Culture

What we learned about the CFP in Week 11: Mizzou’s ‘Playoff hunt’? One-bid ACC? Assume nothing

Published

8 months ago

November 11, 2024

What we learned about the CFP in Week 11: Mizzou’s ‘Playoff hunt’? One-bid ACC? Assume nothing

The 12-team College Football Playoff has made it challenging to pinpoint just how big the fall’s biggest games are. For decades, the result of a regular-season game could feel definitive. Even if it wasn’t quite so, it could be pretty darn close.

That’s not the case anymore.

After the number of unbeaten teams shrunk to four in Week 11, we’ve learned that using the phrase “If they win out” is fraught with peril and the SEC seems to be headed for a massive logjam.

Magnificent 7

After Missouri beat Oklahoma 30-23 in a bonkers game that included five touchdowns in the fourth quarter — four in the final 3:18 — Tigers coach Eli Drinkwitz proclaimed his team still alive in the Playoff race.

Coach Drinkwitz says tonight’s win was big because it keeps Mizzou in the playoff hunt pic.twitter.com/AG0nL3bW6K
— Unnecessary Roughness (@UnnecRoughness) November 10, 2024
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“That’s right. I said it. Playoff hunt,” Drinkwitz said.

Really?

Well, put it this way: Mizzou is now one of seven SEC teams that could finish the regular season 10-2, along with — in alphabetical order — Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Texas and Texas A&M. Those six all landed in the CFP selection committee’s top 16 last week.

Only two SEC games are remaining matching any of those seven teams. Next week, Georgia tries to bounce back from its second loss of the season against Tennessee in Athens. On Thanksgiving weekend, Texas goes to Texas A&M.

Georgia had a chance to vote Ole Miss off the island, but Rebels coach Lane Kiffin finally broke through with a top-five victory to remain very much alive. Now the Bulldogs, preseason No. 1 and the favorites to win the national championship, are in danger of missing out on a 12-team bracket.

Unthinkable.

The Crimson Tide rolled past LSU 42-13 to unofficially, but undeniably, eliminate the Tigers from Playoff contention. Tennessee and the winner of Texas-Texas A&M control their paths to the SEC title game, which is better than the alternative, but control feels like an illusion this season.

As for Mizzou and Drinkwitz, nobody should apologize for going 7-2, especially a program that does not regularly churn out double-digit-victory seasons. The reality is Missouri, which was ranked 25th by the selection committee last week, clearly sits seventh in the SEC’s Playoff pecking order.

The Athletic’s projections model gives Missouri a 0.3 percent chance of making the Playoff. So, you’re saying there’s a chance?

SEC CFP and title odds

CFP bid	SEC title	Record
78%	42%	8-1
75%	9% Advertisement	7-2
68%	10%	7-2
62% Advertisement	10%	8-2
39%	13	8-1 Advertisement
12%	12	7-2
4%	4 Advertisement	6-3
0.3%	0.3%	7-2

Hurricane warning

No. 4 Miami had been tempting fate and hoping for quarterback Cam Ward to pull it out of precarious situations for most of the last month and a half. Four times in the previous five games, the Hurricanes fell behind only to have Ward and their potent offense bail them out and keep them unbeaten.

Ward ran out of second-half magic against Georgia Tech, and now the Canes’ path to the Playoff has narrowed. SMU, 13th in the committee’s initial rankings, had a productive off week. The Mustangs are now alone atop the ACC standings.

Miami’s loss was the 10th this season by an AP top-10 team against an unranked team. That means the rankings at the time of the games, which means Georgia Tech has two of those victories after starting the season by beating preseason No. 10 Florida State in Ireland. Yes, sometimes early-season upsets are not what they appear to be.

Still, that list includes Kentucky over Ole Mis, Arkansas over Tennessee and, of course, Northern Illinois over Notre Dame. It almost added Utah over No. 9 BYU later Saturday night.

It has been a fun season.

Thanks to Pitt’s loss to Virginia, Miami is still in control of its ACC championship hopes heading into an off week. The Canes conclude the season with games against Syracuse and Boston College — both very winnable. Then again, so was Georgia Tech.

“We have a bye week with everything in front of us to play for,” Miami coach Mario Cristobal said.

The Yellow Jackets ran for 271 yards and held the ball for nearly 35 minutes. Two failed fourth-down conversions by Miami in Georgia Tech territory were essentially the difference in a 28-23 loss.

The bigger issue for Miami is that the prospect of getting into the Playoff just by reaching the ACC Championship Game just went down. Look at all those SEC teams potentially sitting there with two losses. Then take a peek at the Big Ten, where the odds continue to rise that its four CFP contenders (Oregon, Ohio State, Indiana, Penn State) all will win at least 10 regular-season games.

If the Hurricanes reach the ACC title game, they are likely to do so having beaten only one ranked team (Louisville).

