College Football Sunday Summary: Riding the Hype Train

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With week two of college football in the books, College Football Sunday Summary is pushing the hype train down the tracks. There are some jumping-on and jumping-off spots for everyone.

College Football Sunday Summary: Riding the Hype Train

Who Invited Him on the Train?

We start the hype train journey with ESPN’s completely inappropriate hyping of the Protect College Sports Act during its College Gameday show Saturday. They had Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on for 10 minutes to discuss the virtues of the proposed legislation that would revolutionize the business of college sports.

Cruz, of course, is one of the authors of the bill. And even with the Gameday show in Austin for the Longhorns-Buckeyes game, he was roundly booed (it is Austin, after all). But ESPN failed at several levels. One, they never came clean that they are huge proponents of the bill and have spent significant money sending legal counsel to Washington DC to lobby Congress.

ESPN also never put on a voice of any credible representative from the many who oppose the legislation. Whether you support the bill or oppose it (with a vote in the Senate likely coming this week), it would have been the right thing to do. No one wants to see the pre-game show turned into Crossfire. So the best answer would have been to have no one on to discuss Nick Saban’s pet project. No one is going to confuse anyone in ESPN management with being tied to journalistic standards, but this was an easy call to make.

Permanent Seating

Texas quarterback Arch Manning has had his seat on the train since he was born…genetics and last name go far. His stats Saturday were ok; 23 of 37 passing for 195 yards with one touchdown and one interception. But he led the Longhorns to three unanswered touchdowns in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s 24-23 win over top-ranked Ohio State. They will be naming a full train after him someday.

Rutgers Bought Expensive Tickets to Be Sitting in the Back

The State University of New Jersey is struggling. The Scarlet Knights are 0-2, having paid UMass $1.5 million for the honor of losing to the Minutemen, and then losing to Boston College, a team picked to finish next to last in the ACC.

Head coach Greg Schiano, in his second stint in Piscataway, is 99-110 overall and 43-88 in Big 10 play. On the upside, he is 6-3 in mostly third-tier bowl games, some of which were so third-tier they don’t even exist anymore.

The school president and athletic director both come from jobs in the SEC and are in their second season of Rutgers football. They upped the budgets for the football program and got this in exchange. What are the odds they have one of those hobo satchels at the end of a stick ready for Schiano as they take him off the train?

Did the Train Derail?

We acknowledge that we have been on the Hype Train for the Oregon Ducks and their quarterback Dante Moore. The train is not at a stop, and we will be taking them off, pending further credential checks.

The Ducks lost to Oklahoma State in Stillwater, OK on Saturday. This is the same Oklahoma State team that lost to Tulsa the week before. Oregon was trailing for most of the game before losing 39-31. And Moore? An anemic 14 of 29 passing for 191 yards, two touchdowns and no turnovers.

In the BCS world of two teams in the championship postseason, Oregon would already be out and playing for whatever consolation prizes they could muster up. Same with the four-team playoff. In the world of the 12-team playoff, they are not out…yet. This was supposed to be one of the gimmees on the schedule before they face the Big 10 gauntlet.

And as for Moore, he is not out of the Heisman race, only because it is such a wide-open race this year. But he is no longer in the first-class car on the train.

Train Tickets are Non-Refundable

The question was going to get asked. The folks who wanted quarterback Bryce Underwood at Michigan paid premium rates. In case you forgot, there was some “divine intervention” to get Underwood to flip his commitment from LSU to Michigan. Jolin Zhu Ellison (birth name Zhu Keren) is the sixth wife of kajillionaire Larry Ellison. Being nearly 50 years younger than he is, she is also a 2012 graduate of the University of Michigan.

The well-documented stories had her getting in her husband’s ear about this great young quarterback prospect that the Wolverines simply needed. The founder of Oracle set up a multi-year $12 million NIL deal for Underwood.

The returns on investment thus far? Michigan went 9-4 in 2025, and Underwood threw only 11 touchdown passes with nine interceptions. Now a more mature second-year player, Underwood has “led” Michigan to a 2-0 record thus far. There was the “win” over Western Michigan last week and the upset over Oklahoma on Saturday.

In the two games combined, Underwood is throwing at less than a 60% completion rate, has only 281 passing yards with one touchdown and one interception.

Train Hopping

LSU played at home against Louisiana Tech on Saturday. In theory, it should have just been about not looking ahead to the Lane Kiffin Bowl in Oxford, Miss next week. And the Tigers did win, 45-14. But the game gave us the stat of the night. LSU was up only 10-7 at the half….10-7 over LA Tech….and LA Tech officially had 0 yards of offense at the half. Zero. Nada. Whatever gains the Bulldogs had on offense were erased by negative-yardage plays.

Their lone score came compliments of a 100-yard pick-six by defensive back Jordan McRae.

Get the Train Back on the Tracks

We try not to agree with Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz if we can help it. He tends to say things like the snarky kid in the class and then grin with his own amusement. But he was right on Friday night.

His Tigers were playing against Kansas in the heated Border War rivalry. People’s ancestry has historically not been off-limits when discussing this game.

The official Kansas social media feeds took it to a different level, putting together a 90-second video invoking the righteousness of abolitionist John Brown, a Kansas native, and reminding folks, as if a reminder were needed, that Missouri was a slave state. It was attention-getting in that it was shocking to see an athletic department go this far.

But after Missouri beat Kansas 38-21 in Lawrence, “Coach Drink” said he thought KU should be embarrassed by the video, and said that choosing to go down to that level and release it on the solemn anniversary of 9/11 was just wrong at so many levels. Coach got us with that one.

The Proper Salute

When we can, we try to end the weekly column with a tribute to schools who did cool things with their uniforms over the weekend.

The South Dakota and Eastern Washington football teams paid tribute to the Native American heritage in their states. On Saturday’s Native American Heritage Day, they both wore helmets with their team names written in the native tribal languages.

The white South Dakota Coyotes helmets had “Sungmanitu,” written on the sides, which is Lakota for “coyote.” They also had a helmet stripe with a design that represented the alliance of the seven Sioux groups comprising the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota peoples.

Eastern Washington (the Eagles) had the phrase, “uł pql̓qeyn,” on the helmets. It is Salish (a series of Indigenous languages in the Pacific Northwest) and translates to “Group of Eagles.”

South Dakota won the game 41-23. Both schools get first-class train tickets, on the house, for the gesture. (Helmet photos courtesy the University of South Dakota and Eastern Washington University)

Main Image: William Purnell-Imagn Images

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