Culture
College Football Playoff at-large contenders: Cases for, against and fatal flaws
As the season approaches its final two weeks, jostling for at-large bids continues for teams in the upper echelon of College Football Playoff competition.
At this point, there are teams with CFP hopes both as a conference champion and as an at-large. There are others, such as Big 12 contenders BYU and Colorado, which need to win their conference to reach the Playoff. The same scenario exists for Group of 5 squads Boise State and Tulane.
For the teams strictly in at-large contention, what are the cases for their inclusion and what are the flaws that could keep them from the 12-team tournament? Below we examine 16 teams with at-large hopes — not just the 16 highest-ranked teams — and examine why they are worthy of at-large consideration while breaking down their flaws.
No. 1 Oregon (11-0)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS (strength of schedule): 52; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 4-0; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 6-0; Points for: 33.9; Points against: 15.7.
Case for: The Ducks are the nation’s only unbeaten team, have ranked wins against Ohio State, Boise State and Illinois and compete in a coast-to-coast conference. At this stage, Oregon deserves the No. 1 ranking without debate.
Fatal flaw: This is more of a concern moving forward. Had Ohio State quarterback Will Howard slid a second earlier and called a timeout against Oregon, the Buckeyes might have kicked a game-winning field goal in Eugene. The teams are likely to meet in Indianapolis for the Big Ten championship. Should Oregon fall, the Ducks could face Boise State again in the CFP, and they won that game on a last-second field goal. Rematches against motivated opponents could pose challenges.
No. 2 Ohio State (10-1)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 58; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 5-1; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 5-0; Points for: 37.8; Points against: 10.7.
Case for: The Buckeyes have the talent at every position to compete with any team in the country. They boast two NFL-caliber running backs and the nation’s top defense. Howard has completed 80 percent of his passes in six different games, and receivers Emeka Egbuka, Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate are an electrifying trio. On a neutral field, this team could win it all.
Fatal flaw: There are times the Buckeyes look ordinary, like in a 21-17 home win against Nebraska. Injuries to Ohio State’s top two offensive linemen could have consequences against a physical, athletic front. Howard has competed at a high level this year, but can he make the game-winning plays in a close contest against similar talent?
GO DEEPER
Predicting College Football Playoff rankings after Week 13: How far will Indiana fall?
No. 3 Texas (10-1)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 39; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 7-1; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 3-0; Points for: 37.8; Points against: 12.1.
Case for: Texas can match up with anyone player-for-player. The Longhorns have the SEC’s top scoring defense and rank second nationally in total defense. They have an experienced quarterback in Quinn Ewers, elite players at every position and showed their grit by losing only one game so far in their first SEC season.
Fatal flaw: The Longhorns don’t own a victory over a current Top 25 team. They avoided Alabama, Ole Miss, Tennessee and South Carolina and they lost decisively to Georgia. That doesn’t take away their intent; the Longhorns traveled to defending national champion Michigan and won 31-19. But questions persist about how Texas will perform against fellow elite programs because they haven’t faced more than one entering this week’s showdown against Texas A&M.
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 37; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 6-1; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 4-0; Points for: 32.4; Points against: 14.6.
Case for: The Nittany Lions have handled their business in fine fashion. They survived at tough road venues like USC, Minnesota, Wisconsin and West Virginia with big plays in critical moments. Penn State has an underrated quarterback in Drew Allar, the nation’s best tight end in Tyler Warren and a top-five NFL Draft pick in edge rusher Abdul Carter. The Nittany Lions can adapt to different styles and weather won’t be a factor.
Fatal flaw: There are two big questions facing Penn State. One, can their wide receivers gain enough separation against an equally talented opponent? Two, can coach James Franklin string together multiple wins against top-10 competition? In Franklin’s 11 years, the Nittany Lions are 3-17 against top-10 opponents with only one victory in the last eight seasons.
GO DEEPER
‘On our terms’: Inside Penn State’s season-saving drive with 3 fourth-down conversions
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 65; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 6-1; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 4-0; Points for: 39.0; Points against: 11.6.
Case for: Few, if any, teams have looked more impressive than Notre Dame in the last two months. Only once have the Irish allowed more than 16 points in a game, and they’ve scored at least 31 points in each of their last seven games. Quarterback Riley Leonard has become an elite playmaker and Notre Dame’s line of scrimmage play can hang with any opponent.
Fatal flaw: The Irish have ranked wins against Texas A&M and Army away from home, but their overall schedule was light. Notre Dame’s 16-14 loss to Northern Illinois has served as a lightning rod for criticism. For the Irish the scenario is simple: beat USC and pick up a home CFP game. Lose to the Trojans and probably fall from CFP consideration.
