line has the Crimson Tide by 6.0.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

Weekend Recap

Week 4 delivered the most games of the season, 58 in all, and the fewest favorites winning at home: just 31, or 53 percent, after three straight weeks between 67 and 82 percent. That’s the shape of the whole weekend in one number.

By the numbers

• 58 games were played between FBS teams, the most of any week this season

• Home teams won just 31 of them, 53 percent, the lowest rate of the season

• 19 games (33 percent) were decided by one score or less, in line with the season average of 34 percent

• Combined scoring averaged 50.9 points per game, below the season average of 53.0

• 22 of the 138 FBS teams are still unbeaten, down from 35 the week before

• 4 teams are still winless, down from 7

• 10 games went to a team that trailed at halftime, and 8 went to a team that trailed entering the fourth quarter

Florida 52, Ole Miss 28

Florida led 10-0 before Ole Miss’s offense found any rhythm and never let up, scoring on five straight second-half drives. Jadan Baugh ran for three touchdowns. It’s Florida’s first 4-0 start since 2019, and first-year coach Jon Sumrall became the first coach in SEC history to score 200-plus points through his first four games. The Precedent College Football Ratings had Florida at No. 1 already; this result didn’t change that, it confirmed it.

Iowa 20, Michigan 19

Iowa beat Michigan in Ann Arbor on a touchdown pass with no time left, capping a 91-yard drive. It’s Iowa’s first win at the Big House since 2010, and it came despite Michigan outgaining Iowa 429-285.

Texas 20, Tennessee 17

Texas held off Tennessee in Knoxville behind a school-record five sacks from Colin Simmons and ten sacks as a team. The offense managed 201 yards through the air from Arch Manning and needed the defense to finish the job.

Wisconsin 24, Penn State 20

Wisconsin trailed 17-0, then trailed 20-10 in the fourth quarter, and won on a 72-yard touchdown pass with 1:13 left. Two separate streaks ended in the same game: Penn State had won 64 straight games when leading by 10 or more points in the fourth quarter, and Wisconsin hadn’t won at Beaver Stadium since 2003 or beaten a ranked opponent on the road since October 2021, against Purdue.

Oregon 41, USC 27

Oregon starting quarterback Dante Moore was hit while sliding in the second quarter, drew a targeting ejection, and was taken to the hospital with a concussion. He’s expected back this season; Oregon has a bye before playing again October 10. Backup Dylan Raiola, a Nebraska transfer, threw for 289 yards and two touchdowns in relief. USC linebacker Desman Stephens II was ejected for the hit and suspended by USC for an additional game over his conduct afterward. The win extends Oregon’s streak over USC to five straight, 9-2 across the last 11 meetings.

Other results: LSU buried Texas A&M 35-6 a week after LSU’s own loss. Mississippi State beat Missouri 31-24 behind 360 passing yards from Kamario Taylor, the Bulldogs’ first win over a ranked opponent since 2014. Wake Forest won at Louisville 30-27. Jeremiah Smith caught four touchdowns for Ohio State in a 42-19 win over Illinois, tying a program record. Keelon Russell threw for 365 yards in Alabama’s 49-18 win over South Carolina.

Comebacks defined the weekend. Here are the biggest ones.

The biggest deficits overcome, measured at the end of a quarter

• Miami (OH) over Connecticut, 24-21, trailed by 14

• SMU over Missouri State, 34-24, trailed by 10

• Stanford over Georgia Tech, 34-27, trailed by 10

• Wisconsin over Penn State, 24-20, trailed by 10

• Air Force over Nevada, 36-33, trailed by 7

• Arizona over Washington State, 34-24, trailed by 7

Teams that trailed entering the fourth quarter and won

• Wisconsin over Penn State, down 10

• Mississippi State over Missouri, down 7

• Tulane over So. Mississippi, down 7

• Iowa over Michigan, down 6

• South Florida over Bowling Green, down 6

• Air Force over Nevada, down 4

• UAB over Navy, down 3

• Virginia Tech over Boston College, down 1

The betting lines had a rough weekend too. Favorites won 48 of the 58 games that had a line, but only 33 covered, and two pushed.

Underdogs that won outright, largest line first

• Wake Forest over Louisville, 30-27, as an 11.5-point underdog

• Minnesota over Washington, 27-24, as a 10.5-point underdog

• Wisconsin over Penn State, 24-20, as a 10-point underdog

• UAB over Navy, 24-20, as a 6.5-point underdog

• Cincinnati over Kansas State, 31-26, as a 6-point underdog

• Iowa over Michigan, 20-19, as a 5.5-point underdog

• Stanford over Georgia Tech, 34-27, as a 3.5-point underdog

• UCF over TCU, 21-13, as a 3-point underdog

• Wyoming over Hawaii, 27-10, as a 2.5-point underdog

• Oklahoma State over West Virginia, 41-24, as a 1.5-point underdog

Favorites that fell furthest short of the line

• SMU, 23.5 points short in a 34-24 win over Missouri State

• Hawaii, 19.5 points short against Wyoming

• West Virginia, 18.5 points short against Oklahoma State

• Indiana, 14.5 points short against Northwestern

• Louisville, 14.5 points short against Wake Forest

Favorites that beat the line by the most

• UCLA, by 49.5 points, in a 54-3 win over Maryland

• Massachusetts, by 24.5 points, over Sacramento State

• Toledo, by 22.5 points, over San Diego State

• Arkansas, by 21.0 points, over Tulsa

• Florida, by 20.5 points, over Ole Miss

Rankings Talk

Three weeks ago the ratings had 12 distinct values across 138 teams. This week there are 52, with 30 teams still at 0.000, down from 44 the week before. The picture is sorting itself out fast, but there’s still a lot of shared rank at the bottom, so read the lower half loosely. The top is a different story.

Florida sits alone at No. 1, the only team the ratings clearly separate from the pack. Behind that, this week’s real story is a growing gap between records and resumes.

Georgia is 4-0, second in the AP poll, and has outscored its FBS opponents by an average of 35.3 points per game, best in the country. It’s also 38th in the ratings. The resume explains why: Western Kentucky, Arkansas, and Oklahoma have a combined FBS record of 3-7. Notre Dame is in a similar spot: 4-0, third in the AP poll, and its four FBS opponents, Wisconsin, Rice, Michigan State, and Purdue, have a combined mark of 4-9. Indiana is the one team in this group that actually got tested. Also undefeated, sixth in the AP poll, and its first two FBS opponents, North Texas and Western Kentucky, had allowed Indiana to outscore them 90-16 combined before Northwestern showed up in Week 4 and hung 23 points on that defense by itself, more than Indiana’s first two FBS opponents managed together. Indiana still won, 29-23, but it needed everything it had against a team most people had barely heard of two weeks ago. Georgia and Notre Dame haven’t had a moment like that yet.

Now flip it around. Duke is 4-0, has actually beaten three FBS teams with a combined winning record, and doesn’t have a single vote in the AP poll. UCF and Wisconsin are both 3-1 with genuinely tough schedules behind them and neither cracks the top 25 either. Oklahoma State is a clean example: unranked two weeks ago, now the owner of a 41-24 win at West Virginia that wasn’t particularly close after the third quarter, and the rating has it 7th in the country. Kentucky is 3-1 with real wins and sits 13th by the rating, 24th in the AP poll almost as an afterthought.

None of this means Georgia or Notre Dame are bad teams. It means we don’t know yet. The schedule will answer the question either way: Georgia gets Alabama, Auburn, and Florida over the next several weeks, and Notre Dame has Miami and a trip to BYU still coming.

Biggest risers, all of whom started the week at 0.000

• Air Force, to 0.334, after beating Nevada and North Dakota State improved to 3-0

• Utah, to 0.333, after its three FBS wins started producing records worth counting

• Georgia, to 0.300, for the same reason

• Arkansas, to 0.296

• Tennessee, to 0.267, after Texas improved to 4-0

• Miami (OH), to 0.259

Biggest fallers

• Northwestern, from 0.500 to 0.334, after the Indiana loss

• Louisville, from 0.400 to 0.242, after the Wake Forest loss

• Troy, from 0.250 to 0.111

• MTSU, from 0.300 to 0.167

• W. Michigan, from 0.300 to 0.167

• Notre Dame, from 0.429 to 0.308, even though it won; its opponents’ records didn’t hold up

The biggest gaps between the ratings and the scoreboard run in both directions.

Rating rank is higher than margin rank

• Arkansas, 41st in the ratings, 103rd in average margin (-11.0)

• Miami (OH), 54th in the ratings, 115th in average margin (-15.3)

• UTSA, 17th in the ratings, 76th in average margin (-1.7)

• Central Michigan, 66th in the ratings, 124th in average margin (-22.0)

• Stanford, 50th in the ratings, 108th in average margin (-12.5)

• Oklahoma State, 7th in the ratings, 55th in average margin (+3.7)

Rating rank is lower than margin rank

• Massachusetts, 109th in the ratings, 13th in average margin (+22.5)

• UCLA, 86th in the ratings, 9th in average margin (+26.0)

• Indiana, 55th in the ratings, 7th in average margin (+26.7)

• Arizona, 86th in the ratings, 41st in average margin (+8.0)

Where the ratings and the AP poll disagree most. Sixteen of the AP’s 25 teams are also in the top 25 of the ratings.

The AP ranks the team higher

• SMU, 21st in the AP and 94th in the ratings

• UCLA, 23rd and 86th

• Indiana, 6th and 55th

• Georgia, 2nd and 38th

• Tennessee, 17th and 51st

• Notre Dame, 3rd and 36th

• Houston, 20th and 41st

• Texas Tech, 12th and 33rd

The ratings rank the team higher

• Duke, not in the AP top 25 and 6th in the ratings

• UCF, not in the AP top 25 and 7th

• Wisconsin, not in the AP top 25 and 7th

• Cincinnati, not in the AP top 25 and 10th

• Auburn, not in the AP top 25 and 11th

• Oklahoma State, 19th in the AP and 7th in the ratings

• Kentucky, 24th and 13th

• Oregon, 15th and 5th

The Rankings

Teams with the same rating share a rank and are listed alphabetically.

Top 25 Teams

1. Florida (SEC), 4-0, 0.750
2. Texas (SEC), 4-0, 0.615
3. Miami (FL) (ACC), 4-0, 0.545
4. BYU (Big 12), 3-0, 0.500
5. Oregon (Big Ten), 3-1, 0.485
6. Duke (ACC), 4-0, 0.455
7. Oklahoma State (Big 12), 3-1, 0.445
7. UCF (Big 12), 3-1, 0.445
7. Wisconsin (Big Ten), 3-1, 0.445
10. Cincinnati (Big 12), 4-0, 0.444
11. Auburn (SEC), 3-1, 0.437
12. LSU (SEC), 3-1, 0.428
13. Kentucky (SEC), 3-1, 0.424
14. Alabama (SEC), 4-0, 0.417
14. Mississippi State (SEC), 4-0, 0.417
16. Ole Miss (SEC), 3-1, 0.404
17. Iowa (Big Ten), 4-0, 0.400
17. Minnesota (Big Ten), 3-1, 0.400
17. USC (Big Ten), 4-1, 0.400
17. UTSA (American), 3-1, 0.400
21. Pittsburgh (ACC), 4-0, 0.375
22. Boise State (Pac-12), 3-1, 0.371
22. Missouri (SEC), 3-1, 0.371
24. Michigan State (Big Ten), 2-2, 0.357
25. Michigan (Big Ten), 3-1, 0.347
25. Ohio State (Big Ten), 3-1, 0.347

Conferences

1. SEC (0.416)
2. Big Ten (0.354)
3. Big 12 (0.303)
4. ACC (0.292)
5. American (0.229)
6. Pac-12 (0.219)
7. Independents (0.195)
8. Mountain West (0.168)
9. Sun Belt (0.165)
10. Mid-American (0.135)
11. Conference USA (0.120)

Loose Ends

• Colin Simmons tied the Texas program record with five sacks against Tennessee. He was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct for a celebration after one of them, which wiped out a Texas sack and handed Tennessee an automatic first down.

• Texas Tech LB Austin Romaine returned two interceptions for touchdowns on consecutive Sam Houston possessions to open the second quarter, one off Brett Holloway, the next off Landyn Locke.

• Michigan’s Week 1 win over Western Michigan, on a Hail Mary set up after officials put one second back on the clock, remains a live controversy; the MAC formally protested the result.

• 22 teams are unbeaten in overall record, and six games this week pit two of them against each other, four involving a ranked team: Ole Miss-Florida, Iowa-Michigan, Northwestern-Indiana, and Texas-Tennessee.

• The biggest line of the week belonged to Central Michigan at Miami, a 41.5-point spread. The closest was a three-way tie at 1.5 points: Oklahoma State-West Virginia, Clemson-California, and UCLA-Maryland.

• Oregon’s schedule so far is the toughest in the country by strength of schedule played (0.405), tied with Texas State.

• Oklahoma has the toughest remaining schedule in the country (0.438), followed by Mississippi State, Missouri, LSU, and Vanderbilt, all five in the SEC.

• Jacksonville State has the easiest remaining schedule in the country (0.053).

• USC’s Desman Stephens II was ejected for targeting on the hit that sent Oregon’s Dante Moore to the hospital, then suspended by USC for an additional game over his conduct on the sideline afterward.

Looking Ahead

Two unbeaten-versus-unbeaten games headline Week 5: Pittsburgh (21) at Virginia Tech (66), Friday 6:00 PM, and Alabama (14) at Mississippi State (14), Saturday 11:00 AM. Both matchups guarantee at least one long winning streak ends this weekend.

