Pat drops 49 on Stew in the Week 9 GOTW, Penn State answers a loss with a 42-14 blowout, and Michigan won't stop scoring.
Four weeks, twenty-one games, and the belt took a hit it's never taken before. Not in the bracket — in Week 9, on a Saturday night, on stream, by 39 points. Let's get into it.
Ole Miss 49, Oklahoma 10. The Week 9 Game of the Week, and it isn't close to a fair fight on the scoreboard. Stew had been 4-0 in this stretch — wins over Alabama, Texas, South Carolina — before Pat's offense put up 49 on him and held the two-time champ to a single score. It's the worst loss of Stew's two-season Oklahoma tenure, full stop.
Pat's own read on it afterward, verbatim from the chat: "I know Stew gave me his idgaf performance so he can use it as motivation to kick my ass when it means something. But you play a game on your cell phone then come back to the console and that shit feels like you actually on the field with full control of all 11 players simultaneously." Read into that what you want. The final score doesn't care either way — 49-10 is 49-10, and it's the loudest statement anybody has made against the belt holder all season.
Oregon 31, Penn State 14 was the Week 7 Game of the Week — Bowzer knocking off the Big Ten champ. States didn't sit on it. Seven days later: Penn State 42, Ohio State 14, the Week 8 GOTW, a 28-point beatdown of Curt's Buckeyes. Lose the marquee game one week, deliver the marquee blowout the next. That's the whole Penn State stretch in two box scores.
Dre's Michigan put up 33-6 over JT's Nebraska in Week 7 and followed it with 56-10 over Frank's Washington in Week 8 — 89 points scored, 16 allowed, across the two. Nobody else in this stretch has a two-week margin like it.
Purp opened the window with Tennessee 48, Georgia 21 in Week 6, run-ruling Ice Man's team by 27. Three weeks later it was Tennessee 45, Alabama 42 — a shootout tight enough that the group chat got a heads-up ping before kickoff. Two very different kinds of wins, same result both times.
Lute doesn't get the volume the other unbeatens get, but Miami 24, SMU 17 in Week 7 and Miami 36, Florida State 0 in Week 8 — a road shutout — are as clean a two-week stretch as anybody put together in this window.
Indiana's Gooch beat TV's UCLA 42-28 in Week 7; TV answered in Week 9 by beating JT's Nebraska 42-31. Curt's Ohio State bounced between extremes — an 80-21 blowout of UCLA in Week 4 carried into the window, then that 42-14 loss to States. JT's first real stretch as Nebraska's coach was rough: a 33-6 loss to Michigan, a 31-16 win over Teeric's USC, and a 42-31 loss to TV to close it out. Welcome to the league, again.
Texas found one win in the window — Work beat Ice Man's Georgia 35-21 in Week 9 — after a run of tight losses. Florida's Polo split the stretch, falling to Pat and Bawce before beating Work. And Oregon wasn't done after the Penn State win: Bowzer closed the window with a 35-14 win over Teeric's USC, pushing his season mark to 4-0.
Twenty-one games, one seismic upset, and the belt is still around Stew's waist because that's not how you take it off him. Ask Pat. He knows better than anybody right now. Next advance, more film.