No. 6 Miami (10-1)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 61; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 5-1; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 4-0; Points for: 44.7; Points against: 22.3.
Case for: The Hurricanes average more points than any team in CFP contention. With quarterback Cam Ward, Miami can fill it up. In five different games, the Hurricanes have scored at least 50 points.
Fatal flaw: No at-large contender allows more points per game than Miami at 22.3. The Hurricanes frequently have been involved in one-score games against unranked opponents and have needed late rallies to win. Miami has yet to play a Top 25 team, let alone beat one.
Miami will finish the regular season on the road against Syracuse on Saturday. (Sam Navarro / Imagn Images)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 4; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 4-2; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 4-0; Points for: 33.2; Points against: 14.6.
Case for: Nobody has more quality wins than Georgia, which beat CFP contenders Clemson, Texas and Tennessee. When operating at a high level, the Bulldogs look like an eventual champion. They have a veteran quarterback and talent that jumps off the roster. Despite a loss at Alabama, their furious comeback attempt will scare any future opponent.
Fatal flaw: Which version of Carson Beck will take the field in the CFP? He’s thrown 12 interceptions and three picks in three different games, including in a loss to Alabama and a win against Texas. In a game between equally matched opponents, how Beck performs could enhance – or harm – Georgia’s performance.
No. 8 Tennessee (9-2)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 57; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 3-2; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 5-0; Points for: 37.4; Points against: 13.1.
Case for: The Vols can play any style of football and compete. They rank second in the SEC in both points scored and points allowed. Running back Dylan Sampson is one of the nation’s three best running backs and sophomore quarterback Nico Iamaleava displays some dynamic qualities.
Fatal flaw: Outside of beating Alabama, the Vols have an ordinary resume. None of their nonconference opponents are bowl eligible, and they lost to 6-5 Arkansas at home. It’s why Tennessee hovered outside the CFP before Ole Miss and Alabama suffered losses last weekend.
No. 9 SMU (10-1)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 59; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 5-1; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 4-0; Points for: 39.3; Points against: 21.0.
Case for: SMU’s ACC debut has been flawless with nary a loss despite a reduced revenue share. The Mustangs are one victory shy of running the table and advancing to the ACC title game. All-everything running back Brashard Smith was critical in wins against Duke and Pittsburgh.
Fatal flaw: An early loss to BYU lingers but not in the way most people expected back in September. With SEC teams slipping after their third loss, heightened scrutiny awaits SMU this weekend against Cal and in a potential ACC title game. It’s worth watching SMU’s defense, which has allowed at least 25 points to every bowl-eligible opponent since its BYU loss.
GO DEEPER
How SMU has developed the nastiest defense in the ACC
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 68; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 3-1; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 6-0; Points for: 41.3; Points against: 16.0.
Case for: The eye test and statistics favor Indiana. The Hoosiers have an electrifying offense led by quarterback Kurtis Rourke and five receivers with at least 24 catches, 280 yards and three touchdowns. Indiana also plays high-level defense, which is unusual for a portal-based team.
Fatal flaw: As of today, Indiana has beaten three FBS teams with winning records but that could fall to zero by Saturday. Its strength of schedule is by far the lowest of any power conference team vying for an at-large bid. In the Hoosiers’ only game against a ranked opponent, they lost 38-15 to Ohio State.
No. 12 Clemson (9-2)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 62; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 1-2; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 7-0; Points for: 37.6; Points against: 22.0.
Case for: In all but one of its victories, Clemson won by double figures. It has a potent offense guided by quarterback Cade Klubnik, who has 29 touchdowns and four interceptions. The Tigers are third in the ACC in both scoring offense and scoring defense.
Fatal flaw: Clemson has the most pedestrian resume of any potential at-large squad. It has played just three FBS teams with winning records and won just once, and that was last week against 7-4 Pittsburgh. The Tigers give up nearly 23 points a game, the second-most of any team in the CFP Top 25.
No. 13 Alabama (8-3)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 7; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 6-3; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 1-0; Points for: 36.2; Points against: 17.5.
Case for: In the first half against Georgia or throughout its victories against LSU and Missouri, Alabama looked like not only a CFP team but a title contender. Nine of its 11 FBS opponents have winning records, including seven of eight SEC opponents.
Fatal flaw: It really starts and ends with the win-loss record. Losing three games would end CFP hopes for nearly every other program save for Alabama. The Tide dropped games to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, both of which are 6-5. It’s not impossible to build a case for Alabama’s inclusion, but it involves losses by multiple teams this weekend rather than for the Tide to simply beat Auburn.