Here are the top games for Week 5 by the ratings, with each team’s ratings rank in parentheses. All times Central.

• Florida (1) at Missouri (22), Saturday, 2:30 PM

• Alabama (14) at Mississippi State (14), Saturday, 11:00 AM

• Miami (FL) (3) at Clemson (35), Saturday, 6:30 PM

• Michigan State (24) at Wisconsin (7), Saturday, 11:30 AM

• Ohio State (25) at Iowa (17), Saturday, 2:30 PM

• Michigan (25) at Minnesota (17), Saturday, 11:00 AM

• UCF (7) at Houston (41), Saturday, 11:00 AM

• Auburn (11) at Tennessee (51), Saturday

• Kentucky (13) at South Carolina (49), Saturday, 3:15 PM

• Vanderbilt (27) at Georgia (38), Saturday, 11:45 AM

For the full weekend, watch for Friday’s Weekend Viewing Guide. It breaks the slate into time windows and lists the top four games in each one, with any unbeaten AP top-25 matchup added as well.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop.

Four different windows this weekend carry an average game rank in single digits, which tells you something about how loaded this slate is. Saturday evening is the deepest stretch of the day, with four ranked-ish matchups bunched together and not a bad game in the bunch. If you only have one window to give your full attention, that’s it.

Game of the Week

#6 Ole Miss at #1 Florida — Saturday, 2:30 PM, ABC

Florida sits at the top of the ratings and is favored by 3.5 at home, which is about as thin a margin as you’ll find in a game between a one and a six. Both teams are unbeaten, both have won at least two straight, and the over/under at 59.5 suggests nobody expects a defensive struggle. This is the kind of game that tells you something real about where the season is headed, not just who wins.

From here, we’ll walk through the weekend window by window, so you know what’s on and when. If you’ve got a multi-view setup, these are the games worth filling it with.

Friday Afternoon (Avg. Game Rank: 53.0)

#53 Army (95) at Temple (95) — Army -3.0, O/U 48.5, 3:00 PM, ESPN

Not much shine here on paper, and the ratings have both teams near the bottom of the FBS pack. Army carries a one-game losing streak into this one, Temple’s dropped two straight.

Friday Evening (Avg. Game Rank: 43.0)

#11 Northwestern (2) at Indiana (78) — Indiana -20.5, O/U 49.5, 7:00 PM, FOX
#50 Navy (95) at UAB (91) — Navy -6.5, O/U 51.5, 6:00 PM, ESPN
#68 Howard at Rutgers (95) — Rutgers -43.5, 6:00 PM, ESPN

Northwestern-Indiana is the one to circle, and not because either side is a lock. The Precedent has Northwestern rated as the second-best team in the country, yet Indiana is favored by more than three touchdowns as the home team. It’s early enough in the season that gaps like this can mean the ratings haven’t caught up to reality yet, or they can mean the market hasn’t. We’ll find out which one it is Friday night.

Friday After Dark (Avg. Game Rank: 10.0)

#10 Clemson (36) at California (28) — Clemson -1.5, O/U 50.5, 9:30 PM, ESPN

A late kickoff for a game that’s closer than the records might suggest. Clemson’s won two in a row, Cal one, and a point and a half separates them in Vegas. Good one to have on if you’re still up.

Saturday Early (Avg. Game Rank: 10.5)

#4 Illinois (22) at Ohio State (36) — Ohio State -27.5, O/U 53.5, 11:00 AM, FOX
#9 Wake Forest (62) at Louisville (11) — Louisville -13.5, O/U 56.5, 11:00 AM, ESPN
#12 Colorado State (41) at UTSA (22) — UTSA -13.5, O/U 58.5, 11:00 AM, ESPNU
#17 South Alabama (78) at Kentucky (10) — Kentucky -20.5, O/U 54.5, 11:45 AM, SEC Network

Illinois-Ohio State is the headline here on paper, though a 27.5-point spread doesn’t leave much drama to expect. Louisville’s the heavy favorite in the window’s other big line, a 13.5-point spread against Wake Forest, and if you want the one late add to your morning slate, that’s the game worth flipping to.

Saturday Afternoon (Avg. Game Rank: 6.0)

#1 Ole Miss (6) at Florida (1) — Florida -3.5, O/U 59.5, 2:30 PM, ABC
#3 Iowa (41) at Michigan (6) — Michigan -5.5, O/U 38.5, 2:30 PM, CBS
#8 Boise State (28) at W. Michigan (28) — Boise State -7.0, O/U 49.5, 2:30 PM, ESPN2
#12 Vanderbilt (41) at Auburn (22) — Auburn -9.5, O/U 55.5, 3:15 PM, SEC Network

This window doubles as our Game of the Week slot, but don’t sleep on Iowa-Michigan sitting right alongside it. Both teams are unbeaten, both have won at least two straight, and the 38.5 over/under is the lowest of the entire weekend. There’s also a fun subplot buried in Boise State-Western Michigan: Boise nearly knocked off Oregon, and a lot of people think Western Michigan actually did beat Michigan earlier this year, depending on which replay you believe. Two teams with a case for the best win nobody’s crediting them for, on the same field.

Saturday Evening (Avg. Game Rank: 5.0)

#2 South Carolina (28) at Alabama (15) — Alabama -12.5, O/U 53.5, 6:00 PM, ESPN
#5 Oklahoma State (15) at West Virginia (41) — West Virginia -1.5, O/U 60.5, 6:00 PM, FS1
#6 Texas A&M (62) at LSU (9) — LSU -9.5, O/U 51.5, 6:30 PM, ABC
#7 Oregon (41) at USC (20) — Oregon -3.0, O/U 62.5, 6:30 PM, NBC

This window edges out Saturday afternoon as the deepest of the weekend, though it’s close enough that either one could carry your night. Oklahoma State-West Virginia is a true toss-up at a point and a half, and Oregon-USC carries the highest total of the entire weekend at 62.5. USC also brings the longest active win streak in the country into this one, four games and counting.

Saturday After Dark (Avg. Game Rank: 37.2)

#31 Rice (95) at Fresno State (22) — Fresno State -13.5, O/U 44.5, 9:00 PM, CW
#32 Minnesota (28) at Washington (95) — Washington -10.0, O/U 45.5, 10:00 PM, FOX
#41 Georgia Tech (95) at Stanford (41) — Georgia Tech -3.5, O/U 47.5, 9:30 PM, ESPN
#45 Missouri State (95) at SMU (66) — SMU -34.5, O/U 59.5, 8:00 PM, ACC Network

Minnesota is the name to watch late, not so much for this game but for what’s waiting next week: a date with sixth-ranked Michigan. Whether that’s on their minds Saturday night in Seattle is anyone’s guess, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

By the Numbers

Thirty-five teams enter the weekend unbeaten, and six games this week pit two of them against each other, four involving a ranked team: Ole Miss-Florida, Iowa-Michigan, Northwestern-Indiana, and Texas-Tennessee.

The biggest line of the week belongs to Central Michigan at Miami, a 41.5-point spread. The closest is a three-way tie at 1.5 points: Oklahoma State-West Virginia, Clemson-California, and UCLA-Maryland. Oregon-USC carries the highest total on the board at 62.5, while Iowa-Michigan sits at the other end with a 38.5.

USC’s four-game win streak is the longest active run in the country heading into the weekend.

Sleeper of the Week

#18 UCLA at Maryland — UCLA -1.5, O/U 56.5, 12:30 PM, BTN

Nobody’s talking about this one, but the number says it should be tight. A game ranked 18th overall with a point-and-a-half spread is exactly the kind of matchup that sneaks up on you by the fourth quarter.

Storyline to Watch

Three different games this weekend pit unbeaten teams against each other: Ole Miss-Florida, Iowa-Michigan, and Northwestern-Indiana. By Sunday morning, at most three teams that started the day undefeated will still be able to say so. That’s the kind of weekend that reshapes how the rest of the season looks.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop.

They’re not wrong, exactly. They’re also not asking the right question, because American sports were never fully built to answer the one they think they’re asking.

Seventeen Games and a Guess

Start with a fact that surprises people once they hear it: the NFL didn’t begin with a playoff system either. From 1920 through 1932, the NFL had no scheduled championship game. Its champion was determined from the regular-season standings, though the league’s earliest titles were formally ratified by a vote of club owners. Then 1932 happened. The Chicago Bears and Portsmouth Spartans finished tied atop the standings with no clean mechanism to settle it, so the league staged a hastily arranged indoor playoff game, which Chicago won 9-0. The interest that game generated, along with a growing appetite for a clearer way to settle things, helped push the league to formalize the idea a year later. In 1933 the league split into Eastern and Western divisions, with the winners meeting in the first official NFL Championship Game. The Bears beat the Giants 23-21, and the modern idea of a football postseason was born essentially by accident, because a tiebreaker turned out to be more fun than a plain standings race.

From there the field only grew. Four teams in 1967, once the league reorganized into divisions. Eight after the AFL-NFL merger created two full conferences in 1970. Ten in 1978, alongside the expansion of the regular season itself from fourteen games to sixteen. The league also briefly expanded to sixteen playoff teams during the strike-shortened 1982 season before reverting to ten the following year, a reminder that even this history isn’t perfectly linear. Twelve in 1990. Fourteen as recently as 2020, part of the new collective bargaining agreement that owners and players hammered out that year. Every expansion came with a stated justification about access and competitive fairness, and every expansion also happened to create more nationally televised, high stakes football. The league’s own case for the 2020 expansion leaned on both: it pointed out that had a seventh playoff seed existed since 1990, forty-four of the sixty teams that would have qualified for it had winning records, including ten different ten-win clubs left out in the cold under the old format. That’s a legitimate competitive argument, drawn from the league’s own numbers. It also happens to be an argument that produces two additional playoff games every single January, and nobody at the NFL was losing sleep over that side effect.

It’s worth separating two things that tend to blur together in this history: adding franchises and adding playoff spots are not the same decision. New teams generally arrived for their own reasons, new television markets, expansion fees, and in the NFL’s case a merger with a rival league, and once those new teams existed, the leagues had to reorganize into more divisions just to make sense of the standings. That reorganization is what mechanically produced more division winners, and therefore more automatic playoff spots. The later additions, like extra wild card slots layered on top of an already-settled division structure, are a different kind of decision entirely, one clearly aimed at creating more valuable, more marketable postseason games rather than accommodating a bigger league.

Here’s the thing about the NFL specifically, though, and it’s easy to miss if you’re comparing sports without thinking about what a seventeen game season can actually tell you. Football doesn’t give you much data. Teams play an unbalanced schedule against a small slice of the league, one game a week, with injuries capable of swinging three or four wins in either direction depending on which body gets hurt and when. A standings table built on seventeen games isn’t lying to you, but it’s also not offering much confidence. Two teams can finish 10-7 and 9-8 and be functionally identical, separated by nothing more than a bounce of the ball in Week 4. In that world, a playoff isn’t just a business decision dressed up as fairness. It might be the most honest tool the league has, because the regular season alone often can’t do the sorting job by itself.

A Season Baseball Almost Trusts

Baseball is a completely different animal, and its history proves it.

For most of its existence, Major League Baseball didn’t have an internal playoff bracket at all. The American League and National League ran separate season-long pennant races, and whoever finished on top of each league simply advanced to play each other in the World Series, first held in 1903. The regular season wasn’t a qualifier for something else. It was the whole competition. Whoever survived 154, later 162 games with the best record in their league was, by definition, that league’s champion.

That changed in 1969, when expansion pushed each league to split into two divisions, creating the League Championship Series as a new round sitting between the regular season and the World Series. From there the familiar pattern repeats: expansion in 1985 to a best-of-seven LCS, a three-division realignment in 1995 that introduced the first wild card team in each league, a second wild card and a one-game play-in round added in 2012, and the current twelve-team format locked in by the 2022 collective bargaining agreement. Worth noting that 2020’s pandemic-shortened season briefly used a one-year sixteen-team postseason, an exception rather than a permanent step in this progression. Each real step added more teams, more meaningful September baseball for more fan bases, and more nationally televised October games. Nobody at MLB has ever really pretended otherwise. The 2012 change explicitly kept a real advantage for winning your division by making a wild card team survive a single win-or-go-home game before it could even reach the Division Series, which is itself an admission that the sport values whatever a 162-game season proves and wants a system that still respects it, at least a little.

But here’s what the research on this actually shows, and it’s sharper than most of us assume walking in. A 162-game schedule is genuinely the strongest regular season sample in North American sports. It should tell you more about which team is actually good than a seventeen game NFL season tells you about a football team. And in one sense, it does. Researchers looking at competitive balance across sports, using betting markets to estimate true team strength, have found that a good NFL team’s per-game win probability is meaningfully higher than a good baseball team’s. Football games are, in a strange way, less random than baseball games, even though football gives you far fewer of them to look at. Baseball is a sport where even a genuinely strong team often wins only a little more than half its games, night to night. One SABR analysis frames just how much noise that creates: for a hypothetical team that’s truly a .500 team, random variation alone would be expected to produce a standard deviation of roughly six wins across a 162-game season, treating each game as something close to an independent coin flip. Real baseball isn’t quite that clean, but it’s a useful benchmark for how much noise a full season can still carry even at its longest.

So when a 90-win team gets knocked out by an 84-win team in a five-game series, the honest answer to “was that fair” is more complicated than either side of the bar argument wants it to be. The 162-game season really did tell you something true and meaningful about team quality, more so than almost any other American sport’s regular season. But a short series was never built to preserve that signal. It was built to create a decisive, sellable event, and baseball has been very clear-eyed about that tradeoff every time it’s expanded the format. Multiple analysts, including a widely cited FanGraphs review of roughly sixty team-related variables, found that almost none of them meaningfully improved predictions of short-series outcomes beyond what a team’s regular-season record already suggested, which is why baseball writers have called the playoffs something close to a lottery for years.

