San José State led No. 13 Boise State by 14 and had the ball at the BSU 2 just 20 minutes in. Wisconsin led top-ranked Oregon heading into the fourth quarter. Arkansas had the ball and a chance to take the lead on No. 3 Texas with 13 minutes left. Boston College had the ball and a chance to take the lead on No. 14 SMU with two minutes left. Pitt did take the lead on No. 20 Clemson with 1:36 left.
I predicted jump scares in my Week 12 preview, and we got loads of them. Boise State, Oregon, Texas, SMU and Clemson all survived with varying degrees of dramatics, but others weren't so lucky.
No. 6 BYU and No. 16 Kansas State were the latest to fall victim -- again, in K-State's case -- to the chaos demons in the Big 12. LSU not only lost in Gainesville to an inspired Florida team, getting all but eliminated from CFP contention in the process, but the Tigers were also so drastically outplayed that they were lucky to lose by only 11. New Mexico scored its first win over a ranked opponent since 2003, ending whatever CFP hopes Washington State had. Hell, down in Conference USA, the conference title favorite (Western Kentucky) lost, and two other leaders (Jacksonville State and Sam Houston) nearly did as well.
If you bet on every underdog to cover Saturday, you'd have won 62% of your bets. It was as delightfully strange a day as I had hoped, even if we didn't see quite as much carnage as we could have.
We'll have plenty of chances to talk about the teams still heavily involved in the CFP race soon enough. Let's pause for a moment, though, and recap Week 12's action by looking at the teams that have either been eliminated from CFP contention or have seen their odds diminish significantly. What went wrong for hopefuls like LSU and Kansas State? What's going wrong for Miami and BYU?
(Note: All playoff odds below are from the Allstate Playoff Predictor.)
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Eliminated: LSU, K-State, Pitt
Long shots: ISU, TA&M, Clemson, Army
Fading: Miami, BYU
Week 12 surprises
Heisman of week | Favorite games