The higher they climb, the B1Gger they flop.
What a wretched Saturday for the Big Ten. The conference that spent the past three seasons enjoying the view down on the SEC from the throne chalked up to losses to Oklahoma State, Mississippi State, Wake Forest and Duke in the span of a few hours.
Whiff!
That amounts to college football’s version of a golden sombrero.
Oh, I almost forgot (because it’s easy to forget Rutgers): a loss to Boston College, too.
Michigan’s defense ensured the weekend wouldn’t be a total faceplant for the Big Ten, but then Ohio State provided the chef’s kiss to a dour day by losing a game in which
it led by 20 points, for the first time in program history.
Here’s what’s brewing on my brain after Week 2:
Oregon flirting with fraud territory
Oregon is the new Clemson, and although Dabo Swinney once built a dynasty, I don’t mean that as a compliment.
I’m looking at this through a narrower lens: Oregon is threatening to imitate 2025 Clemson. That is, a freefall from frontrunner to fraud.
Remember the national championship chatter for Clemson back when we were floating on pool noodles in summer 2025? Remember the first-round draft projection, around that same time, for Cade Klubnik? Remember how it was going to be Swinney’s comeback hour?
What a sick joke that turned out to be. Clemson went from July darling to the Pinstripe Bowl, but here’s the thing: The Tigers didn’t suffer from a lack of talent. Nine Clemson players were selected in last spring’s NFL Draft.
And, if Oregon’s season swirls the drain after a 39-31 loss to Oklahoma State (a team that couldn’t beat Tulsa), don’t pin it on a lack of talent.
Bet your last dollar, numerous players from this Oregon roster will be drafted. It’s a squad of talented individuals, but, as a unit, Oregon is swiftly becoming the most mediocre team a Nike war chest can buy.
“The score was closer than it really was because it wasn't close in a lot of ways," coach Dan Lanning told reporters afterward. "We got our ass kicked.”
An honest assessment. A concerning one, too.
The Ducks are fortunate to not be 0-2, after needing a rally to survive Boise State in the season opener. Consider a schedule that includes Southern Cal, Ohio State, Michigan and Washington, and I wouldn’t have preseason No. 2 Oregon in my playoff projection.
In hindsight, maybe we should’ve seen this coming. Warning signs presented in January, when Indiana routed Oregon in a playoff semifinal.
Months later, Boise State pushed around Oregon.
When you look back on Oregon’s 2025 season, what do you see? I see a skimpy resume, earmarked by narrow wins against Penn State (another fraud that went to the Pinstripe Bowl) and Iowa.
Yes, indeed, the warning signs were there.
All of a sudden, Dante Moore’s Heisman hopes are underwater. If he’s the first quarterback selected next spring, then this batch of draft-eligible quarterbacks must not be what it’s hyped up to be.
I told you before the season I don’t trust Lanning a bit in big games, but this one against Oklahoma State was just the type of game Lanning doesn’t lose — until now. The Cowboys’ 554 yards were the most allowed by Oregon since Georgia blasted the Ducks in Lanning’s 2022 debut.
Oregon is a couple of losses away from us having to ask: Is Lanning college football’s most overrated coach? He’s piled up a lot of wins, but so would a lot of other coaches, with access to Phil Knight’s checkbook.
Time for Oklahoma to give Brent Venables another extension?
College athletics departments are notoriously poor stewards of money. An agent versus athletic director matchup in a contract negotiation is a mismatch of Miami versus Florida A&M proportions.
Even by college football standards, Oklahoma’s preseason extension for Brent Venables reeked of contract lunacy. The queue of schools lined up to steal Venables away from Oklahoma was shorter than the afternoon line at a Hardee’s drive-thru.
Bidding only against itself, Oklahoma gave Venables a raise, upped his buyout, and tacked on two years to his contract, for a new deal that runs through the 2031 season.
"It didn't take long to see how well suited he is to lead Oklahoma football,” new athletics director Roger Denny said in announcing the extension. “Coach Venables is elite at building culture.”
Maybe, and he’s undeniably elite as a defensive mind, but Oklahoma’s offense tanked after joining the SEC and never pulled out of the funk.