No. 14 Ole Miss (8-3)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 31; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 5-2; Record vs. FBS non-winning teams: 2-1; Points for: 38.5; Points against: 13.9.
Case for: Just watch the Rebels in action. It’s a potent offense led by Jaxson Dart and Tre Harris, capable of putting up points on everyone. Ole Miss crushed Georgia 28-10 and scored 63 points on Arkansas, which held Tennessee to 14. The defense has NFL-caliber performers, especially along the line.
Fatal flaw: Not only do Mississippi’s three losses make it difficult to climb into the CFP, but it’s also who beat the Rebels. None of the three teams are ranked by the committee with LSU (7-4) posting the best record. Losing at home to Kentucky (4-7) is probably the kill shot.
Ole Miss’ loss to Florida last week dropped the Rebels’ Playoff chances to 9 percent, per The Athletic’s model. (Matt Pendleton / Imagn Images)
No. 15 South Carolina (8-3)
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 18; Record vs. FBS winning teams: 4-3; Record vs. non-winning FBS teams: 3-0; Points for: 32.9; Points against: 18.2.
Case for: Of the 8-3 teams hovering in the SEC’s second tier, the Gamecocks won the important head-to-head battles against Texas A&M and Missouri. South Carolina has one of college football’s most dominant defensive lines with 39 sacks. Its offensive efficiency is impressive.
Fatal flaw: This is the season of “almosts” for South Carolina. Two touchdowns were called back against LSU because of penalties and a failed two-point conversion cost the Gamecocks an overtime opportunity against Alabama. Barring a chaotic scenario rivaling 2007, South Carolina “almost” will get into the CFP.
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 33; Record vs. winning teams: 3-1; Record vs. non-winning teams: 6-1; Points for: 30.5; Points against: 22.8.
Case for: Arizona State has posted its two most impressive wins in the last two weeks, beating Kansas State 24-14 on the road before toppling BYU 28-23 at home. The Sun Devils, who are led by versatile running back Cam Skattebo, have churned out five wins by a touchdown or less.
Fatal flaw: The Sun Devils have a 7.7-point differential, which is by far the lowest of any potential at-large team. Their losses came against 7-4 Texas Tech and 5-6 Cincinnati, and they’ve played only four teams with winning records.
By the numbers – Sagarin SOS: 40; Record vs. winning teams: 4-1; Record vs. non-winning teams: 4-1; Points for: 31.4; Points against: 19.5.
Case for: The Cyclones are resilient, as demonstrated by three come-from-behind victories in the closing seconds. Iowa State has the Big 12’s best pass defense, which ranks third overall. Their receiving combination of Jayden Higgins and Jaylin Noel has compiled nearly 2,000 yards and 13 touchdowns.
Fatal flaw: Iowa State steadily climbed the rankings until losing two straight to Texas Tech and Kansas (5-6). The Cyclones don’t own any Top 25 wins, and their depleted defense has given up more than 230 rushing yards in three of their last five games.
(Top photo: Johnnie Izquierdo / Getty Images))
Here we are on Day 4 of the Poetry Challenge, looking up, again, at the sky. (If you’ve just arrived, click here to catch up.)
We’ve considered “The More Loving One” as a witty, teasing love poem, and also peeked into the life of its author, W.H. Auden, to see what it might have meant to him. But maybe it’s time to take this poem at face value, as a meditation on our place in the universe.
You can read the whole poem here, but to recap: We start by admiring the stars even though they don’t feel the same way (or any way, really) about us. Then we wonder … do we care about them all that much? At last, we imagine them extinguished, leaving an emptiness that we tell ourselves would be just fine. Eventually.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Tracy K. Smith, poet
The poem resolves with a sigh that seems to linger, as if the poem didn’t quite want to end. Unlike the concluding lines of the previous stanzas, all of which clocked in at precisely eight syllables, the last line of the last one extends to nine. That may sound trivial, but we know that Auden counted his syllables carefully.
And it isn’t hard to identify the extra particle, the one tweezed in among the others. Auden could just as well have written, “Though this might take a little time.”
That would have maintained the pattern without altering the meaning. The “me” is implied. Adding it might seem redundant. Which is exactly why Auden does it.
Though this might take me a little time.
W.H. Auden, poet
That scant word makes the poem last a little longer. It also emphasizes the human presence of the speaker, a person whose perceptions and feelings are what this is finally all about. He is asking for patience, for grace, as he adjusts his eyes and heart to a stark new situation.
