Kansas football is rocking the chalk
Confetti from a college football weekend.
They took down the goalposts at Kansas’ Memorial Stadium Saturday and tossed them into a nearby lake. It was understandable, given the 18-game losing streak to Oklahoma that Kansas just snapped, but it was also symbolic.
No program in the power conferences has required more heavy lifting than the one at Kansas. From 2009 through 2021, the Jayhawks either won zero or one conference game every year. Last year they went to the Liberty Bowl and lost a thriller to Arkansas, their first postseason game since 2008, but even then they were only 3-6 in the Big 12.
Now they are 6-2 overall and 3-2 in the league which, until this season, required all its members to play each other. It is also the league that is tied in the tightest knot. Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Kansas State all have one league loss, and West Virginia and Kansas are one game behind. With disappearing rivalries like Oklahoma-Oklahoma State coming up soon, a stampede looms to nail down the top two spots and a place in the conference championship game. Oklahoma and Texas still have dreams of making the College Football Playoff, too.
Kansas’ heads have not reached such clouds. The Jayhawks are happy with hopeful Saturdays, and with third-year coach Lance Leipold, who came from Buffalo to do what Charlie Weis, Les Miles and Turner Gill could not. This just in: Headline-grabbing press conferences don’t turn around football programs. Leipold’s coordinators were at Buffalo with him, and Wisconsin-Whitewater as well, and the lessons that worked there work just as well with starry recruits.
However, two reasons for Saturday’s win predated Leipold. Devin Neal grew up right there in Lawrence. He knew Kansas as a football-free zone and chose to go there anyway, even as the top high school player in the state. He scored the game-winning touchdown Saturday with :55 left. Daniel Hishaw ran for two touchdowns. He’s from Moore, Okla., just outside Norman, home of the Sooners, and he redshirted at KU. People still redshirt these days? Yes, and Hishaw has eight touchdowns for the year, one more than Neal.
The quarterback is Jason Bean, a North Texas transfer who is filling in for the injured Jalon Daniels. Bean has had his bumps there, but he rumbled for a 38-yard touchdown after one of Oklahoma’s three turnovers, and Kansas led 26-21.
With 2:15 left Dillon Gabriel (three rush TDs) and the Sooners were on the KU 35 and going for a fourth-and-7. The Jayhawks had just spent their final timeout. But Nic Anderson, the hero of OU’s Texas win, false-started. Now the Sooners were out of field goal and had to punt, and the ball went into the end zone.
Bean faced a fourth-and-six on the Sooner 46, basically a convert-or-lose situation, and he found Lawrence Arnold, a 3-star recruit from DeSoto, Tex. who was also there when Leipold arrived. That was a 37-yard gain that set up Neal’s touchdown, and eventually propelled the goalposts into Potter Lake.
Mpre confetti from a college football Saturday:
Air Force 30, Colorado State 13
– Fan misbehavior finally got punished at Fort Collins on Saturday. A snowstorm hit Colorado, and CSU fans took the opportunity to hurl snowballs at the visiting Falcons, who have to endure more difficult travails every day. The officials warned the fans, then gave CSU an unsportsmanlike penalty that helped Air Force drive for Zac Larrier’s touchdown that broke a 10-10 tie.
– After they finished target practice, the fans on the visiting side of the field were moved 16 rows higher, and security guards stood in the line of fire. It’s not like they had much to cheer. The Falcons held the ball for two-thirds of the second half.
– Air Force is 8-0 for the first time in 38 years. It plays Army in Denver on Saturday, goes to Hawaii, meets UNLV at home and closes with a Nov. 24 trip to Boise State.
Georgia 43, Florida 20
– The top-ranked Bulldogs needed to beat a credible team and do it without injured tight end Brock Bowers. They scored 36 consecutive points to make their point, improving themselves to 8-0 and dropping Florida to 5-3.
– Georgia has now outscored Florida 119-47 in the past three meetings, reinforcing suspicion that the Gators’ program is almost as overrated as Florida-Georgia Line.
– The Bulldogs had eight sacks, including two from Smael Mondon Jr., and Ladd McConkey’s six catches for 135 yards compensated for Bowers’ absence. Carson Beck, quarterbacking in his hometown of Jacksonville, had a comfortable 19-for-28 game with no interceptions and two touchdowns.
Oregon 35, Utah 9
-– The Ducks also tried to win over the persuadables in the college football world, as they wanted to show they were the best team in the best conference. Beating the 2-time Pac-12 champs on the road was a start, and they did it undeniably, as Oregon stuffed Utah’s run game (2.8 per carry) and held the Utes without a touchdown.
– Bo Nix surpassed 70 percent in completion percentage for the eighth consecutive games and threw for two touchdowns, including one to elite receiver Troy Franklin, who caught eight for 99 yards. Nix only missed two passes on his first six drives.
– Oregon (7-1) snuffed Utah’s College Football Playoff hopes. Its own are hanging by a thread after a close loss to Washington. A win in a Pac-12 title game rematch would fix that, but Oregon must first deal with USC and Oregon State.
Tulane 30, Rice 28
– The Green Wave is 7-1 and showing that last year’s Cotton Bowl win over USC was just the start of something. Quarterback Michael Pratt went 22 for 30 and Makhi Hughes ran 23 times for 153 yards, and the defense held JT Daniels to 189 yards in 29 carries.
– Rice (4-4) was down 27-7 at halftime but cut the lead to 30-28 on a 35-yard pass from former USC quarterback Daniels to Luke McCaffrey, brother of Christian. That happened with 8:10 left. Tulane reacted with an 18-play drive that surrendered the ball on downs on Rice’s 14-yard line – with 0:04 on the clock. That’s how the show should be closed.
— Tulane’s only loss was to Ole Miss, which also has one loss. The Wave might find itself competing with Air Force for the Group of Five spot in a New Year’s Day Bowl, but we already know that coach Willie Fritz knows the way.
Oklahoma State 45, Cincinnati 13
– There won’t be another Barry Sanders, but Ollie Gordon has churned his way into some of the same paragraphs. He ran for 271 yards and two touchdowns in this blowout win for the hot Cowboys (6-2) and has become the nation’s leading runner, with 858 in his past three games and 1,087 overall. Only Sanders, in school annals, has hit 250 or more in back-to-back games as Gordon has.
– Gordon has averaged eight yards per pop in conference play and has 14 runs of 20 or more yards. He had a bit of a tantrum Saturday when he had his first fumble of the season but compensated. He’s accustomed to big numbers. As a 16-year-old at Fort Worth’s Trinity High, Gordon took on Allen High, Kyler Murray’s alma mater and the high school that built a $60 millon stadium. He ran for 455 yards on 49 carries.
– Oklahoma State was cast aside after a 33-7 loss to South Alabama in September, but the Cowboys beat Kansas State and Kansas the previous two weeks and dropped 601 yards on Cincinnati Saturday. They are now in a five-way tie for first in the Big 12. Cincinnati is 0-5 in league play. The Bearcats and other newcomers BYU, UCF and Houston are 3-17.