The Table Doesn’t Blink

Now go look at what happens on the other side of the Atlantic, because England’s top flight makes a genuinely different choice, not an absence of one.

The Premier League, which began in its current form in 1992, didn’t invent the single table format. It inherited it from more than a century of English football, where the club with the most points at the end of the season was simply the champion, full stop. No conference, no bracket, no play-in game. Every club plays every other club twice, once at home and once on the road, for thirty-eight matches total. Three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a loss. Whoever accumulates the most points at the end of that common schedule wins the league. The Premier League’s own explanation of the format is almost disarmingly simple: every team plays every other team twice, and the team on top when it’s over is champion.

It’s worth sitting with what that format is actually optimizing for, because it’s not the same thing American leagues are optimizing for. There’s no mechanism in the Premier League for a team to get hot for three weeks in the spring and steal a trophy that thirty-seven matches of evidence say it didn’t earn. If you were the best team over the full season, judged against the exact same slate of opponents everyone else faced, you’re the champion. Full stop. The tradeoff, and English football is honest about this too, is that the drama doesn’t always survive to the final day. A dominant club can clinch with weeks to spare, and a team that finds its best form late in the year has no tournament to convert that form into a trophy. The reward for improvement has to show up in next season’s table instead.

Stakes at the Bottom

What’s easy to miss from an American perspective is that England isn’t allergic to playoffs. It just puts them somewhere else entirely. One level down, in the Championship, the second tier of English football, the top two teams are promoted automatically based on their table position, exactly the way the Premier League title works. But the final promotion spot goes to a playoff, which the EFL expanded for the 2026-27 season to include the third through eighth place teams, up from the previous third-through-sixth format. England will absolutely use a short, high-stakes tournament to settle something. It just doesn’t use one to settle who’s the best team in the country. That job stays with the table.

And that leads to the part of the English system with no real American equivalent at all: relegation. The bottom three Premier League clubs each season don’t just miss the playoffs. They get demoted out of the league entirely, dropping into the Championship along with the drastically reduced television revenue and prize money that comes with it. The Football League’s Second Division was created in 1892, and automatic promotion and relegation took hold by the late 1890s, gradually replacing the re-election system under which struggling top-flight clubs could petition to keep their place. Either way, the basic structure predates anything resembling an American wild card by more than a century. The logic behind it is almost the inverse of the American approach. Instead of adding stakes at the top of the table through an expanding tournament, English football adds stakes at the bottom, making nearly every match on the schedule matter to somebody, whether they’re chasing a European spot, fighting to avoid the drop, or trying to survive long enough to be competitive again next year.

A Sport That Settled It by Vote

College football makes the case in its own particularly American way, mostly because it did everything backwards compared to the leagues we’ve already discussed. For most of the sport’s history, there wasn’t a designated champion at all in the way the NFL or MLB has one. Teams played their regular seasons, went to whichever bowl game their conference tie-ins sent them to, and then the Associated Press poll of sportswriters and the coaches’ poll of, well, coaches, each independently decided who the best team in the country was. Most years the two polls agreed. Plenty of years they didn’t. Michigan and Nebraska both finished undefeated in 1997, each won its bowl game, and walked away with a legitimate claim to a national title that the sport had no mechanism to settle between them. It happened again in 2003, when USC topped the final AP poll while LSU, the winner of the actual Bowl Championship Series title game, was crowned by the coaches. Two undisputed seasons, two disputed champions, decided not on a field but by a spreadsheet of ballots.

That 2003 split was the final straw. The Bowl Championship Series itself had already been created in 1998, using polls and computer rankings, specifically to produce a No. 1 versus No. 2 title game and stamp out the risk of a split champion. When it produced one anyway just five years in, the pressure for an actual playoff, something with games instead of ballots, became impossible to ignore. It still took another decade. The four-team College Football Playoff didn’t arrive until 2014, and even then it functioned more like the BCS with two extra teams than like a true tournament. It expanded to twelve teams in 2024, a move projected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional media rights revenue on its own, and earlier this month the CFP opened a 30-day negotiating window with ESPN to discuss doubling the field to twenty-four teams, a format that could theoretically begin as soon as the 2027 season if the Big Ten and SEC, who hold the most sway over any format change, can reach agreement with the rest of the CFP’s governance process.

The throughline is unusually clean by the standards of this article. College football’s postseason didn’t grow because the game changed or because seasons got longer. It grew because a bowl-and-poll system produced genuinely disputed champions often enough that fans, coaches, and eventually television partners all wanted something more conclusive, and because every step toward conclusiveness also happened to be worth more money than the step before it. Unlike the NFL or MLB, where expansion mostly followed the sport getting bigger, college football expanded its championship field almost entirely because people were unhappy with who wasn’t getting a chance to play for the title, and because a bigger bracket turned out to be a very good business.

Whether that’s a better system depends entirely on what you think a sports league is supposed to reward. It’s a genuinely different question than the one American leagues are answering, and it’s worth remembering that before declaring either side’s approach obviously correct.

The Deeper Dive

The research on all of this gets more interesting the closer you look, mostly because it refuses to hand anyone a clean, satisfying answer.

The instinct that a shorter season needs a playoff more than a longer one does hold up, but not in the tidy way it first sounds. A team’s built-in randomness matters as much as its schedule length. Academic work by Michael Lopez, Gregory Matthews, and Benjamin Baumer, comparing competitive balance across the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL using betting markets to estimate real team strength, modeled basketball talent as unusually spread out, with a strong NBA team’s advantage showing up reliably across a long, high-possession game. Their model found hockey and baseball sit much closer to a coin flip on a given night, with even a clearly better team carrying a smaller per-game edge than an equivalent NBA favorite would. That means MLB’s 162 games buy real statistical confidence over a full season, but each individual game inside that season carries a lot of noise, which is exactly why a short postseason series can undo months of evidence in a way a seven-game NBA series structurally resists a little better.

That’s the sharpest available answer to whether MLB’s playoffs are “strictly business” the way some fans assume. The honest version is more layered. The 162-game season genuinely earns a strong claim to identifying real quality, stronger than almost any other American league’s regular season. The postseason that follows wasn’t built to protect that signal. Multiple analysts, including that widely cited FanGraphs review mentioned earlier, have found limited ability to predict short-series outcomes beyond what a team’s own regular-season performance already suggested, which is why baseball writers have called the playoffs something close to a lottery for years. But that doesn’t mean the whole enterprise is cynical. Baseball has simply made a clear, repeated choice across a century of history to value a decisive championship event over a pure extension of the regular season table, the same way basically every American league has.

The NFL sits at close to the opposite end. Seventeen games, against an unbalanced schedule, is a genuinely thin sample to sort quality from noise. But a single elimination playoff bracket doesn’t exactly fix that problem either. It trades one kind of uncertainty for another, testing which team can win three or four high pressure games in a row rather than which team was best across an entire season. Both are legitimate ways to define a champion. They’re just answering different questions, and it’s worth being honest that the NFL’s format isn’t more “accurate” so much as it’s differently structured around the reality that seventeen games alone were never going to settle much.

England’s model removes that particular tension by refusing to ask a knockout tournament to answer a season-long question in the first place, which is precisely why the table has such a strong claim to legitimacy there. But it comes with its own cost, both competitive and financial. Research on promotion and relegation, including work published through Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research, has found that the threat of relegation drives real economic behavior, including elevated player wages as clubs spend to avoid the drop, along with the well-documented use of parachute payments to cushion relegated teams financially. Those payments are associated with a stronger chance of bouncing back to the Premier League, and some researchers argue that gives recently relegated clubs a real head start over the rest of the Championship, though the evidence isn’t unanimous; at least one major study has pushed back on the idea that parachute payments unfairly distort competition below the top flight. The system that spreads stakes across the entire table also spreads financial risk across the entire table, and how evenly it does so is still genuinely debated.

None of this produces a tidy verdict, and it probably shouldn’t. Every league examined here made a real, historically documented choice about what a champion is supposed to mean, shaped by how much its regular season alone could prove, how random its individual games tend to be, and how much commercial value it placed on a decisive postseason event. The Premier League asks who was best across an entire season played on equal terms. American leagues generally ask who could win a tournament after that season ended. Neither question is more honest than the other. They’re just different questions, and it’s worth knowing which one you’re actually watching before you argue about the answer.

For the Curious

If this topic has you hooked the way it’s had me hooked for years, the single best next step is Michael Lopez, Gregory Matthews, and Benjamin Baumer’s research paper “How Often Does the Best Team Win?,” freely available through arXiv or Loyola’s eCommons repository. It’s more technical than anything in a typical sports newsletter, but it’s the paper behind some of the sharpest claims in this piece, and it’s worth reading in full if you want the actual math behind why baseball and hockey behave so differently from basketball on a given night.

For something more conversational, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s book Soccernomics spends real time on the economics of promotion and relegation and why European football’s structure evolved so differently from American sports, without ever needing a single stat-heavy paragraph to make its case.

Worth Watching

Keep an eye on the American League and National League wild card races over these final two weeks. Several clubs currently on the outside looking in have better run differentials than teams currently holding a playoff spot, which is about as clean a live example of this entire article as you’re going to find before Issue 10 comes around.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop.

Weekend Recap

The biggest game of the week was Ole Miss against LSU, sixth and ninth in the ratings, and it lived up to the billing. Around it, the weekend looked like this.

By the numbers

• 57 games were played between FBS teams

• Home teams won 40 of them (70 percent), and two games were played at neutral sites

• 21 games (37 percent) were decided by one score

• Combined scoring averaged 55.1 points per game

• 35 of the 138 FBS teams are still unbeaten, and seven are winless

• 10 games went to a team that trailed at halftime, and five went to a team that trailed entering the fourth quarter

Ole Miss 32, LSU 24

• Ole Miss won as a three-point underdog

• Trinidad Chambliss completed 33 of 48 passes for 363 yards and two touchdowns

• His 14-yard touchdown run put Ole Miss ahead with 6:14 left

• Ole Miss converted the two-point try on a JT Lindsey run, which made it an eight-point lead

• Jaylon Braxton intercepted Sam Leavitt in the end zone to end LSU’s final drive

The eight-point lead meant LSU needed a touchdown and a two-point conversion just to tie. Lane Kiffin took the LSU job during last season’s playoffs and did not coach Ole Miss in them, so the game came with a storyline of its own.

Comebacks defined the weekend. Here are the biggest ones.

The biggest deficits overcome, measured at the end of a quarter

• Cincinnati over Miami (OH), 35-31, trailed by 21

• Jacksonville State over Georgia Southern, 31-27, trailed by 14

• Vanderbilt over NC State, 35-31, trailed by 14

• Mississippi State over South Carolina, 41-34, trailed by 13

• Alabama over Florida State, 50-36, trailed by 11

• Clemson over North Carolina, 28-20, trailed by 11

Teams that trailed entering the fourth quarter and won

• Jacksonville State over Georgia Southern, down 10

• Vanderbilt over NC State, down 10

• Cincinnati over Miami (OH), down 7

• Toledo over Temple, down 6, in overtime, 49-48

• Clemson over North Carolina, down 2, after a lightning delay that lasted two and a half hours

Vanderbilt’s win earns a closer look. Freshman Jared Curtis threw for 277 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 64 more, and the Commodores still trailed 31-28 when NC State took over near its own goal line, facing fourth down with six seconds left. Dave Doeren said afterward that the plan was to take an intentional safety and run off as much clock as possible. It didn’t go that way. Quarterback C.J. Bailey was hit in the end zone by Vanderbilt’s Miles Capers and fumbled, and Cayden Daniels recovered it for a touchdown. The play was reviewed, the touchdown stood, and Vanderbilt won 35-31. How a team should handle that spot deserves more room than a paragraph, so I’ll take it up in Wednesday’s video.

The betting lines had a rough weekend. Favorites won 49 of the 57 games that had a line, but only 26 covered, and one game was a push.

Underdogs that won outright, largest line first

• Kentucky over Texas A&M, 31-21, as a 16.5-point underdog

• West Virginia over Virginia, 38-27, as a 10.5-point underdog

• Mississippi State over South Carolina, 41-34, as a 4-point underdog

• MTSU over Nevada, 27-20, as a 3.5-point underdog

• East Carolina over Old Dominion, 20-17, as a 3-point underdog

• Ole Miss over LSU, 32-24, as a 3-point underdog

• Central Michigan over Wyoming, 24-10, as a 1.5-point underdog

• James Madison over San Diego State, 26-13, as a 1.5-point underdog

Favorites that fell furthest short of the line

• Texas A&M, 26.5 points short against Kentucky

• Virginia, 21.5 points short against West Virginia

• Missouri, 17.5 points short in a 27-17 win over Troy

• Wyoming, 15.5 points short against Central Michigan

• San Diego State, 14.5 points short against James Madison

Favorites that beat the line by the most

• Northwestern, by 30.5 points, in a 41-7 win over Colorado

• Connecticut, by 25.0 points, over Southern Mississippi

• Iowa State, by 24.5 points, over Bowling Green

• Liberty, by 21.5 points, over Ball State

• Wisconsin, by 20.5 points, over Eastern Michigan

Rankings Talk

Three weeks in, the ratings are starting to separate teams.

• There are now 33 distinct ratings across the 138 teams, up from 12 a week ago

• 44 teams are still at 0.000, down from 97

• Florida is alone at No. 1 with a 0.667, and it is the only team above 0.500

That still leaves a lot of shared ranks, so the lower half of the list deserves a loose reading. The top is a different story.