But how much time is “a little”? The split second it takes to utter that extra, unstressed “me”? However much is needed to heal all proverbial wounds? Or are we thinking in astronomical measures, as those stars invite us to suppose? In that case, it might take our poor stargazer more time than he has. Millions of years. Hundreds of millions!
What does it mean to exist as a solitary being in such a vast, incomprehensible cosmos? This may have been an especially timely question when this poem was written; early versions date from 1957, the year the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, marking the beginning of the space age. But poets have been looking at the sky for a very long time.
Some find comforting news of heaven, like William Wordsworth:
The stars are mansions built by Nature’s hand,
And, haply, there the spirits of the blest
Dwell, clothed in radiance, their immortal vest’
Others, like Ada Limón, see the projection of our own curiosity:
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars.
Occasionally a poet (Stephen Crane in this case) will hear an answer that makes Auden’s silent stars seem kind:
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
Auden himself came back to the subject a dozen years after “The More Loving One,” in a poem called “Moon Landing,” which ambivalently hailed the Apollo II mission as a “phallic triumph,” “a grand gesture” of male self-regard. And while he acknowledges the spirit of adventure behind the mission, he doesn’t admire the moon enough to want to see it up close:
Worth going to see? I can well believe it.
Worth seeing? Mneh! I once rode through a desert
and was not charmed
He’d rather contemplate the moon above him — one who “still queens the Heavens” — than tread like Neil Armstrong on its dusty, lifeless surface. The feats of NASA and its astronauts belong to a world of science, politics and media spectacle; Auden prefers the realm of mythology and aesthetics.
He’s in good poetic company. In “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” Walt Whitman, at a lecture, finds himself “tired and sick” of charts and diagrams and scientific discourse.
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
He did not give a damn if they gave a damn.
For Auden, as for Whitman, demystifying the stars risks stripping them of their poetry. A sense of wonder flickers through “The More Loving One,” along with the wit and the romantic weariness. The poem concludes with an almost defiant commitment to awe, the search for sublimity in the heavens.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Matthew McConaughey, actor and poet
Stars or no stars, what matters is the attitude of the person below: receptive, yearning, more in love than he may be willing to admit, even if — or indeed because — he doesn’t quite know what it is he’s worshiping.
As we approach the end of the poem, our own feelings might be in a bit of tangle: admiration, amusement and something else that’s harder to pin down in words or themes. A feeling that, having spent time with a poem largely about solitude, we are less alone.
Let’s nail down those tricky last lines, and come back tomorrow to talk about the whole thing.
Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.
Question 1/6
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Your task today: Learn the final stanza!
Let’s start with the first couplet in this stanza. Fill in the rhyming words.
Ready for another round? Try your hand at the 2025 Poetry Challenge.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.
Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.
The result has been a terrible irony for a country that was founded as a refuge from intolerance: “How is it that the appeal to humanitarianism, tolerance, the rule of law and protection of minorities that characterized the beginning of Jewish self-emancipation gradually acquired all the traits of the relentless, remorseless and increasingly racist ethnonationalisms from which Zionism sought to liberate European Jewry?”
To answer this painful question, Bartov uses all the tools at his disposal, weaving together history, personal anecdotes, even some literary criticism, including a close reading of a poem — by Hayim Nahman Bialik and known to “every Israeli schoolchild” — about the perils of vengeance that has been misinterpreted and warped for political ends. Bartov writes unsparingly about Hamas’s murderous attacks, in which about 1,200 Israelis were killed and about 250 others taken hostage, which he calls an unequivocal “war crime and a crime against humanity.” It was a “slaughter of innocents” that “evoked collective memories of massacres and the Holocaust.”
Indeed, in a May 2024 poll of Israelis that he cites, more than half of the respondents said Oct. 7 could be compared to the Holocaust, and the Israeli media repeatedly depicted the massacre as a pogrom. Bartov understands why — for traumatized people, new traumas will revive old ones — but he maintains that the label is a category mistake. Israel is a state; it has an army, laws and government. A pogrom “is a mob attack, condoned or supported by the state authorities, against a minority lacking any attributes of a state.” (“To be sure,” he adds, “pogroms have occurred within the territories controlled by Israel, but when they take place, they were and are being carried out, with increasing frequency and ferocity, by settlers in the West Bank.”)
Israel doesn’t have a constitution. After its founding, its government was supposed to codify the protection of religious freedom and minority rights, but efforts to adopt a constitution were waylaid and arguably thwarted by political figures like David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first prime minister. Bartov believes that a constitution could have made Zionism “superfluous” after it succeeded in establishing a state that could be a refuge for Jews. Citizens could have turned toward the task of building a “just society” that aimed at “peace, truth and reconciliation with the Palestinians.”