OU’s defense dragged the team into the playoff last season, and that defense gave the Sooners a puncher’s chance at Michigan.
But an interception from turnover-prone John Mateer swung the game for a 17-10 Michigan victory.
Venables dropped to 33-21 at OU. You wouldn’t think that’s meeting the Sooner standard, but his August contract extension says Oklahoma is content with being an also-ran.
Kansas-Missouri Border War back at full heat
When a friend alerted me to the Kansas hype video ahead of the Border War against Missouri, I figured it must be spicy.
Wrong. It was a stick of dynamite.
There’s very little off limits in college football rivalries, but Kansas tapping into the Civil War for its official hype video nonetheless shocked the senses.
It might mark the first time in college football history that abolitionist John Brown or pro-slavery guerrilla leader William Quantrill appeared in a reel to promote a game.
The video directly painted Kansas as the heroes and Missouri as the villains. It heavily leaned into Bleeding Kansas and the years of fighting between pro- and anti-slavery factions along the Kansas-Missouri border in the years leading up to the Civil War.
“There’s right and wrong,” the video’s narrator says. “There’s Kansas and Missouri.”
The whole production went hard.
A historian might point out Missouri takes its mascot from the pro-Union Missouri Tigers militia group.
Anyway, the video struck a nerve with Missouri coach Eliah Drinkwitz, who called it “bizarre” and “uncalled for” and said he wanted to run up the score and “embarrass” Kansas in Missouri’s 38-21 victory. The video dropped on 9/11, the day of the game. Drinkwitz argued 9/11 should be a day of unity, not division.
I'm not here to debate the video's sentiment, but it's fair for Drinkwitz to question whether a 90-second pregame hype video is the right form for this conversation.
“We left Kansas bleeding again,” Drinkwitz said after the game.
Oh, my. If the hype video was ruthless, so is that quote.
Kansas really just showed the world how much hatred can go into a rivalry with this pregame hype video before the Mizzou game 😭 pic.twitter.com/OGOUpJK9sW
— The College Sports Company (@CollegeSportsCo) September 11, 2026
I’ve got little issue with Missouri trying to run it up on a rival, especially after Kansas lit the fuse.
What I didn’t like: Drinkwitz suggested the Kansas video might decrease his appetite to play the Jayhawks in the future. Missouri isn’t scheduled to play Kansas again until 2031.
Sorry, but I see it differently. A rivalry that burns as hot as this one should be played regularly. Missouri shouldn’t need any extra fuel. Just keep that Kansas hype video saved to the Cloud for Missouri to use to stoke the fires the next time these teams meet.
Enjoy the 12-team playoff while it lasts
I’ve repeatedly argued a 12-team playoff strikes the right balance of access and exclusivity.
It’s big enough that Ohio State can recover from a one-point road loss to Texas but small enough that Oregon’s loss to Oklahoma State feels damaging.
If Tony Petitti gets his way and ushers in a 24-team playoff soon, results like the Ducks shriveling in Stillwater or the Sooners shrinking in Ann Arbor lose some significance.
In a universe with a 24-team playoff, we’re looking at Oregon after a bad loss to the Cowboys and saying: Hey, the Ducks look like a playoff team! (And so does Iowa!)
Three and out
1. Hard to argue with Texas being No. 1 after its comeback against Ohio State, but who’s the team I'd least want to face right now? Miami.
2. Mississippi State is the disruptor we convinced ourselves Kentucky could be. Need more evidence? Call Minnesota to the witness stand. Quarterback Kamario Taylor is living up to the hype he started generating as a breakout performer at the Manning Passing Academy.
3. LSU looked dominant against Clemson after Lane Kiffin walked down the runway during the Tiger Walk alongside a couple of bikini models. Fast forward a week, and LSU got a bit sloppy against Louisiana Tech after Kiffin made an entrance alongside a couple of rappers. Well, that does it. More bikini models needed at LSU. Twist Lane’s arm, right?
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Listen to his podcast, "College Football Unfiltered." Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dan Lanning has Nike money, playoff hype and one growing problem | Opinion