Florida earned its spot in the week’s most entertaining game, a 44-39 win over Auburn that put 83 points on the board. Jon Sumrall, who came to Florida from Tulane, and Alex Golesh, who came to Auburn from South Florida, are both in their first seasons at their schools.

• Jadan Baugh ran for 162 yards and three touchdowns

• Florida’s other FBS win was a 66-21 rout of FAU

• FAU and Auburn are both 2-1, a combined 4-2

• Florida’s schedule so far is tied for the fifth toughest in the country

Behind Florida, tied at 0.500

• BYU

• Miami (FL)

• Northwestern, which has played only one FBS game, a 41-7 win over Colorado

• Texas

Conference movement, with last week’s rank in parentheses

• SEC, first (sixth), rating up from 0.206 to 0.374, with a 32-8 record against FBS teams

• Big Ten, second (first)

• Independents, third (fifth)

• ACC, fourth (second)

• Big 12, fifth (third)

• American, sixth (fourth)

• Pac-12, seventh (ninth)

• Mountain West, ninth (sixth)

The conference picture shows up in the top 25 too. Eight of the 26 teams come from the SEC and six from the Big Ten. No other conference has more than three, and the Mountain West, Conference USA, and Mid-American have none.

Biggest risers, all of whom started the week at 0.000

• BYU, to 0.500

• Notre Dame, to 0.429

• Ole Miss, to 0.429

• Kentucky, to 0.416

• Louisville, to 0.400

• UCF, to 0.400

Those jumps mostly reflect teams whose opponents now have records to count. The fallers are more revealing.

Biggest fallers

• Indiana, from 0.500 to 0.167, still unbeaten, with FBS opponents North Texas and Western Kentucky combining for a 1-5 record

• SMU, from 0.500 to 0.200, after losing to Louisville

• Cincinnati, from 0.500 to 0.250, still unbeaten

• UCLA, from 0.333 to 0.167, still unbeaten

• FIU, from 0.334 to 0.190

• Nebraska, from 0.333 to 0.200, still unbeaten

Louisville 41, SMU 31 produced the biggest single swing

• Louisville went from 0.000 to 0.400 and now sits 11th

• SMU went from 0.500 to 0.200 and now sits 66th

The biggest gaps between the ratings and the scoreboard run in both directions. Kentucky is 10th in the ratings and 89th in average margin, while Georgia is first in average margin and 95th in the ratings. Margin ranks below are among the 133 teams with at least two FBS games.

Rating rank is higher than margin rank

• Marshall, 13th in the ratings, 102nd in average margin (-12.3)

• Kentucky, 10th in the ratings, 89th in average margin (-9.0)

• FAU, 22nd in the ratings, 96th in average margin (-10.3)

• Stanford, 41st in the ratings, 114th in average margin (-19.0)

• UTSA, 22nd in the ratings, 91st in average margin (-9.5)

• California, 28th in the ratings, 89th in average margin (-9.0)

• Louisiana, 21st in the ratings, 78th in average margin (-6.0)

• Oklahoma State, 15th in the ratings, 71st in average margin (-3.0)

Rating rank is lower than margin rank

• Georgia, 95th in the ratings, first in average margin (+39.0)

• Nebraska, 66th in the ratings, second in average margin (+38.5)

• Indiana, 78th in the ratings, third in average margin (+37.0)

• Utah, 95th in the ratings, sixth in average margin (+33.0)

• Tennessee, 95th in the ratings, eighth in average margin (+27.0)

• Pittsburgh, 78th in the ratings, 18th in average margin (+21.3)

• N.D. State, 86th in the ratings, 22nd in average margin (+17.7)

• Nevada, 92nd in the ratings, 31st in average margin (+14.0)

Where the ratings and the AP poll disagree most

Eleven of the AP’s 25 teams are also in the top 25 of the ratings.

The AP ranks the team higher

• Georgia, 2nd in the AP and 95th in the ratings

• Tennessee, 14th and 95th

• Utah, 15th and 95th

• Indiana, 5th and 78th

• SMU, 22nd and 66th

• Texas A&M, 23rd and 62nd

• Texas Tech, 11th and 41st

• Ohio State, 7th and 36th

The ratings rank the team higher

• Northwestern, not in the AP top 25 and 2nd in the ratings

• Florida, 21st in the AP and 1st in the ratings

• Kentucky, not in the AP top 25 and 10th in the ratings

• UCF, not in the AP top 25 and 11th in the ratings

• Marshall, not in the AP top 25 and 13th in the ratings

• Oklahoma, not in the AP top 25 and 13th in the ratings

• Michigan, 18th in the AP and 6th in the ratings

• Duke, not in the AP top 25 and 15th in the ratings

Georgia shows the split most clearly.

• 3-0 overall, and the best average scoring margin in the country at +39.0

• FBS wins over Western Kentucky (70-20) and Arkansas (45-17), whose combined FBS record is 0-5

• Its remaining schedule is the fourth toughest in the country

• Its next game is against Oklahoma, 13th in the ratings

Tennessee is at the same 0.000, and its FBS opponents, Georgia Tech and Kennesaw State, are a combined 0-4.

Texas A&M shows what a scoreboard can and can’t tell you. The Aggies are 2-1 and 62nd in the ratings, tied with Wake Forest, and their first game looked like a statement.

September 12, Texas A&M 48, Arizona State 20

• A&M led 24-20 after three quarters, then outscored Arizona State 24-0 in the fourth

• 14 of those points came on interception returns, 55 yards by Marco Jones and 45 by Julio Humphrey

• Arizona State outgained A&M 369 yards to 255

Since then

• Arizona State beat Kansas 24-17 in London, in the inaugural Union Jack Classic at Wembley Stadium

• Kentucky beat A&M 31-21 at Kyle Field, its first win over Texas A&M since 1953

• The game was tied 7-7 at halftime, Kentucky scored 21 points in the third quarter, and A&M gained 20 yards in that quarter

• Kentucky is 10th in the ratings, and its average scoring margin of -9.0 ranks 89th among the 133 teams with at least two FBS games

So how much should that first A&M game have told us? The ingredients are all here.

The Rankings

Teams with the same rating share a rank and are listed alphabetically. Five teams tie for 22nd, so the top 25 runs to 26 teams. Records shown are overall records. The full ratings for all 138 teams are in the PDF attached to this post.

Top 25 Teams

1. Florida (SEC), 3-0, 0.667
2. BYU (Big 12), 3-0, 0.500
2. Miami (FL) (ACC), 3-0, 0.500
2. Northwestern (Big Ten), 2-0, 0.500
2. Texas (SEC), 3-0, 0.500
6. Michigan (Big Ten), 3-0, 0.429
6. Notre Dame (Independents), 3-0, 0.429
6. Ole Miss (SEC), 3-0, 0.429
9. LSU (SEC), 2-1, 0.417
10. Kentucky (SEC), 2-1, 0.416
11. Louisville (ACC), 2-1, 0.400
11. UCF (Big 12), 2-1, 0.400
13. Marshall (Sun Belt), 2-1, 0.381
13. Oklahoma (SEC), 2-1, 0.381
15. Alabama (SEC), 3-0, 0.375
15. Duke (ACC), 3-0, 0.375
15. Maryland (Big Ten), 2-1, 0.375
15. Oklahoma State (Big 12), 2-1, 0.375
19. Michigan State (Big Ten), 2-1, 0.371
20. USC (Big Ten), 4-0, 0.364
21. Louisiana (Sun Belt), 2-1, 0.357
22. Auburn (SEC), 2-1, 0.334
22. FAU (American), 2-1, 0.334
22. Fresno State (Pac-12), 2-1, 0.334
22. Illinois (Big Ten), 2-1, 0.334
22. UTSA (American), 2-1, 0.334

Conferences

1. SEC - 32-8 - .800 - Rating 0.374
2. Big Ten - 31-12 - .721 - Rating 0.330
3. Independents - 4-1 - .800 - Rating 0.291
4. ACC - 22-18 - .550 - Rating 0.287
5. Big 12 - 21-11 - .656 - Rating 0.274
6. American - 13-19 - .406 - Rating 0.244
7. Pac-12 - 5-13 - .278 - Rating 0.196
8. Sun Belt - 10-19 - .345 - Rating 0.180
9. Mountain West - 8-15 - .348 - Rating 0.174
10. Conference USA - 5-18 - .217 - Rating 0.129
11. Mid-American - 6-23 - .207 - Rating 0.113

Loose Ends

• Texas Tech 28, Houston 26 was decided by two points, and the two teams are now tied for 41st in the ratings.

• The best second halves so far, measured by points outscored after halftime in FBS games:

  • Texas, +56

  • LSU, +50

  • Alabama, +48

  • Penn State, +46

  • Notre Dame, +45

  • UCLA, +43

• The worst second halves so far:

  • UTEP, -56

  • Miami (OH), -53

  • Western Kentucky, -52

  • Kent State, -49

  • Ball State, -48

  • Eastern Michigan, -44

• UTEP has played the toughest schedule so far at 0.405, and it is 0-2 against FBS teams. Rice is second at 0.364, also 0-2.

• Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Utah, and Utah State are tied for the easiest schedule so far, all at 0.000.

• The toughest remaining schedules:

  • Mississippi State, 0.367

  • Oklahoma, 0.346

  • Ole Miss, 0.339

  • Georgia, 0.332

  • Missouri, 0.328

• All five of those teams are in the SEC. The ratings only count records, and the SEC has the best record against FBS teams at 32-8.

• Rutgers, 0-3, has the sixth-toughest remaining schedule at 0.327.

• The easiest remaining schedules:

  • Massachusetts, 0.046

  • Ohio, 0.052

  • Louisiana, 0.060

  • Connecticut, 0.061

  • Toledo, 0.065

• Only two teams have played four games and won them all, USC and North Dakota State.

• Seven teams are still winless at 0-3, Bowling Green, Charlotte, Northern Illinois, Rutgers, ULM, Utah State, and Western Kentucky.

Looking Ahead

Here are the top 10 games for Week 4, ranked by the ratings, with each team’s ratings rank in parentheses. All times are Central.

1. Ole Miss (6) at Florida (1), Saturday, 2:30 PM

2. South Carolina (28) at Alabama (15), Saturday, 6:00 PM

3. Iowa (41) at Michigan (6), Saturday, 2:30 PM

4. Illinois (22) at Ohio State (36), Saturday, 11:00 AM

5. Oklahoma State (15) at West Virginia (41), Saturday, 6:00 PM

6. Texas A&M (62) at LSU (9), Saturday, 6:30 PM

7. Oregon (41) at USC (20), Saturday, 6:30 PM

8. Boise State (28) at Western Michigan (28), Saturday, 2:30 PM

9. Wake Forest (62) at Louisville (11), Saturday, 11:00 AM

10. Clemson (36) at California (28), Friday, 9:30 PM

The top game pairs the No. 1 team in the ratings against the No. 6 team, and Ole Miss has the third-toughest remaining schedule, so the result will move both numbers for weeks. Texas A&M at LSU is the sequel to the A&M question above.

For the full weekend, watch for Friday’s Weekend Viewing Guide. It breaks the slate into time windows and lists the top four games in each one.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

Fifty-six games make the cut this week, and three of them pit two ranked teams against each other: LSU-Ole Miss, Houston-Texas Tech, and SMU-Louisville. That’s the most crowded ranked-versus-ranked slate we’ve had all season. Elsewhere, Texas is the new unanimous #1 with all 56 first-place votes and hosts UTSA, while Ohio State, knocked all the way from #1 to #6 after last week’s loss, gets a home date with Kent State to start rebuilding the case.

One quick note: game selections are still pulled from the AP Poll for now. The Precedent Ratings take over once there’s enough data to actually differentiate teams. Betting lines reflect the market as of Thursday, when this guide was put together, so keep an eye out for late movement.

All times Central

Game of the Week

#7 LSU at #8 Ole Miss — Saturday, 6:30 PM, ABC

Both teams are 2-0 and riding two-game win streaks, but the numbers tell two different stories about how they got there. LSU’s average margin against FBS opponents is a staggering +36.0 per game, more than double Ole Miss’s +17.5. The market agrees LSU is the better team even on the road, installing the Tigers as a 3-point favorite with the over/under at 58.5.

Friday Evening

Avg. Game Rank: 5.5

• (2) Houston (22) at Texas Tech (13) — Texas Tech -7.5, O/U 52.5 — 7:00 PM, FOX

• (9) Miami (FL) (5) at Wake Forest (NR) — Miami -20.5, O/U 56.5 — 6:30 PM, ESPN

Texas Tech slipped a spot to #13 despite starting 2-0, but it’s still favored at home over a Houston team that’s climbed to #22 on a modest +13.0-per-game margin. The bigger story is Miami, up two spots to #5 after quadrupling its first-place votes from one to four, laying 20.5 points on the road at an unbeaten but unranked Wake Forest team. That’s the most dominant scoring margin of anyone in this window at +39.0 per game.

Friday After Dark

Avg. Game Rank: 64.0

• (64) Portland State at Oregon (21) — Oregon -57.5, O/U 67.5 — 9:30 PM, BTN

Oregon closes out Friday as a 57.5-point favorite over FCS Portland State. Nobody’s watching this for competitiveness, but if you want a look at the Ducks before Saturday’s bigger slate, it’s on BTN.