This sounds nice, if fanciful; constitutions don’t magically prevent authoritarianism. Not to mention that attacks by surrounding Arab states did nothing to alleviate Israelis’ sense that they were constantly embattled.
Now that we’ve memorized the first half of our poem, let’s learn a little more about the man who wrote it. (Haven’t memorized anything yet? Click here to start at the beginning.)
For most of his life, Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-73) was a star. He was widely read, quoted, argued over and gossiped about, achieving a level of fame that few writers now — and not many then — could contemplate. His New York Times obituary did not hesitate to call him “the foremost poet of his generation.”
Celebrity of that kind is ephemeral, but Auden’s words have continued to circulate in the half century since his death. Maybe you’ve heard some of them before. In the 1994 film “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” his poem “Funeral Blues” is recited by Matthew (John Hannah) over the casket of his lover, Gareth (Simon Callow).
In the Gen-X touchstone “Before Sunrise” (1995), Jesse (Ethan Hawke) regales Celine (Julie Delpy) with an impression of Dylan Thomas reading Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening.”
In both these scenes, the characters use Auden’s poetry to give voice to a longing for which they otherwise might not have words. Auden’s poetry is often useful in that way. It speaks to recognizable human occasions, and it isn’t always all about him.
“The More Loving One” might not be something you’d quote at a funeral or on a date, but it is almost effortlessly quotable — the perfect expression of a thought you never knew you had:
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Ken Burns, filmmaker
The word “I” occurs five times in this stanza, but we don’t know much about the person speaking. His personality is camouflaged and revealed by craft.
Auden, born in the northern English cathedral city of York, began practicing that craft as a schoolboy, and honed it at Oxford. Not long after graduating in 1928, he was anointed by critics and readers as the great hope of modern English poetry. A charismatic, divisive figure, he gathered acolytes, imitators and haters.
He swam in the intellectual and ideological crosscurrents of the 1930s, drawing Marxism, psychoanalysis and mystical nationalism into his writing. Assimilating a daunting array of literary influences — Old English and Ancient Greek, French chansons and Icelandic sagas — he forged a poetic personality that was bold, confiding and seductive.
His love poems of that era were candid, discreet dispatches from a calendar of feverish entanglements, wrenching breakups and one-night stands, usually with other men. He also wrote about the feverish politics of the time — class conflict; the rise of fascism; the Spanish Civil War — in ringing rhetoric he later disavowed.
In 1939 Auden moved to America, acquiring U.S. citizenship after World War II. In New York he fell in love with Chester Kallman, a young American writer who became his life partner.
It was a complicated relationship, starting as a passionate affair and enduring through decades of domestic companionship and creative collaboration. Kallman’s refusal to be sexually exclusive wounded Auden, a dynamic that poignantly shades this poem’s most memorable couplet:
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Yiyun Li, writer
In America, Auden distanced himself from the radical politics of his earlier career and embraced Anglican Christianity. His intellectual preoccupations shifted toward religion and existentialism — to the kinds of big questions we think about late at night, or when we look to the sky.
Making the leap from wunderkind to grand old man without seeming to stop in middle age, he became a mentor for several generations of younger poets. He was a prolific and punctual contributor of reviews and essays to various publications, including this one, for which he wrote a rave of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” in 1954.
Through it all, Auden devoted fanatical attention to the finer points of poetic technique. His notebooks are full of numbers, word lists and markings that show just how deep this commitment went. He counted every syllable, measured every stress.
He gathered rhymes and other words with a lexicographer’s zeal and a crossword puzzler’s precision.
The third stanza of “The More Loving One” is a miniature showcase of Auden’s skill. Of the four epigrams arrayed before us, it may be the most technically perfect.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
W.H. Auden, poet
The rhythm is flawless, without an extra syllable or an accent out of place. The grammar is also fastidious. Here is a single sentence, springloaded with equivocation, beginning with one idea and sliding toward its opposite.
This quatrain is the poem’s ideal formal representation of itself, a kind of proof of concept: four lines of impeccable iambic tetrameter in an AABB rhyme scheme. The by-the-book regularity of this stanza should give you a leg up in memorizing it, and you can test yourself below!
But the rest of the poem is an argument against perfection, just as it is a celebration of uncertainty and humility — as we’ll see tomorrow.
Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.
Question 1/6
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Your first task: Learn the first two lines!
Let’s start with the first couplet in this stanza. Fill in the rhyming words.
Ready for another round? Try your hand at the 2025 Poetry Challenge.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.
Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.
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