Nebraska meets top teams when Big Ten opens year
Miami’s offense might be better than first thought
For the second straight weekend, the Big Ten made news without playing.
Last week, the conference was in the process of putting together a restart plan for football.
On Saturday, the Big Ten released its schedule 3.0, doing it a little bit at a time on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff pregame show. The Big Ten also took up much of the conversation on ESPN’S “College Gameday,” which had interviews with Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields and Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren.
Nice flex and a heady play as the Big Ten is about to drop off the radar until its season starts the weekend of Oct. 24.
The Southeastern Conference kicks off next week and the ACC and Big 12 get cranked up, too.
Most notable on the Big Ten’s schedule was how Nebraska will start the season: at Ohio State and home for Wisconsin. Oof!
No Big Ten school made as much of a public fuss over the conference’s initial decision to postpone the season as Nebraska. The brutal opening schedule against the conference’s two division winners from last season might have been a coincidence, but it did not go unnoticed.
The Huskers also play Penn State in the fourth game of the season, giving Nebraska easily the toughest cross-division games of any team in the West Division.
Nebraska had both Ohio State and Penn State on its original nine-game, pre-pandemic conference schedule, along with Rutgers. The Big Ten used those schedules to set these schedules, dropping one of the three crossover games for each team.
Athletic director Bill Moos told the Omaha-world Herald that he pushed to rework schedules more thoroughly to provide competitive balance. He also suggested having only division games count toward the division race.
He said he lost every argument.
“For obvious reasons, I was hoping we could dissemble the schedule because of unique circumstances and rebuild it to be fair for each school in the conference,” Moos told the newspaper Saturday. “I was outspoken on that, to the point where they heard it from me every day. The rationale was there, I didn’t think we needed to follow it. Nebraska is playing five AP preseason Top 25 teams.
Ohio State’s playing two.”
Miami climbs
A week before Big Ten teams become eligible again for The Associated Press college football poll, No. 25 Marshall is ranked for the first time since 2014 and Miami jumped to No. 12 after a conference road victory.
Clemson remained a nearly unanimous No. 1 in the AP Top 25 on Sunday after another light week in college football. The Tigers received 59 of 61 firstplace votes from a panel of sports writers and broadcasters. The rest of the top 10 was basically unchanged. No. 2 Alabama received one first-place vote. Oklahoma was No. 3, followed by Georgia, Florida and Louisiana State at No. 6. The defending champions also received a first-place vote.
Notre Dame is seventh. Auburn and Texas are now tied for eighth and Texas A&M is No. 10.
Aloha
Central Florida has another Heisman Trophy contender quarterback from Hawaii.
Dillon Gabriel, who ended up winning the job during last season as a freshman, appears even better this year. Gabriel went to the same high school as teammate Mckenzie Milton, who finished in the Heisman top 10 in 2017 and ’18.
Few quarterbacks are as fearless throwing deep as Gabriel. Against Georgia Tech, he passed for 417 yards and four touchdowns, averaging 10 yards an attempt and 15 yards a completion. It was a convincing victory against a Power Five team, if only a rebuilding one.
Milton is still hoping to play again after a gruesome leg injury two seasons ago. Just getting on the field would be a miraculous comeback. But make no mistake, Gabriel is the man at UCF and the Knights have a team that could again make a case for something more than just an American Athletic Conference championship trophy.
“You saw what happened last week,” Gabriel said, referring to Georgia Tech’s victory at Florida State. “I guess you can say we’re the best team in Florida.”
Like a Hurricane
Miami might take issue with that assessment by Gabriel.
The 17th-ranked Hurricanes unleashed their new offense on No. 18 Louisville and pulled away for a victory.
It’s a very different looking Miami team with transfer quarterback D’eriq King running new coordinator Rhett Lashlee’s up-tempo attack. The Canes broke off back-to-back 75-yard touchdowns in the third quarter, busting a Louisville defense that was often out of sorts.
On the flip side, Miami’s got some work to do on defense. Still, Hurricanes fans who have suffered through so much anemic offense in recent years must be giddy.
“A lot to fix, but a lot to be proud of,” coach Manny Diaz said of the effort.
Miami gets the primetime treatment again next week at home against Florida State. The Seminoles will be without head coach Mike Norvell, who tested positive for COVID-19.
Around the country
■ The Pac-12 likely will jump back into fall football season this week. The conference’s university presidents meet Thursday. When to start is the hang up. Some Pac-12 teams are way behind in preparation, but not all. A Halloween start gives room to get seven games in before a Dec. 19 championship that puts the Pac-12 in play for College Football Playoff and New Year’s Six bowl selection.
■ Navy, which started the season being outscored 79-3, scored the last 27 points of the game to beat Tulane on a last-second field goal. The Trident Trophy Game (Green Wave vs. Midshipmen) has produced some wild results in recent years. The AAC rivals have split the last four games by a combined total of nine points.