Saturday Early

Avg. Game Rank: 15.0

• (6) Georgia (2) at Arkansas (NR) — Georgia -24.5, O/U 54.5 — 11:00 AM, ABC

• (10) Kent State (NR) at Ohio State (6) — Ohio State -52.5, O/U 58.5 — 11:00 AM, FOX

• (15) Buffalo (NR) at Penn State (14) — Penn State -40.5, O/U 49.5 — 11:00 AM, BTN

• (29) Tulane (NR) at Kansas State (NR) — Kansas State -20.5, O/U 49.5 — 11:00 AM, ESPN2

Georgia’s +50.0-per-game margin is the best of any team playing this weekend, and Vegas has the Bulldogs by 24.5 on the road against a reeling Arkansas team that just dropped to 1-1. Ohio State is a 52.5-point favorite at home over Kent State, about as clean a get-right spot as the schedule makers could have handed them after last week. Penn State and Kansas State, both 2-0, round out the window as heavy home favorites over losing opponents.

Saturday Afternoon

Avg. Game Rank: 6.5

• (3) SMU (16) at Louisville (23) — Louisville -1.5, O/U 58.5 — 2:30 PM, ESPN2

• (4) Mississippi St. (NR) at South Carolina (NR) — South Carolina -4.0, O/U 58.5 — 3:15 PM, SEC Network

• (8) Western Kentucky (NR) at Indiana (4) — Indiana -44.5, O/U 60.5 — 3:00 PM, Peacock

• (11) Kentucky (NR) at Texas A&M (9) — Texas A&M -17.5, O/U 50.5 — 2:30 PM, ESPN

The closest line of the week lives in this window: SMU at Louisville is a virtual pick’em at 1.5 points, even though SMU carries the better record. South Carolina’s +57.0-per-game margin is actually the single best number on the board this week, bigger than Georgia’s, and yet the Gamecocks are favored by only 4 over an equally unbeaten Mississippi State. Indiana is the biggest favorite in this window at -44.5 over Western Kentucky.

Saturday Evening

Avg. Game Rank: 6.5

• (1) LSU (7) at Ole Miss (8) — LSU -3.0, O/U 58.5 — 6:30 PM, ABC — see Game of the Week

• (5) UTSA (NR) at Texas (1) — Texas -30.5, O/U 58.5 — 7:00 PM, SECN+

• (7) Michigan State (NR) at Notre Dame (3) — Notre Dame -29.5, O/U 52.5 — 6:30 PM, NBC

• (13) BYU (11) at Colorado State (NR) — BYU -17.5, O/U 52.5 — 6:30 PM, CBS

The Game of the Week anchors this window. New #1 Texas is a 30.5-point favorite over an also-unbeaten UTSA team, and #3 Notre Dame lays 29.5 at home on Michigan State. BYU is a 17.5-point road favorite at Colorado State, the only game in this window where a ranked team is the underdog on the schedule.

Saturday After Dark

Avg. Game Rank: 26.5

• (25) Purdue (NR) at UCLA (NR) — UCLA -14.0, O/U 52.5 — 10:00 PM, BTN

• (26) James Madison (NR) at San Diego State (NR) — San Diego State -1.5, O/U 46.5 — 9:00 PM, CW

• (27) Northern Illinois (NR) at Arizona (NR) — Arizona -33.5, O/U 49.5 — 9:30 PM, TNT

• (28) N.D. State (NR) at Sacramento St. (NR) — N.D. State -27.5, O/U 50.5 — 9:30 PM, ESPN

None of these four are ranked, but the numbers still tell a story. James Madison is favored on the road despite San Diego State’s home field advantage, and North Dakota State, the only 3-0 team in this entire window, is a 27.5-point road favorite over a Sacramento State team that’s already slipped to 1-2.

By the Numbers

Fifty-two teams are still unbeaten entering the weekend. Twelve games this weekend pit two unbeaten teams against each other, and eight of those involve a ranked team:

• LSU at Ole Miss

• Houston at Texas Tech

• UTSA at Texas

• Michigan State at Notre Dame

• Miami (FL) at Wake Forest

• BYU at Colorado State

• Troy at Missouri

• West Virginia at Virginia

Lines to watch this week:

• Biggest line: Kent State at Ohio State, 52.5

• Highest total: FIU at FAU and North Texas at Texas State, both O/U 62.5

• Lowest total: Wyoming at Central Michigan, O/U 38.5

• Closest line of the week, a three-way tie at 1.5 points: SMU at Louisville, James Madison at San Diego State, and Wyoming at Central Michigan

• Upset alert: #16 SMU is a 1.5-point underdog to #23 Louisville

• Hot start: the longest active win streak in the country is three games, shared by USC and North Dakota State

Sleeper of the Week

North Dakota State at Sacramento State, Saturday at 9:30 PM. The Bison are the only 3-0 team in the entire late window and they’re a 27.5-point road favorite, yet this game is buried at the bottom of the slate where almost nobody will find it.

Storyline to Watch

Ohio State getting a 52.5-point cushion against Kent State a week after falling from #1 to #6 is about as favorable a bounce-back spot as the schedule allows. The scoreboard should take care of itself. The real question is whether this team looks like a top-six squad doing it, or a shaken one just padding a stat line.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

Weekend Recap

Two games reordered the season this weekend, one in Austin and one in Stillwater.

Texas trailed Ohio State 23-3 entering the fourth quarter. Then the Longhorns scored 21 unanswered points to win 24-23, capped by a touchdown with 25 seconds left. Down three scores and out of easy options, Steve Sarkisian’s staff started attacking on fourth down, converting twice from their own territory to keep the comeback alive. On the other sideline, Ryan Day made two more measured calls: a punt from Texas’s 39 while up 20, then a decision not to concede a late Texas touchdown that would have given Ohio State more time to answer. Both were defensible in the moment. Together, they’re the kind of sequence that gets replayed all season if Ohio State’s ceiling doesn’t match its record. One caution worth keeping in mind: it’s tempting to say any single decision cost Ohio State the game, but change one snap and the rest of the game plays out differently too. Everything downstream shifts, the same way one changed moment rewrites the whole future in Back to the Future. The four-point margin matters. Assigning it to one play doesn’t tell the whole story.

Oklahoma State’s story needed its own kind of context. Entering the day as 22.5-point underdogs against No. 6 Oregon, the Cowboys instead won 39-31, outgaining the Ducks 554 to 281. It capped a nearly two-year FBS drought: Oklahoma State snapped a 12-game overall losing streak and a 21-game skid against FBS opponents, a run that stretched back to 2024. According to NCAA.com, no team had previously ended a losing streak of 10 or more games by beating a top-10 opponent. Oregon, meanwhile, needed a late push just to escape Boise State in Week 1. Two weeks in, a team many expected to contend for a national title hasn’t looked like the dominant roster it was built to be.

Michigan’s win fits the same pattern from the other direction. After a shaky Week 1 escape, the Wolverines beat Oklahoma 17-10 behind a defense that held John Mateer to 17 of 33 passing and a run-heavy offensive plan that leaned on Bryce Underwood. It’s an early sign of what Michigan under Kyle Whittingham might look like: tight, physical, and built to win in the trenches rather than the air.

Rankings Talk

Here’s the honest state of the ratings two weeks in: 97 of 138 FBS teams share the exact same rating, 0.0. That’s not a bug. The formula multiplies win percentage by opponent win percentage, and with most teams sitting at 1-1 or 2-0 against similarly thin schedules, there simply isn’t enough separation yet. The raw records tell more of the story right now than the math does.

And the honest state of the season is just as unsettled. Is Oregon actually a mediocre team, or a good one playing two rough weeks? Is the version of Michigan and Oklahoma State we saw in Week 2 the real one, or was Week 1 closer to the truth? Nobody knows yet, and that’s fine. Four of the preseason AP Top 25 have already lost, and notably, all four lost to other ranked or receiving-votes opponents, not outsiders. The chaos so far is coming from the top of the sport beating on itself, not from unranked teams sneaking up on anybody.

Conference ratings, unlike team ratings, do have enough data to mean something. The Big Ten sits at No. 1 despite not having the best raw win percentage in the country. That distinction belongs to the SEC, at 0.875 in FBS games, and yet the SEC sits down at No. 6 in the conference ratings. The gap comes down to strength of schedule: the SEC has simply beaten up on weaker competition so far. It’s a good reminder that a gaudy record and a strong resume aren’t always the same thing this early in the year.

The Rankings

A few things worth pulling out of this week’s numbers:

Duke, quietly, is No. 1. Not in the AP poll, not in anyone’s playoff conversation, but in the numbers. Duke sits atop the internal ratings at 2-0, while Georgia, Miami, Alabama, and a few dozen other teams everyone’s actually talking about are stuck in a massive logjam at 41st. That’s not a knock on the formula. It’s what happens two weeks into a season when strength of schedule hasn’t separated anyone yet. But it’s also a reminder that the teams getting the headlines aren’t necessarily the teams with the resumes, at least not yet.

Oklahoma State went from irrelevant to No. 9 in one Saturday. A week ago the Cowboys were buried near the bottom after losing to Tulsa. One win over Oregon later, they’re inside the top ten. That’s either a sign the ratings are working exactly as designed, rewarding a genuinely great win, or a reminder of how violently the numbers can swing on a single game this early. Probably both.

Oregon’s loss didn’t sink them nearly as far as you’d think. Despite getting outgained by nearly 300 yards in Stillwater, the Ducks are still sitting at 29, not buried near triple digits. A win is still a win in this system, and Oregon’s is over a team that just cracked the top ten. It’s a good early example of how the ratings try to separate a bad loss from a loss to a team that turned out to be good.

Northwestern is 1-0 and ranked dead last. That one sounds like a bug. It isn’t. The Wildcats’ only game so far was a win over South Dakota State, an FCS opponent, followed by a bye in week 2. The ratings formula only counts games against FBS teams, on purpose, so a win over an FCS opponent doesn’t inflate anyone’s number. That leaves Northwestern with zero FBS games played, which means their win percentage isn’t zero. It’s undefined, since there’s nothing to divide. The system has to put that team somewhere, and it drops them to the very bottom, the same spot you’d expect from a team confirmed to be bad. Northwestern hasn’t been proven bad. They just haven’t played anyone the formula can count yet. Once they face Colorado in week 3, they’ll get a real number and move off the floor immediately. Worth remembering any time a team looks buried early in the season: last place doesn’t always mean worst team. Sometimes it just means no data yet.

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Loose Ends

• Kentucky and Alabama traded pick-sixes to open scoring. Mi’Quise Humphrey-Grace’s 2-yard return got Kentucky on the board first, and Alabama’s Luke Metz answered with a 34-yard return on the very next possession.

• Broadcasters spent the Texas-Ohio State fourth quarter insisting Texas didn’t want to take the lead too soon, and that Ohio State might’ve wanted to let Texas score to get the ball back with time. Both assume a level of command over in-game outcomes that a live fumble in the middle of that exact sequence undercut.

• Sam Leavitt threw three interceptions and LSU still won 45-14 over Louisiana Tech.

• Iowa beat Iowa State 16-13 on a 42-yard Caden Buhr field goal with 15 seconds left, the Hawkeyes’ first win in the Cy-Hawk series since 2021. Worth noting what Iowa State is working with this year: head coach Matt Campbell left for Penn State in the offseason and took roughly 20 players with him, including starting quarterback Rocco Becht. A nearly rebuilt Cyclones roster under new coach Jimmy Rogers still made this a one-score game that came down to the final seconds.

• USC’s Jayden Maiava threw five touchdown passes in a 49-30 win over Louisiana.

• James Madison’s special teams put on a show against Wagner: a blocked punt returned for a touchdown, plus two separate punt-return touchdowns in the same game.

• Steve Sarkisian capped a live sideline interview by shouting “Texas fight!”

• Akron let a season-ticket holder script its opening drive against Robert Morris, following borrowed Nick Saban advice: get the call in early, stay ahead of the sticks, and don’t get cute. The script drove Akron to the Robert Morris 37 before a fumble ended the possession at four plays. Head coach Joe Moorhead publicly took the blame himself, and Akron went on to win 45-10 anyway.

• Washington needed a late stop to beat Utah State 16-14, another ranked team that survived rather than made a statement.

• North Dakota State is off to a 3-0 start in its debut season in the rebuilt Mountain West, including a win over Air Force for their first conference victory as an FBS program. North Dakota State and USC are the only two teams sitting at 3-0 this early, a game ahead of most of the country.

• Georgia’s 70 points against Western Kentucky led the country this week, ahead of Nebraska’s 56 and Notre Dame’s 52.

• Four games this weekend were decided by two points or fewer: Ohio’s 29-27 win over Jacksonville State, Marshall’s 28-26 win over Middle Tennessee, Washington’s 16-14 win over Utah State, and Iowa’s 16-13 win over Iowa State.

• The rebuilt Pac-12 is off to a combined 3-10 start through two weeks, the worst mark of any conference outside Conference USA and the Mid-American.

Games to Watch — Week 3

LSU (#7) at Ole Miss (#8) — the clear Game of the Week, the only matchup between two ranked teams. LSU has climbed from a preseason #11 on the strength of blowout wins, and it’s worth watching whether Sam Leavitt cleans up the three-interception game from this week against a quality SEC defense, or whether it costs LSU this time.

Houston (#22) at Texas Tech (#13) — Houston has actually posted the bigger scoring margin of the two so far this season, despite sitting lower in the poll than Texas Tech. Worth watching whether that gap shows up on the field.

SMU (#16) at Louisville (#23) — SMU has climbed from a preseason #19 and arrives unbeaten, while Louisville enters 1-1 after already dropping a game despite its own preseason ranking. Another data point in the week’s larger theme: nobody’s resume is settled yet.

