Spencer Hall’s Top Whatever: Every QB is interchangeable, apparently

The Top Whatever is a weekly ranking of only the college football teams/things that must be ranked at this time.

1. UCF. 45-14 over Pitt. The champs stay champs until further notice. How long will I keep doing this? Years, if necessary.

2. Ohio State. Defeated Penn State 27-26. There are two keys to victory in any football game:

1. Be a big, sturdy team with great depth, superb talent, and the ability to endure stretches of bad play and bad luck. Ohio State gave up huge plays to Penn State. The Buckeyes struggled on offense at times. They looked both shaky and shook on the road for whole chunks, yet managed to win.
2. Make sure your opponent sets themselves on fire at worst possible moment.

It’s the scream that really makes this. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. It sounds like he just watched a loved one plummet off a cliff and watched them all the way down, which he sort of just did.

If anyone wants an explanation for Penn State’s play call on fourth-and-5 with the game on the line — a muddled-looking handoff to the running back for a loss and, um, the loss — there are only a few possible explanations. Penn State checked back twice on the play, never really looked set, and ran face-first into a buzzsaw anyway because they never had their communication straight.

That happened after taking two timeouts. This would be incompetent, and that is a very mean thing to assume about someone.

The other possibility is that James Franklin and his staff called that play because they all have rabies. Rabies is the kinder assumption here. Everyone involved with this play call has untreated rabies. They need to seek medical attention immediately, or they will die.

3. The Fox graphics team.

Colorado WR Laviska Shenault is having an incredible season, even if the teams the Buffs have played are a combined 1-16 so far. And that’s good, but damn, y’all, it is just a third of the way into a long, long season. Stretch a little before pulling that graphic out or risk serious injury.

4. Clemson. Won, 27-23. This looks a lot better if we take the labels off. Two undefeated ACC teams met in a closely fought contest! One lost their quarterback to injury, yet mounted a determined comeback anchored by the run game. The other held in gamely against the more talented opposition but gave up a game-winning TD drive on the road. These are all reasonable things good teams do under the pressure of a live football game.

This sounds a lot worse when I say this was Clemson and Syracuse. It sounds even worse if I say that the injured QB was Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, and if I remind you he started over established starter Kelly Bryant, who’s said he’s transferring elsewhere after losing the job. Ha, ha, look, Dabo Swinney gambled and now he has to use a mere three-star quarterback — Chase Brice, who was middling in relief — as starter.

That intentionally misses a few things in order to laugh at Dabo.

• Clemson was going to make this switch anyway. They knew this situation was possible, unless they believed Lawrence was the first player in the history of football to be 100 percent immune from injury. They probably did not believe this!
• Syracuse beat Clemson 27-24 last year, and for some reason or another gives Clemson fits on offense and defense.
• Clemson pulled the game out anyway by running with Travis Etienne and daring Syracuse to stop it. Etienne finished with 203 yards on 27 carries and scored three times, including the two-yard TD run to cap a 13-play, 94-yard drive for the win.
• Most people think the longest straight road in the United States is a 31-mile stretch on Highway 46 in South Dakota, but it’s actually a 35-mile I-80 along the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

TL;DR: Clemson lost this game last year without Bryant, and they won this game this year without Bryant, and sometimes everyone drastically overthinks things based on one game. IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL, YOU SAY? Never.

5. Notre Dame. Outpaced Stanford 38-17. Heyyyyyy, look: another team that replaced a QB and kept winning. Notre Dame replaced QB Brandon Wimbush with Ian Book, picked up an entirely new passing game, and stopped Stanford from winning four in a row for the first time in the history of the rivalry.

This brings up the very good question of how Stanford lost this game. I have an answer.

It should be apparent, but in case it’s not? Stanford refused to do the obvious and powerful thing. The Cardinal ran plays that were not indefensible fade routes to JJ Arcega-Whiteside. I’m not saying Stanford should do this every other play. I’m not saying they should do this even one out of every three plays.

No, I’m saying that, especially if Bryce Love is not in the game, this should be Stanford’s entire offense. If starting QB K.J. Costello misses a throw to Arcega-Whiteside, immediately replace him with the backup. (I learned this strategy by watching college football in 2018. Quarterbacks can be switched out like bad spark plugs in an engine, but Arcega-Whiteside is a nine-foot-tall literal tree with the hands of a classical pianist.)

Oh, and this was the first time Notre Dame won at home over a top-10 team since 1993. They might be really, really good. They also might lose to Pitt or miss the playoff because they do not play a conference championship game. This is why Notre Dame should just plan on showing up to the ACC Championship Game like indignant wrestlers and demand to face both teams at once.

Tell me that man can’t hit the camera with spittle during a righteous promo.

6. Georgia. A 38-12 function over Tennessee. QB Jake Fromm went 16 of 22 for 185 yards and was fine, but just assume he’ll be benched next week for freshman Justin Fields because ... well, just because Georgia feels left out of all the luxury quarterback shuffling going on this year.

7. The Michigan Athletics Twitter account. Dunking on someone statistically? WE COULD NOT BE MORE BIG TEN RIGHT NOW, MICHIGAN.

Northwestern blew a 17-0 lead in a 20-17 loss, probably because Michigan is a better school that makes harder-working people with better connections and a deeper appreciation of the musical Hamilton. Just one man’s opinion, but please email me about what a really good school Northwestern is at celebrityhottub at gmail dot com. Be sure to drop the name of at least three semi-famous people you sort of know just so I can confirm you’re really a Northwestern grad.

P.S. I am not worried about you actually emailing me because an email address is a lead, and Northwestern loses those.

8. Oklahoma. 66-33 over Baylor. It’s always good when you can come out on the high side of a football game in which the score could also be an international basketball game’s score.

9. Kentucky. 24-10 over South Carolina, a team that has now tasted the wrath of Big Blue five years in a row. Looking down the schedule, it is entirely possible that with their next three games — Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, and Missouri — Kentucky could be 8-0 going into a matchup against Georgia. The SEC East game of the year will probably be Kentucky versus Georgia, and with factual statements like that, drugs aren’t even necessary.

10. LSU. 38-16 over Ole Miss. LSU quarterback Joe Burrow threw for three TDs, which against any other team, would be great. Against Ole Miss in 2018, that might be underachievement, but this game took place in the rain, and also hit some kind of wormhole where it had to take five hours? Don’t act surprised that Baton Rouge would be the site of a rip in the fabric of space time. Don’t even try.

11. Alabama. 56-14 over UL Lafayette. Alabama allowed 200 rushing yards in this game. Is this a weakness someone else can exploit to beat the Tide??????*

*no

5,219. All quarterbacks. Replaceable now, evidently.