That measurement can be a little deceiving and random. Is there that much difference between team No. 25 and team No. 30? Not really.

Still, the ACC moved closer to being a one-bid league Saturday.

ACC CFP and title odds

CFP bid	ACC title	Record
70%	36%	9-1 Advertisement
42%	26%	8-1
38%	36% Advertisement	7-2
1%	2%	6-3

GO DEEPER

College Football Playoff 2024 projections: Indiana up to 92 percent chance to make field

2024 BYU = 2022 TCU

BYU’s unbeaten season appeared to be over when quarterback Jake Retzlaff was sacked near his goal line on a fourth down with less than two minutes left in the fourth quarter. The Cougars have dodged a few losses on the way 9-0, but no escape was greater than Saturday night’s against rival Utah.

A holding penalty on the Utes wiped out what likely would have been a decisive sack, and the Cougars took their second chance and drove to set up a game-winning field goal in the waning seconds. The 11-point halftime deficit was the largest BYU has overcome to win since 2002 against Utah State.

“We won this game. Someone else stole it from us,” Utah athletic director Mark Harlan told reporters. “This was not fair to our team. I’m disgusted by the professionalism of the officiating crew tonight.”

Utah Athletic Director Mark Harlan Post Game pic.twitter.com/eKjy4PpedU
— Elijah Grayson Murray (@elijahgmurray) November 10, 2024
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OK, then.

The Cougars remain alone in first in the Big 12, a mere game ahead of Colorado, which had its own come-from-behind victory on Saturday night.

Indiana already has locked up this season’s best turnaround, the perennial Big Ten doormat now in contention for a conference title after going 3-9 last season. BYU is not quite that, but the Cougars went 5-7 in their first season in the Big 12 last year and were picked to finish near the bottom of the conference again.

Sound familiar?

TCU took a similar path to the Playoff in 2022. These Cougars are no Hypnotoads, but they are most definitely a vibes-based operation.

Big 12 spoiler

Kansas has had one of the most disappointing years in the country, starting the season ranked and losing its first five FBS games, none by more than 11 points.

The Jayhawks now have won two of three, with only a two-point loss to Kansas State preventing a three-game winning streak. Quarterback Jalon Daniels and company pretty much eliminated Iowa State from the CFP race with a 45-36 victory Saturday.

Kansas can continue to play spoiler for the next two weeks. The Jayhawks visit BYU next week and host Colorado after that.

Keeping BYU out of the Big 12 Championship Game at this point is going to take at least two losses by the Cougars. Avoiding that is not going to be as easy as it might have looked a few weeks ago.

BYU goes to Arizona State in two weeks. As good as the turnaround in Provo has been, Sun Devils coach Kenny Dillingham’s has been even better in Tempe. Arizona State (7-2, 4-2) is also still in contention for a spot in the Big 12 title game.

And BYU closes its regular season at home against Houston, which has won three of its last four.

Big 12 CFP and title odds

CFP bid	Big 12 title	Record
59%	32%	9-0 Advertisement
41%	42%	7-2
14%	11% Advertisement	7-2
8%	7%	7-2
3% Advertisement	3%	7-2

Tested Hoosiers

It took 10 games, but finally somebody made Indiana work deep into the fourth quarter.

Indiana is 10-0 for the first time after beating defending national champion Michigan 20-15 in what was by far the Hoosiers’ worst offensive game of the season.

“I’m glad we won,” coach Curt Cignetti said. “I don’t like the way we played.”

10 games, 10 wins. pic.twitter.com/OU9Bi4I8Xi
— Indiana Football (@IndianaFootball) November 10, 2024

Considering Indiana improved to 11-62 all-time against Michigan, I’m pretty confident that sentence never had been uttered by a Hoosiers coach after beating the Wolverines.

Indiana gets a week off before playing at Ohio State. It would seem that the Hoosiers have built up enough credit to sustain a loss to the Buckeyes and get into the Playoff, but the strength of schedule metric is still hanging around Indiana like an anchor. The Wolverines are now 5-5.

Big Ten CFP and title odds

CFP bid	B1G title	Record
99% Advertisement	63%	10-0
99%	20%	8-1 Advertisement
95%	8%	8-1
92%	9% Advertisement	10-0

(Photo: Ed Zurga / Getty Images)

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Culture

Match Five International Cities to Popular Book Titles

Published

3 days ago

June 24, 2025

Press Room

Match Five International Cities to Popular Book Titles

A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights fictional works with the names of real international cities in their titles. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. Links to the books will be listed at the end of the quiz if you’d like to do further reading.

Culture

Match These Books to Their Movie Versions

Published

2 weeks ago

June 16, 2025

Press Room

Match These Books to Their Movie Versions

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. With the summer-movie season here, this week’s challenge is focused on novels that went on to become big-screeen adventures. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their filmed versions.