Mississippi State (receiving votes) at South Carolina (receiving votes) — both teams came into the season unranked and have forced their way into the conversation at 2-0, with South Carolina actually running up the bigger scoring margin of the two.

One more worth a mention outside the top four: Michigan State is unranked but 2-0 with a real point differential, and they’re headed to Notre Dame. That’s the kind of game that could look very different by Tuesday than it does on paper today.

Look for Friday’s Weekend Viewing Guide, with the top four games in each TV window.

Looking Ahead

It’s worth remembering how differently a result like Oregon’s or Oklahoma’s would have played out just a few years ago. In the four-team playoff era, a Week 2 loss to an unranked team was close to a knockout blow. Surviving that kind of loss and still making the field was a tall order.

The 12-team format changes that math substantially. There’s simply more room now. A one-loss team with a strong resume the rest of the way still has a real path, especially in a conference like the Big Ten or SEC where quality wins are available all season. Oregon and Oklahoma both have time to write a different ending to this story, and neither result from this weekend needs to define their season the way it might have in 2023.

That’s not a reason to wave off what happened. It’s a reason to watch how these two teams respond over the next month, rather than trying to draw a conclusion today. The bigger field was built to allow for exactly this kind of early stumble. Whether it actually changes the outcome for teams like Oregon and Oklahoma is the more interesting question, and one we won’t have an answer to for a while yet.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

One quick note: these rankings are pulled from the AP Poll for now. The Precedent College Football Ratings take over in the coming weeks, once there’s enough game data to make them meaningful.

* All times Central

Game of the Week

#1 Ohio State at #4 Texas - Saturday, 6:30 PM, ABC

Every single first-place vote in the country belongs to Ohio State right now, and the Buckeyes are taking that unanimous ranking on the road to a Texas team that jumped a spot to #4 after its own opener. Both sides are 1-0. Nothing else on the board this week even pretends to be a matchup between two ranked teams. If you watch one game, this is it.

Friday Evening

Avg. Game Rank: 32.0

(19) - Missouri (23) at Kansas (NR) - 7:00 PM, FOX
(45) - Rutgers (NR) at Boston College (NR) - 6:30 PM, ESPN2

Missouri climbed two spots after its opener, but like Kansas, that win came against an FCS opponent, so Friday is really the first look at either team against real competition. Rutgers-Boston College is the rougher watch of the two: both teams are 0-1 with no poll support on either side, and it’s on the slate mostly because someone had to fill the window.

Saturday Early

Avg. Game Rank: 5.0

(2) - Oklahoma (11) at Michigan (28) - 11:00 AM, FOX
(4) - Arizona State (41) at Texas A&M (10) - 11:00 AM, ABC
(6) - Western Kentucky (NR) at Georgia (2) - 11:45 AM, SEC Network
(8) - Oregon (6) at Oklahoma State (NR) - 11:00 AM, ESPN

Oklahoma heads into Ann Arbor against a Michigan team that fell all the way out of the numbered rankings this week, a rough landing for a squad that opened the season at #16. This is Michigan’s chance to argue the drop happened too fast. Down in College Station, Arizona State visits a Texas A&M team that slid two spots to #10. Georgia hosting Western Kentucky is as lopsided as it looks on paper. The one worth circling back to is Oregon at Oklahoma State: the Ducks actually won their opener and still fell four spots, which tells you the voters wanted more proof before trusting them again.

Saturday Afternoon

Avg. Game Rank: 6.5

(3) - Arizona (29) at BYU (15) - 2:30 PM, FOX
(5) - Memphis (30) at Boise State (26) - 5:00 PM, USA Network
(7) - Rice (NR) at Notre Dame (3) - 2:30 PM, NBC
(11) - Alabama (12) at Kentucky (NR) - 2:30 PM, ABC

Arizona carries only a handful of votes into Provo against a BYU team settling in at #15. Rice at Notre Dame is a lopsided road trip for a Fighting Irish team that moved up to #3. Alabama’s visit to Kentucky is its first real road test of the year after climbing a spot itself. But the one to actually watch is Memphis at Boise State, buried in this window without a numbered rank on either side. Memphis is a perfect 2-0, a full game ahead of most of the country, and nobody’s talking about it yet.

Saturday Evening

Avg. Game Rank: 8.0

(1) - Ohio State (1) at Texas (4) - 6:30 PM, ABC - see Game of the Week
(9) - Louisiana Tech (NR) at LSU (8) - 6:30 PM, SECN+
(10) - Charlotte (NR) at Ole Miss (9) - 6:45 PM, ESPN2
(12) - Texas Tech (13) at Oregon State (NR) - 6:30 PM, CBS

LSU jumped three spots to #8 this week, the biggest riser inside the current top ten, and hosts Louisiana Tech in what should be a comfortable step up in national standing. Ole Miss is a home favorite over Charlotte, holding steady at #9. Texas Tech slipped a spot to #13 and heads on the road against an unranked Oregon State squad.

Saturday After Dark

Avg. Game Rank: 24.0

(13) - Louisiana (NR) at USC (14) - 10:00 PM, BTN
(17) - Arkansas (NR) at Utah (20) - 9:15 PM, ESPN
(28) - North Dakota State (NR) at Air Force (NR) - 9:00 PM, FS1
(38) - Sacramento State (NR) at Fresno State (NR) - 9:30 PM, CBSSN

USC is the only 2-0 team on the board in this entire window, but don’t mistake that for a marquee matchup. Louisiana carries no poll presence at all. Arkansas travels to a Utah team that nudged up a spot to #20. The late slate closes with North Dakota State-Air Force and Sacramento State-Fresno State, four teams with zero poll standing between them.

Sleeper of the Week

Memphis at Boise State, Saturday at 5:00 PM. Perfect record, real production, and almost nobody outside Memphis is paying attention yet. Worth the flip during a commercial break in a bigger game.

Storyline to Watch

Michigan falling out of the rankings entirely after a preseason #16 slot is the most interesting subplot of the weekend, and it has nothing to do with the scoreboard. A ranked win over Oklahoma changes that conversation fast. A loss, and the questions about this Michigan team start sounding a lot louder.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

In January of 2025, sitting in front of reporters with a Heisman conversation already swirling around him, Arch Manning said something that cut through most of the noise. He had received, he admitted, a lot of undeserved attention because of his last name. Then he added the line that mattered more. He hadn’t done anything yet. He had started two football games.

It was a strange thing to hear from the most hyped quarterback prospect of his generation, a kid who’d been compared to his uncles since middle school and treated as college football’s biggest story before he’d thrown a single meaningful pass. But it was also true, and it framed the question Texas was about to answer in real time. Was Arch Manning going to be good because he was patient, or was he simply given more patience than anyone else because of who he was?

A Redshirt With Real Reps

The popular shorthand is that Manning spent two years on the bench behind Quinn Ewers before finally getting his shot. That’s not quite right, and the details matter. In 2023 he redshirted, appearing in just two games under the rule that lets a player see limited action without losing the season, two of five passing for 30 yards against Texas Tech and a mop-up snap in the Big 12 Championship Game. But 2024 was different. When backup Maalik Murphy transferred, Manning became QB2 for real and saw action in ten games, completing 67.8 percent of his passes. When Ewers went down with an oblique injury against UTSA, Manning came off the bench and threw four touchdown passes in relief. He started twice that season while Ewers was hurt.

Ohio State, Florida, and the Pile-On

Whatever goodwill the apprenticeship built evaporated fast once Manning actually had to carry a team by himself. Texas opened its 2025 season ranked No. 1 in the country, with Manning as the new face of the program, and it lasted about three games before the doubts came roaring back. He completed just 55.3 percent of his passes across his first three starts, throwing three interceptions in the process. The Florida loss in early October was the low point. Sixteen of 29 for 263 yards sounds fine on paper, but two more interceptions and six sacks told the real story. Texas dropped to 3-2, and the same critics who’d questioned him as a recruit were suddenly back with fresh ammunition.

Ryan Clark said flatly that Manning wasn’t a generational talent. Johnny Manziel piled on about his high school competition, joking that the players chasing him on tape at Isidore Newman looked like they were barely moving. It wasn’t a new argument. Recruiting analyst Mike Farrell had made a version of it back in 2022, saying that if Manning’s name were Arch Smith, he’d have been rated a three-star prospect instead of the top overall recruit in the country. Isidore Newman plays in Louisiana’s 2A classification, nowhere near the level of the state’s true football factories. The skepticism wasn’t limited to media personalities, either. Heading into 2026, a CBS Sports survey of anonymous NFL scouts and personnel executives named Manning among the most overrated players in the sport, right alongside Oklahoma State’s Drew Mestemaker. That’s a factual gap in his résumé, not just an opinion, and it gave the skeptics a real foothold once his college struggles started piling up.

The Turnaround Nobody Fully Trusts

Then something shifted. Over his final eight games, Manning completed 62.1 percent of his passes and threw just two interceptions, a dramatic reversal from his rocky start. He threw for 346 yards and three scores in an overtime win at Mississippi State, then followed it with a clean, mistake-free 328-yard, three-touchdown performance against a ranked Vanderbilt team. He capped the season with a Citrus Bowl MVP award against Michigan, racking up 221 passing yards, 155 rushing yards and four total touchdowns.

It wasn’t a perfectly clean arc. He still had a rough day at Kentucky and an ugly loss at Georgia mixed into that stretch. But the broader shape of the season was unmistakable: a quarterback who looked overwhelmed in September and looked like one of the best players in the country by December.

Would Arch Smith Have Gotten This Long

Here’s where the argument really lives. Steve Spurrier, never one to hold back, asked publicly why Texas let Ewers play over Manning for as long as it did if Manning was already this good, pointing out that Ewers only ended up a seventh round pick. It’s a punchy line, and it’s not entirely fair. Ewers had led Texas to a Big 12 title and back-to-back playoff berths, and threw for over 3,400 yards with 31 touchdowns in his final season. That’s not a guy who was just keeping a seat warm.

Cam Newton offered the sharpest defense of the whole arrangement, and it came from personal experience. Newton spent two years behind Tim Tebow at Florida before transferring to Auburn and winning a national title and the Heisman the following year. He said the point was never whether you’re starting, it’s whether you’re being developed, and he argued that Manning would have been foolish not to learn from watching Ewers manage a locker room and handle pressure up close.

Texas has actually run this experiment before, and it didn’t go nearly as smoothly. Chris Simms, son of Super Bowl-winning quarterback Phil Simms, arrived in Austin in the late 1990s under similar circumstances, a famous last name, sky-high expectations, and coach Mack Brown never quite settled on how to handle him. Simms and Major Applewhite bounced the job back and forth for years, a mess that likely cost Texas a shot at bigger things. Sarkisian’s disciplined patience with Manning looks less like an inability to say no to a Manning and more like a coach who watched his own program botch this exact situation once already and was determined not to repeat it.

Still, nobody can prove the counterfactual. Sarkisian has said publicly there was no extra pressure attached to Manning’s recruitment because of his name. He’s also said he saved a text from Cooper Manning sent right after Arch committed in 2022, one telling Sarkisian to make sure every recruit coming through the program knew Arch loved Texas and hadn’t taken money to commit there. It was a message about the decision itself, not a claim that Arch would play for free once he got there. He hasn’t. His NIL earnings are now among the highest in all of college sports. But the text still signals something: a father wanting it on record that the commitment wasn’t purchased, even if everything that followed it eventually was. Whether a quarterback with identical tape and an identical rocky freshman handoff would have received the same two years, absent the name, remains unknowable. That tension doesn’t resolve. It’s part of what makes the story worth telling.

Stafford, Nix, and the Others

History offers company on both sides of this. Matthew Stafford threw 13 interceptions as a true freshman at Georgia, a worse start statistically than Manning’s, and needed three full years before becoming the No. 1 pick in the draft. That’s the clean version of patience paying off. Bo Nix’s path was messier. He started immediately at Auburn, spent three years there without ever truly breaking out, and only became a Heisman finalist after transferring to Oregon. DJ Uiagalelei and Max Browne are the harder lessons. Both arrived as the most hyped quarterback recruits of their classes, both got real chances, and neither one turned into the player the hype promised, no matter how much runway they were given.

The lesson from all four isn’t that patience works or that it doesn’t. It’s that a rough freshman or sophomore season predicts almost nothing on its own.

What makes Manning’s situation increasingly rare is simply that he got the chance to find out. Look at the quarterbacks recruited just two classes ahead of him: among the top ten quarterback recruits in the 2021 class, eight of ten have already transferred schools. Staying in one place long enough to complete a real developmental arc, redshirt year, backup year, adversity, recovery, has become the exception rather than the rule in the current sport. Whether that exception was earned or handed to him is still an open question heading into 2026. Texas opens the season on September 5th, and for the first time, Manning gets to answer it with a full season of tape instead of two starts and a promise.

The Deeper Dive

The transfer numbers deserve one more layer, because they explain why the Manning situation feels increasingly like a relic rather than a blueprint. Go back to 2002, when Vince Young topped the recruiting rankings, and nearly every blue-chip quarterback from that class finished their careers at the school that originally signed them. Part of that was culture, but part of it was simply mechanics: transferring was much harder then, with real penalties attached. They didn’t just wait their turn out of loyalty. They waited because leaving came at a real cost.

That patience used to come with a real cost, though a smaller one than people assume. A one-time transfer used to cost a player a year, not a season. Under the old “five years to play four seasons” rule, sitting out after a transfer worked exactly like a redshirt, it burned a year off the clock without touching any of a player’s four seasons of actual competition. Nobody lost eligibility outright. But the year away was real, and it left less room for error, an injury or an earlier redshirt could still cause a player to run out of time before using every season they were owed. Today, none of that applies. A player can transfer as many times as they want and compete immediately, no clock penalty, no redshirt tax, no lost year at all.

