All the teams we’ve historically overlooked are making college football fun and unexpected in 2025.
It is human nature to assume that every trend line points endlessly in the same direction, off to some far horizon that looks, more or less, just like our current view.
We see the sun come up every day, and we assume it will again tomorrow. We bet on blue-chip stocks, knowing that, for every blip and dive along the way, they’ll pay off in the long run. We hear « Texas is back » each season, and we’re secure in the knowledge that, sooner or later, we’ll all get to laugh about it again.
Amid an infinite universe filled with mystery, there are some hard truths that are impossible to escape.
Or, at least that’s how it used to be.
On Saturday, Nashville, Tennessee, was the center of the college football universe, as Vanderbilt took another step toward the playoff. Week 9 gave us another Virginia escape act, another Texas Tech blowout, another line on Fernando Mendoza’s Heisman Trophy résumé at Indiana. This season, the meek have inherited the college football world, and it’s as fun as it is unexpected.
It used to be that Vanderbilt was the doormat of the SEC, the team whose job was simply to keep the Butch Joneses and Will Muschamps of the world bowl eligible.
It used to be that Virginia was the least invested school in the ACC, a place where the locker room served as a Jamba Juice during open dates.
It used to be that Indiana’s place in the Big Ten was to keep Rutgers company at the bottom of the standings.
It used to be that Texas Tech used all its oil money on brisket and Cadillacs and Kliff Kingsbury’s hair gel.
These were truths we knew to be self-evident. These were teams whose struggles you could set a watch by. These were the standard by which all other awfulness was judged.
Until now.
In 2025, Vanderbilt is a power. The « College GameDay » bus rolled into Nashville, taking up valuable parking spots for bachelorette parties along Broadway, and Vandy put on a show. The Commodores played big-boy football against Missouri, with a dominant defense making up for Diego Pavia’s struggles, holding the Tigers to just 10 points in a 17-10 win. That Vandy mustered just 265 yards, that Pavia didn’t throw a touchdown, that Missouri held the ball for 13 minutes more than the Dores was all pretense. In another era, back when Vandy was simply where the line for Pancake Pantry ended on a Saturday, all those stats would’ve spelled doom. On Saturday, it was the recipe for another win.
In ACC country, the world now revolves around Virginia and Georgia Tech. That this is pure lunacy, a relic of Coastal Chaos that has roared back to life like some sort of « Jurassic Park » sequel, is too horrifying to comprehend. Before this season, Virginia was 56-75 in the playoff era, the worst record in the ACC in that span. Before Brent Key took over as Georgia Tech’s interim coach in 2022, Geoff Collins was contractually obligated to describe recruits as « smothered », « covered » or « scattered » in order to keep the NIL collective flush. And now, the two schools are a combined 15-1 after Virginia won its third overtime game of the year 17-16 against North Carolina, and Georgia Tech lambasted Syracuse 41-16.
How good is Indiana? The Hoosiers have been so dominant this season that the conversation has shifted from « they got a favorable schedule » to « they might be pretty solid » to « what if we paid Curt Cignetti the equivalent of the worldwide box-office take for « A Minecraft Movie »? On Saturday, Indiana utterly demoralized red-hot UCLA 56-6. Not since his role as the villain in « Back to School » seeing Thornton Melon’s astonishing Triple Lindy to win the dive meet had Jerry Neuheisel been so embarrassed. And even still, enjoying a 40-some-point lead, Cignetti roamed the sideline with the same air of indignation as an assistant regional manager of a midlevel textile distributor, frustrated with another supply chain hiccup. Indiana is all business, and business is very good.
And then there’s Texas Tech, a school that spent more than a decade post-Mike Leach wandering the wilderness, now dominating the competition on a weekly basis. The Red Raiders walloped Oklahoma State 42-0, despite turning to their third different QB of the year in Mitch Griffis, who threw for 172 yards and a score. That a guy who was once benched at Wake Forest is now closing out wins for Texas Tech feels a little like a guy who got fired for falling asleep at the Taco Bell drive-through window winning a James Beard Award for making the world’s best burrito at Chipotle.
A school that several Big Ten ADs kept confusing with Iowa’s JV team for the better part of the 2010s is now in line for the playoff.
A job that Bronco Mendenhall once quit because he wanted to go fly-fishing is now one of the best in the ACC.
A place where buskers playing country songs on the sidewalk garnered more respect than the local team’s QB1 is now a true college football town.
This is not supposed to be how any of this works. If there was one eternal truth to the college football universe, it was that Charlie Weis would get another $1 million check 30 years after he quit coaching. But if there was a second incontrovertible truth, it’s that the rich stayed rich, and the commoners weren’t supposed to punch above their weight.
Indiana, Virginia, Georgia Tech, Texas Tech and sweet little Vanderbilt were all here to play the part of the Washington Generals. They were supposed to play along while the Alabamas and Ohio States of the world used Velcro and duct tape and an enchanted monkey’s paw to win by 100 each week.
But this is a new era in college football, a time when the field has been leveled, and all we once knew to be true has evaporated like so many UNC revenue share dollars.
Welcome to the new frontier, kings becoming paupers, bums living large, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.
What a time to be alive.
More:
Bama escapes | Texas survives
Trends | Under the radar
Heisman five
Germie Bernard takes it to the house for a 25-yard rushing touchdown to seal a 29-22 win over South Carolina.
For three-and-a-half quarters, Alabama looked to be teetering on the brink of losing to South Carolina in what would’ve been the week’s biggest upset. It’s not just that the Gamecocks have been struggling and the Tide have looked as good as anyone in the country, but the man calling plays for South Carolina also happens to be the last man to coach an Alabama team that wasn’t any good.
Mike Shula likely holds the title of most embarrassing Alabama coach of the past 75 years who wasn’t fired after visiting a strip club, and he holds the unfortunate title of « the guy who came before Nick Saban. » It’s easy to forget that the Tide were a program in utter tumult back then, just as it was easy to forget Alabama lost to Florida State in Week 1.
On Saturday, Shula arrived with a message, courtesy of his favorite band (we assume): « This is how I remind you. »
LaNorris Sellers threw for 222, ran for 67 and accounted for a pair of touchdowns as the Gamecocks led Alabama 22-14 with less than 3 minutes to play in the game. But for all the chaos of the 2025 season, some upsets are just not meant to be, and Saban didn’t sell a 10% equity stake in the program to Satan at a crossroads in Eutaw just to see his predecessor come in and spoil it all.
Germie Bernard scored twice in the game’s final 136 seconds — first on a 4-yard pass from Ty Simpson and again on a 25-yard run — to seal a 29-22 win.
Afterward, Shula admitted the reunion hadn’t gone as he had hoped, but he offered a dark prediction of things to come, promising he would return and finally get his revenge against all those who had persecuted him before being interrupted by the Wendy’s drive-through attendant, ultimately admitting he just wanted two junior bacon cheeseburgers and a large fry.