Culture

Book Review: “The Möbius Book, by Catherine Lacey

Published

2 weeks ago

June 15, 2025

Press Room

THE MÖBIUS BOOK, by Catherine Lacey

The first thing to know about “The Möbius Book,” by Catherine Lacey, is that it is actually two books. One is a novella with a hint of murder mystery. Start from the opposite side, flipping upside down — how will this work on a Kindle? — and you’ll find the other: a memoir of breakup and friendship during the pandemic, interspersed with musings on religion.

Where will bookstores put this loopy blue thing? Amazon, with unusual resourcefulness, has nested it for now under Self-Help/Relationships/Love & Loss (though I’d wager the author’s core audience avoids Amazon).

One has come to expect such formal experiments from Lacey, especially after her bravura “Biography of X”: not a biography of anyone real, but a footnoted, name-dropping, time-melting fourth novel that made many best lists in 2023.

There are plenty of names pelted into “The Möbius Book,” too — author friends like Heidi Julavits and Sarah Manguso, and many others — but one notably missing in the memoir part is that of Lacey’s ex, which gentle Googling reveals is yet another writer, Jesse Ball. Here he is referred to as The Reason: the literary-circle equivalent, maybe, of The Weeknd.

He is the “reason” why she has become a visitor to, rather than a resident of, the house they bought together, after receiving an email he sent from another room, composed on his phone, telling her he’d met another woman. (At least not a Post-it?) He is also, or so she believed, a pillar of masculine rationality. With tattoos.

The Reason has control and anger issues. He noticed when Lacey, or her memoiristic avatar, put on weight and advised her how to take it off. After they split she found it hard to eat for a time.

The Reason, unreasonably, refused to use a laptop, so she had done most of his paperwork, participating “in the long lineage of women licking stamps for their geniuses.” He once called her “a crazy, sexist autocrat” when she wanted to leave a light on in a stairwell for a female guest. Sometimes he would surprise her — “playfully,” he insisted; unpleasantly, she felt — with a smack on the rear. When not threatening or cold, he seems a little absurd in this telling, playing funeral hymns on a shakuhachi.

There was a time when such narratives were lightning bolts cast down on the world of letters, causing considerable shock waves. (I’m thinking of Catherine Texier’s 1998 “Breakup,” about the dissolution of her marriage to Joel Rose, and even Rachel Cusk’s 2012 divorce memoir “Aftermath.”) But Lacey isn’t scorching earth — she’s sifting it, flinging fistfuls of dirt and thought at us.

With characteristic keenness she notes how “The Reason’s name had burrowed into everything, like glitter in shag carpet.” How mundane language pops out with new meaning in the fog of post-relationship grief (“Even the copy on a jar of peanut butter tried to offer advice — Separation is natural”). She reflects on her religious childhood and her once-authoritarian, now-infirm father. She consults — and sometimes curses — Simone Weil, Seneca and William Gass. She hooks up with a new fellow she dubs, naturally, The Bad Idea.

Lacey runs the same list of acknowledgments and credits at the end of both novella and memoir. There are similar themes, but also an element of “Hey, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” in their juxtaposition. The fiction is shorter, noirish and elliptical. Was yoking it to the fiction an organic, creative act — whatever that is, we’re maybe meant to consider — or a clever packaging solution for two not-quite stand-alones?

A woman named Marie welcomes a friend, Edie, into her grim apartment on Christmas, noticing — is this a nightmare? — a pool of blood spreading outside a neighbor’s door. They both write it off as “just paint” so they can sip mezcal, eat crustless sandwiches and talk about failed relationships, some mediated or complicated through another, friend, Kafkaesquely called K.

They are both reputed in their circle to be in some kind of “crisis.” (Marie’s Crisis happens to be an excellent piano bar in the West Village of Manhattan, but, as Lacey writes, “no one cares about anyone else’s coincidences.”) Their interlocked stories drip with aphorism (“it is a fact that when one living thing rests its chin on another living thing, everything is fine”), defy summary and might all be a fever dream anyway.

“The Möbius Book” invites the reader to consider the overlaps between its two parts, an exercise both frustrating — all that turning back, forth and upside down — and exhilarating, because Lacey is imaginative and whimsical when considering reality, and sees truth in make-believe. The curving strip is like Lewis Carroll’s looking glass. Both halves share a broken teacup. Twins! A violent man. Bursts of sarcastic laughter. A dying dog (God?) with important spiritual wisdom to share.

Depending on how you twist, this book — defying the linear story, homage to the messy middle — is either delightfully neo-Dada or utterly maddening.

Or, as Lacey puts it: “Symbolism is both hollow and solid, a crutch, yes, but what’s so wrong with needing help to get around?”

THE MÖBIUS BOOK | By Catherine Lacey | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 240 pp. | $27