That’s what makes the Manning experiment genuinely interesting rather than just another quarterback story. Texas had a rare set of circumstances that allowed it to run the old model: a stable, respected starter in Ewers who bought time without controversy, and a fanbase willing, if barely, to tolerate patience because of the name attached to the alternative. Strip away either of those pieces and it’s easy to imagine Manning transferring somewhere for a fresh start after a rocky 2025, the same path Bo Nix eventually took, rather than sticking around to author his own turnaround.

Whether that makes Texas smart or simply lucky is worth sitting with. Programs love to talk about player development as if it’s a repeatable formula. Manning’s case suggests it might be less about formula and more about circumstance, the right roster situation existing at the right moment for a program that could afford to wait, and the right player content to wait alongside it. Take away Manning’s own patience, and a talented, frustrated quarterback with his options and his name recognition could have gone anywhere he wanted.

For the Curious

If you want to go deeper on how patience and pressure shape young quarterbacks, ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary “Elway to Marino” is worth your time. It covers the 1983 draft class, a group of quarterbacks who entered the league under wildly different circumstances and expectations, and it’s a good reminder that the tension between hype and readiness isn’t new, it just moves faster now than it did 40 years ago.

Worth Watching

Keep an eye on Texas hosting Ohio State on September 12th. It’s Manning’s first true measuring-stick game of the season, a rematch against the same team that beat him in his rockiest outing a year ago, and it’ll tell us fast whether last year’s turnaround carries over or whether the questions start all over again.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop.

Weekend Recap

One housekeeping note before diving in: this recap and this week’s numbers cover games played through Saturday. Three more Week 1 games are still ahead as of this writing, Washington State at Washington, Louisville against Ole Miss in Nashville, and Wisconsin against Notre Dame at Lambeau Field, all on Sunday, plus one more Monday night. Those results will show up in next week’s numbers rather than this week’s. Consider this the first 47 games of Week 1, not the whole picture.

Week 1 did what Week 1 is supposed to do so far. Across those 47 games and 2,389 combined points, it exposed who actually built something during the offseason and who is still running on reputation. Home teams won at an 80.9 percent clip, and only 10 of the 47 games, about one in five, were decided by a single score. Most weekends aren’t this lopsided this early.

Start in Baton Rouge, where Lane Kiffin’s LSU debut turned into the sport’s first real statement game. Sam Leavitt threw for 230 yards and ran for 113 more with two scores on the ground, and LSU’s defense held Clemson to one first down in the entire first half. The final was 51-10, LSU’s fourth straight opening-week win over a program that used to define the sport, and Clemson has now dropped four consecutive season openers without scoring more than 10 points in any of them. That’s not a slow start anymore. That’s a pattern.

The game carried an extra layer of theater. A Louisiana judge had granted an injunction clearing former Ole Miss players Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris to return to college football at LSU. The SEC didn’t just object. It sued. On Thursday, the conference filed suit against LSU, Kiffin, and university leadership in federal court in Alabama, accusing the program of running a “deliberate and coordinated campaign” to recruit players who’d already signed NFL contracts. Kiffin left both players off the roster for the opener anyway, unwilling to test the SEC’s patience before the legal fight plays out. He didn’t need them. LSU led 31-3 at halftime, and when ESPN’s Holly Rowe wrapped an interview with him at the break, Kiffin walked away, then turned back to a hot mic and said, “Imagine if we had pro players.” He’d also used the two-hour weather delay to his advantage, refusing to shorten Clemson’s stay in the visitors’ locker room. “That locker room sucks over there,” he said afterward, treating the discomfort as a legitimate part of the game plan.

Michigan needed a much stranger path to 1-0. Trailing Western Michigan 12-7 in the final seconds, Bryce Underwood’s first Hail Mary sailed out of the end zone with the clock reading zeroes. Officials reviewed it, put one second back on, and Underwood connected with Utah transfer JJ Buchanan on the second attempt to win it, 13-12. Western Michigan played the better game for nearly sixty minutes. The extra second is the part people will remember.

Oregon needed 378 yards and three touchdowns from Dante Moore, including a 62-yard go-ahead strike, to get past Boise State 34-27. The Ducks survived. Boise State looked like a team that could cause real problems for someone in the playoff picture later this year.

Everyone else with something to prove mostly proved it. Ohio State ran up 56 points on Ball State behind Julian Sayin and Jeremiah Smith. Texas put up 59 on Texas State, with Arch Manning throwing four touchdowns. Miami’s Darian Mensah threw for 401 yards and five scores in a 45-6 rout of Stanford. Georgia, Alabama, Penn State, Texas A&M and Iowa all posted comfortable wins that told you exactly what you expected to hear.

Not everyone got the easy version of Week 1. Auburn survived a Baylor two-point try at the goal line to win 17-16. Colorado beat Georgia Tech 14-13 on a blocked field goal as time expired Thursday. And Rutgers, reportedly paying $1.55 million to host a home opener, lost to UMass, a 29.5-point underdog that hadn’t won a game in sixteen tries.

Rankings Talk

Since this is the first issue where numbers show up alongside the writing, it’s worth explaining what you’re actually looking at.

Starting this season, The Precedent is tracking its own ranking system for college football, the Precedent College Football Ratings, built from a simple formula: a team’s win percentage multiplied by the win percentage of the teams it’s played. The idea is to reward teams for beating good opponents, not just for winning games against whoever happened to be on the schedule. A team that goes 3-0 against three good teams should rate differently than a team that goes 3-0 against three bad ones. That’s the whole premise, and over the course of a season it tends to separate the teams that are actually good from the teams that just look good on paper.

One thing worth being clear about up front: the score of the game doesn’t matter to this formula, only the result. The objective is to win, not to cover a point spread, so a team that wins by one point gets treated exactly the same as a team that wins by fifty. Blowouts don’t earn bonus credit and close calls don’t get penalized. Winning is winning.

Here’s the catch for week one specifically: the formula can’t do its job yet. Week 1 actually spans two separate weekends of games, so a handful of teams, Memphis and USC among them, have already played twice. But that’s still a small enough group that it doesn’t move the needle. Almost every team is sitting at either 1.0 times 0.0, if they won, or 0.0 times something, if they lost. Nobody has played a big enough slate yet for the math to tell anyone apart. That’s not a bug and it’s not the system failing on its debut. It just needs more games in the bank before it can carry real signal, and from that point on, this section is where the actual numbers get discussed.

For now, what we can talk about honestly is the raw win-loss record, and that tells its own story. The SEC went a perfect 9-0 in Week 1’s first 47 games. The Big Ten went 12-1. Every other conference finished with a losing or middling record, and the newly reconstituted eight-team Pac-12, the one that added Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Utah State and Texas State, opened its first season together at a rough 1-4.

The preseason poll held up better than the weekend’s chaos would suggest. Not a single team in the preseason AP Top 25 has lost yet, and USC is the only ranked team already sitting at 2-0. The bigger story is what happened just outside the rankings. Ten teams that received preseason votes without cracking the Top 25 have already played, and nine of them lost. Clemson picked up 112 votes and is 0-1. Boise State (43 votes), TCU (11), Oklahoma State (8), Georgia Tech (4), California (2), Liberty (1), Tulane (1), and Western Michigan (1) all opened 0-1 as well. UNLV (4 votes) is the only one of the bunch that’s even 1-1. That’s about as clean a gap between “ranked” and “almost ranked” as you’ll see all year.

The Rankings

Conference standings by raw record (FBS games only), Week 1

• SEC: 9-0 (1.000)

• Big Ten: 12-1 (0.923)

• ACC: 8-6 (0.571)

• Big 12: 4-3 (0.571)

• American: 4-5 (0.444)

• Mountain West: 5-7 (0.417)

• Sun Belt: 2-4 (0.333)

• Pac-12: 1-4 (0.200)

• Mid-American: 2-10 (0.167)

• Conference USA: 0-7 (0.000)

Team ratings will show up here once there’s enough separation in the data to say something meaningful. With 51 of 138 teams still waiting on their opener, that’s likely another week or two out.

Loose Ends

• Indiana’s Josh Hoover played through a bloody face and still threw four touchdowns in the defending champs’ opener.

• Hawaii is the only team in the country sitting at 0-2. Everyone else who’s lost has only played once.

• Memphis and USC are the only two teams at 2-0.

• Florida scored more points than anyone in Week 1, putting up 66. Mississippi State (62), Texas (59) and Pittsburgh (59) followed.

• Three FCS teams beat FBS opponents: The Citadel over Charlotte in triple overtime, Tarleton State at Bowling Green, and Idaho State at Utah State.

• The scoreboard took a beating elsewhere too. Louisiana Tech hung 80 on Northwestern State, Virginia Tech put up 73 on VMI, and Kansas State beat Nicholls 71-3.

• Arkansas’ mascot Tusk VII sat out a heat-advisory opener, and a game elsewhere ended in a tie when a 108-degree heat index made overtime untenable.

• FBS newcomer North Dakota State opened 1-0. Fellow newcomer Sacramento State opened 0-1.

Looking Ahead

Ohio State and Texas both did exactly what they were supposed to do against overmatched openers, which sets up the first real test of the season. The two meet next Saturday in Austin, and it’s the first game all year where nobody can hide behind a soft schedule. That’s where Weekend Precedent picks back up next week.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop

The offense wasn’t broken in 2025, but Chiefs fans might disagree. An offense that used to not sweat at all on 3rd-and-18 made fans nervous on 2nd-and-2. It ranked 11th in the league in overall efficiency, respectable by most standards, underwhelming by the standard Kansas City set for itself. The real trouble showed up in the specific moments that used to define this team. Third down, where the Chiefs had built a decade of reputation manufacturing conversions out of nothing, dropped to 22nd in the league. At one stretch early in the season they were converting barely a third of their third downs. The running game produced exactly one run over 20 yards from an actual running back all year. Nearly every other explosive rushing play came from Mahomes scrambling for his life, which is not something you want to lean on with a 30-year-old quarterback returning from a torn ACL.

The Diagnosis

Mahomes himself said that defenses had seen a lot of the plays Kansas City had leaned on for years, and the offense needed new answers. That’s not a decline story. The league always catches up. Coordinators had years of tape on Kansas City’s go-to concepts, and those concepts stopped working as often. Add an offensive line that cycled through 17 different combinations over the season, with the Week 1 starting five playing together for exactly two games after Week 6, and you get an offense leaning harder every week on one player to bail it out.

The injuries tell the story in specifics. Left tackle Josh Simmons needed wrist surgery and landed on injured reserve. Right tackle Jawaan Taylor missed time. Right guard Trey Smith went down late in the year. By Week 14, Kansas City was projected to start two backup tackles, Wanya Morris and Jaylon Moore, alongside a backup guard just to field a line. The pressure showed up before Mahomes ever got hurt. From Week 8 on, he was sacked at least three times in every single game, and on Thanksgiving against Dallas, that number hit four.

The numbers back up what Mahomes was describing. Early in the season, Kansas City actually ranked second in the league in rushing plays of 10 yards or more. That sounds like progress until you look at where those runs came from. Seven of the team’s nine explosive rushing plays came off Mahomes scrambles, not handoffs. The ground game wasn’t creating explosive plays. Mahomes was creating them himself, with his legs, on broken plays, which is a great highlight reel and a terrible long-term plan for a quarterback who’d just torn his ACL.

Brett Veach put it in blunt front-office terms this spring. He wanted the running game to be more explosive because a real ground threat takes pressure off everybody, especially a quarterback working his way back from a major injury. That’s the entire thesis of Kansas City’s 2026 offseason, stated by the man who built it.

The Fix

The headline move was signing running back Kenneth Walker III in March. A team that had relied on late-round draft picks and older running backs for several years was finally admitting they couldn’t do that any longer. An even more revealing decision came in where the resources went after that. Veach specifically singled out the interior offensive line trio of Kingsley Suamataia, Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith, saying the plan was to take advantage of those three to impose your will on an opposing defense. Impose your will is not the language of a team that built a dynasty on spacing and matchup problems. It’s the language of a team trying to become harder to solve, not just faster.

Eric Bieniemy’s return as offensive coordinator reads the same way. Bieniemy coached Kansas City’s running backs from 2013 through 2017 before ever calling plays, then ran the offense as coordinator from 2018 through 2022, helping the Chiefs win their first two Super Bowl titles of the Mahomes era. Bringing him back isn’t just a reunion. It’s a bet that the coach who built the running back room the first time around is the right person to rebuild it now, at exactly the moment the Chiefs need it most. Since coming back, his message has been almost stubbornly basic. Do the fundamentals right or nothing else matters, he said. That’s a push toward an offense that doesn’t need a magic trick on every third down just to move the chains.

They didn’t stop at one running back either. Fifth-round pick Emmett Johnson joined the room alongside Walker, Emari Demercado and Brashard Smith, which says Kansas City wanted real competition at a position that had neither depth nor juice last season, and perhaps a nod to the fact that Walker shared carries in Seattle prior to Zach Charbonnet getting injured in the playoffs.

Johnson wasn’t the only rookie brought in to fill a specific gap. Kansas City used its first two picks after Delane on defense, taking defensive tackle Peter Woods and edge rusher R Mason Thomas, then circled back for cornerback Jadon Canady in the fourth round and wide receiver Cyrus Allen in the fifth. Even the sixth-round pick, quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, reads less like a lottery ticket and more like organizational patience, developmental depth behind Mahomes rather than a threat to his job. Look at the class as a whole and a pattern emerges. Kansas City didn’t spend this draft chasing one big fix. It spent the class reinforcing almost every position tied to the thesis: protect Mahomes, support the run game, and make the defense finish what it starts.

The Other Half

The Chiefs acknowledged that the run game wasn’t the entire problem. Kansas City’s defense generated pressure on more than half its third-and-long snaps last season and turned almost none of it into sacks, finishing with the seventh-fewest sacks in the league while allowing opponents to convert 44 percent of their third downs. A defense that creates pressure but can’t finish plays puts the offense right back where it started, needing to be perfect. So the Chiefs spent real capital there too. Defensive tackle Peter Woods and edge rusher R Mason Thomas came off the board with their first two picks after cornerback Mansoor Delane, and run-stopping tackle Khyiris Tonga arrived in free agency. They also brought back cornerback L’Jarius Sneed, a two-time champion in Kansas City who already knows what Steve Spagnuolo wants from his defensive backs.

The Chiefs are betting on the problem having been the talent, not the coaching schemes. Spagnuolo is still calling the same aggressive, pressure-first defense he’s always called. What changed is the talent underneath it, built specifically to finish what the pressure package starts.

Put the two halves together and the picture sharpens. Kansas City isn’t trying to make Mahomes less important. They’re trying to make him less necessary on every single snap, so the next time the league takes something away, as it just did, there’s enough around him to absorb it instead of asking him to make up the difference by himself.

The Deeper Dive

Teams that consistently win eventually run into the same issues. The league adjusts, the quarterback ages another year, and whatever edge used to separate them from everyone else gets thinner. Every dynasty comes to an end. What the front office builds around the quarterback determines how long the window stays open.

The 1990s Cowboys are worth revisiting here, though not for the reason people usually bring them up. Troy Aikman never had to become a different quarterback to win three Super Bowls in four seasons. He wasn’t the reason for all of their success the way Mahomes and the other all-time greats have been in their runs. Emmitt Smith won four rushing titles in that stretch, Michael Irvin gave Aikman a real outside threat, and the offensive line in front of them was arguably the best of its era. When Jimmy Johnson left after the 1993 season and Barry Switzer took over, the formula didn’t change. Dallas kept feeding Smith, kept protecting Aikman, and kept reinvesting in the trenches, drafting guard Larry Allen in 1994 to reinforce a line that was already the engine of the whole operation.

The defense is where Dallas made its most telling move. After losing the 1994 NFC Championship to San Francisco, the Cowboys signed Deion Sanders that September, adding a true difference-maker to a unit that already had Charles Haley and Darren Woodson. Aikman didn’t need to throw for 4,500 yards to win the 1995 Super Bowl. He needed a complete enough team around him that he didn’t have to.

San Francisco’s response to that same Dallas problem tells the flip side. After back-to-back conference championship losses to the Cowboys, the 49ers didn’t ask Steve Young to simply outduel Aikman. They rebuilt the defense that had been the actual gap, adding six new starters in 1994 alone, Sanders among them a year before he landed in Dallas, plus linebacker Ken Norton Jr. San Francisco went 13-3, Young won MVP, and the 49ers finally got past Dallas in the title game before winning the Super Bowl.

Both franchises landed on the same answer from different directions. An elite quarterback buys a lot, but not forever, and not alone. The help usually shows up in the trenches and on defense, not in asking the quarterback to be more spectacular than he already is. Kansas City’s 2026 approach, an interior line built to impose its will and a defensive front retooled to finish what it starts, reads like a team that studied the same history we just did.

For the Curious

If you want the fuller, rougher version of how that Cowboys roster actually came together, Jeff Pearlman’s Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty is worth your time. It’s a candid, sometimes uncomfortable look at what that locker room was really like off the field, and it doesn’t clean up the parts of the story that don’t reflect well on the people involved. Worth knowing going in if you’d rather keep this one strictly about football.

Worth Watching

Keep an eye on Kansas City’s first five regular season games. That stretch should answer the real question hanging over this offseason: is the offensive output we’ve come to expect from this team back, or is something more structural going on that a new running back and a healthier line can’t fully fix.

Thanks for reading The Precedent. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who would too.

Written by Bob Sloop.

That’s the part of the Myles Garrett story that got lost in the noise of trade grades and highlight reels. Yes, the Browns sent a two-time Defensive Player of the Year to the Rams for Jared Verse and a stack of future draft picks. Yes, it reshapes both rosters for years. But buried in the fine print of Garrett’s contract was something that made this trade fundamentally different from almost every other blockbuster in NFL history: Garrett had to say yes first.

The Fine Print

Most NFL players have no say in where they get traded. Football contracts, unlike their baseball and basketball counterparts, are built around team control. No guaranteed money for the life of the deal, limited leverage once you’re under contract, and almost never a no-trade clause unless you’re a quarterback with enough gravity to demand one.

Garrett had one anyway. When Cleveland extended him for four years and $160 million, the deal included a no-trade clause, a rare enough provision on its own that he was reportedly the first defensive player in the league to carry one. Not a running back. Not a receiver. Not another edge rusher. The first.

That clause meant Cleveland couldn’t simply shop him to the highest bidder and call it done. Garrett had to waive it. And by the terms reported after the trade, he negotiated the same protection into his new deal with the Rams, so the leverage didn’t disappear once he changed teams. It traveled with him.

The Numbers

The money tells its own story about how this trade actually got built. Garrett’s 2026 compensation included a $1.3 million base salary alongside a $29.2 million option bonus, plus workout and per-game roster bonuses worth another two million combined. Here’s the part that matters strategically: in late March, Garrett and the Browns jointly agreed to modify the contract language, pushing the deadline to exercise that option bonus from March 25, the 15th day of the league year, back to seven days before the regular season. One report at the time called the move bizarre, since on its face it simply deferred Garrett’s own payment. But it wasn’t one-sided. The Browns also moved $8 million of his later base salary into earlier roster bonuses, a change that worked in his favor. Cleveland framed the whole thing publicly as a routine cap adjustment and insisted no trade was coming. Adam Schefter reported the team was “100 percent not trading” him, just over two months before they did exactly that.

Whatever the public explanation, the effect was clear. The restructure meant that when the trade actually happened, the Browns hadn’t yet paid out the $29.2 million option bonus, which gave the front office room to maneuver. It’s part of why Cleveland could structure the deal the way it did, spreading Garrett’s dead money across two seasons instead of absorbing it all at once. The final breakdown came to roughly $15.5 million in 2026 and another $25.5 million in 2027, a total of about $41 million in cap charges for a player no longer on the roster.

That two-year split happens automatically for any trade completed on or after June 1, no special paperwork required. It’s a different mechanism than the formal “post-June 1 designation” teams use for releases, which is capped at two players a year and lets a team cut someone early while still getting treated as if the move happened after the deadline. Trades don’t have that cap or that formal process. They just need to actually close on or after June 1 to get the same cap treatment. Garrett’s deal was finalized on June 1 itself, right at the edge of that window, which is almost certainly why the option bonus deadline got pushed back in the first place. It gave Cleveland room to wait for the calendar to cooperate rather than forcing a trade earlier and absorbing the full $69 million hit in a single year.

Cleveland didn’t invent this trick. Philadelphia has been doing it for years, timing option bonuses late in the calendar specifically to keep every roster decision open as long as possible, and the approach has spread to San Francisco, Buffalo, and Baltimore. This same offseason, the Eagles used the identical logic with receiver A.J. Brown, saving roughly $20 million in dead money by waiting on a trade until after June 1. New Orleans did something similar with Alvin Kamara, restructuring his deal purely to preserve the option of moving him later. What looks like a one-off maneuver in Garrett’s case is really a front office adopting a strategy that’s becoming standard practice across the league. Contracts increasingly aren’t just about what a player gets paid. They’re about keeping every future option open for as long as possible.

A Familiar Trade, Missing One Thing

Dallas ran this play before, thirty-seven years earlier, though nobody called it that at the time. In October 1989, the Cowboys traded running back Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings for a package of players and draft picks. On paper it looked like a bad deal. The Dallas media said so loudly, and the Vikings themselves believed they’d won. But Jimmy Johnson had done his homework. The picks acquired in that trade eventually became Emmitt Smith, Darren Woodson, and much of the core that carried the Cowboys to three Super Bowls in the nineties.

The underlying math is nearly identical to Cleveland’s. Give up a great player now, in exchange for draft capital that might build something bigger later. Garrett’s return, Verse and three future picks, is a smaller version of the same bet Johnson made in 1989.

What’s different is who got a say. Walker had none. Johnson shopped him around and made the call unilaterally, and Walker learned where he was headed along with everyone else. He didn’t have the standing to object even if he’d wanted to. Players in 1989 were still years away from the kind of true free agency baseball and basketball players already had, and the reserve-style control teams held over careers made a scenario like Garrett’s almost unthinkable. A star could be moved the way a stock gets traded, without so much as a phone call first.

Garrett had to sign off before any of it happened. Cleveland couldn’t simply take the best offer on the table; the front office needed his blessing on the destination, which turned this trade into a three-way negotiation instead of two front offices working it out alone. That shift didn’t happen overnight. It’s the product of decades of labor fights, salary cap evolution, and a handful of stars over the years who were willing to burn bridges to win a bit more control over their own careers.

Thirty-seven years separates a franchise moving its best player without asking from a franchise having to ask. That gap says something about how far player leverage has traveled since 1989. Not evenly, and not for everyone. Most players still operate closer to Walker’s position than Garrett’s. But it has moved.

Two Exits

What’s most interesting about how Garrett got here is how quiet it was. No trade demand. No public ultimatum. No cryptic social media posts building toward a standoff.

Instead, Garrett simply didn’t show up. NFL rules make offseason workouts and minicamp voluntary, so his absence wasn’t a violation of anything. It was a signal. Browns coach Todd Monken acknowledged the two of them had exchanged texts but had never actually met face to face, months into Monken’s tenure as head coach. Whatever conversations happened between Garrett and the front office stayed private, which is itself unusual for a star of his stature.

Compare that to another star edge rusher barely a year earlier. In August 2025, Micah Parsons forced his way out of Dallas after a contract standoff with Jerry Jones dragged from the offseason through training camp, complete with daily attendance updates and a public trade request. Parsons had called himself “a Cowboy for life” in 2024. A year later he was calling the split a divorce, and by the time Green Bay finally landed him a week before the season opener, the saga had played out in headlines for months. He got his trade, and a contract that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in the league at the time. But he had to fight publicly, and repeatedly, to get it.

Garrett landed in almost the same place, an elite pass rusher moved to a contender, without any of that theater. The no-trade clause did the work that public pressure did for Parsons. Withholding consent turned out to be just as effective as forcing a standoff in the media, and considerably quieter about it.

Which raises the real question at the center of this story: not why Cleveland moved on from Myles Garrett, but why so few players outside the quarterback position ever get the chance to make that choice for themselves.

The Deeper Dive

No-trade clauses are common enough in baseball and basketball that fans barely notice them. Full no-trade protection shows up regularly in MLB deals for franchise veterans, and NBA supermax contracts often include the same language as a matter of course. Football has always been the outlier, and the reason comes down to how differently the sport treats guaranteed money.

In the NBA and MLB, long-term deals are typically guaranteed for their full length, so a no-trade clause is really just an extra layer of control stacked on top of security the player already has. In the NFL, guarantees are far more limited and structured around timing, not the life of the contract. That gives teams enormous leverage over a player’s career even without a trade involved, since a club can simply release a player once his guaranteed money runs out. Adding a no-trade clause on top of that removes one of the last tools a front office has to manage an aging or underperforming asset, which is exactly why teams almost never offer it unless a player has enough standing to demand it.

A handful of non-quarterbacks have carried the protection over the years. DeAndre Hopkins negotiated one during his run as arguably the league’s best receiver. Tight end Jimmy Graham had one with the Bears, offensive lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif picked one up as part of a contract restructure with the Chiefs, and Hall of Fame receiver Larry Fitzgerald held one for years in Arizona as the face of that franchise. Defensive players are rarer still. Houston’s Will Anderson Jr. picked one up this year and was reported as only the second defensive player in the league to have that protection. Garrett was the first.

It’s worth remembering that Garrett didn’t get this clause by staging a holdout or forcing a confrontation. He earned it the conventional way, through sustained, historic production over nearly a decade, until the Browns felt they had no real alternative but to grant it if they wanted to keep him at all. The leverage was built quietly, one dominant season at a time, long before anyone in Cleveland had to decide whether to actually use it.

That’s the pattern worth watching going forward. As rosters get more expensive and front offices get more sophisticated about roster-building, the question isn’t whether more non-quarterbacks will start asking for this kind of protection. It’s which ones will have accumulated enough value, and enough patience, to actually get it.

For the Curious

The Curious Case of Curt Flood (HBO, 2011) tells the story of the Cardinals outfielder who sued Major League Baseball in 1969 rather than accept a trade he didn’t want, challenging the reserve clause that bound players to teams indefinitely. Flood lost his case at the Supreme Court and it cost him much of his career, but the fight helped pave the way for the free agency system players operate under today, Garrett included. Worth knowing going in: the documentary also covers the racism Flood faced as a black player during the civil rights era, and doesn’t shy away from the toll the fight took on his life personally. Heavier than a typical recommendation, but it’s the clearest historical throughline to a story about a player controlling his own destination.

Worth Watching

Keep an eye on Baltimore this preseason. After nearly two decades under John Harbaugh, the Ravens are running training camp under a new head coach for the first time in a generation, and how Lamar Jackson responds to a completely different coaching voice could shape the entire AFC picture by September.

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Written by Bob Sloop.