QB U: When the Stars Aligned for This Week’s Top Matchups
QB U: When the Stars Aligned for This Week’s Top Matchups
Revisiting the seasons when the teams in this week's top matchups were at their peak, led by their star quarterbacks.
Welcome to QB U, another (hopefully) regular feature I’m introducing at this here Substack, in which I rank 5 items vaguely related to college football quarterbacks throughout the season. Why quarterbacks? I have this schedule-adjusted Points Above Replacement (PAR) metric for QBs going back to 1956, and I figure I should do something with that. If you have a QB U idea you’d like me to cover, email me1 and I’ll feature it in a future column!
🏈 This Week’s Theme: Today, we dive into the history of this week’s top matchups, highlighting the seasons when both teams were at their strongest (according to the Elo ratings), driven by standout quarterback performances.
🏈 Arizona-Kansas State: 1998
When I think about the peak of K-State and Arizona football, I have to go back to 1998 — one of the formative seasons of my childhood fandom — when both Wildcats finished among the AP Top 10 and had a combined 23-3 record. KSU was, of course, led by Michael Bishop, an awesome dual-threat QB who racked up 2,844 yards in the air (with 23 TDs vs. 5 INTs) and added another 748 yards and 14 TDs (!) on the ground. The Wildcats were coming off an 11-1 season in which the only blemish was a loss to eventual co-national champ Nebraska, and they won their first 11 games of 1998 before blowing a huge lead — and a shot at the BCS title game — in the Big 12 championship.
Arizona also had a fascinating arc. After going 10-2 in 1993, Sports Illustrated picked them to win the national title in 1994 — but they disappointed to 8-4, kicking off a four-year stretch in which they went just 26-20. But improbably, the Wildcats used a QB platoon of Keith Smith and Ortege Jenkins, plus RB Trung Canidate, WR Dennis Northcutt and the nation’s 18th-ranked SRS defense to go 12-1 (the only loss coming against UCLA and our friend Cade McNown).
Did they play? No. 😞 Both Wildcats are in the Big 12 now, but they were in different conferences at the time — and, to this day, haven’t faced since 1978. Arizona’s stellar season got them sent to the Holiday Bowl, where they beat a Nebraska team that KSU also beat early in the season, while K-State went to the Alamo Bowl and lost to Drew Brees and Purdue.
This year’s matchup: Friday, 8:00 PM ET, FOX
🏈 Boston College-Missouri: 2007
At different points in time during the historically chaotic 2007 season, both Missouri and Boston College looked like they could make a serious run at the national championship.
Let’s start with BC: Under the direction of coach Jeff Jagodzinski and QB Matt Ryan (in his best and final college campaign), the Eagles peaked at No. 2 in the AP poll with an 8-0 record at midseason. With only 1 ranked opponent remaining — plus the ACC title game — Boston College had things all lined up, but they lost 3 of their next 5 games (including the conference championship) to fall out of the Top 10.
Meanwhile, Mizzou was led by Chase Daniel, a second-year starter that was putting up some silly numbers in the Big 12 (even if ESPN The Magazine said backup Chase Patton had a better NFL shot.) The Tigers lost at Oklahoma relatively early on, but they won 6 straight afterward to set up a Big 12 title-game rematch with the Sooners… and then lost again, 38-17, as Sam Bradford and OU rolled in the second half.
Did they play? No. 😞 BC and Mizzou had never played each other until 2021; they’ll mark their second matchup this year. In 2007, BC’s late swoon sent them to the Champs Sports Bowl (versus a Big Ten opponent in Michigan State), while Missouri’s pair of Oklahoma losses relegated them to the Cotton Bowl and a date with future SEC foe Arkansas.
This year’s matchup: Saturday, 12:45 PM ET, SEC Network
🏈 Georgia-Kentucky: 2021
As longtime SEC East rivals,2 the Bulldogs and Wildcats are not strangers to each other. They’ve played in each of the past 69 years (2024 included), although seldom has Kentucky been rated higher by Elo before the game — and UGA has won 25 of the previous 27 matchups, including its current 14-game winning streak. But with UK rising to greater prominence in the Mark Stoops era, 2021 seemed like an opportunity for the Wildcats to announce their presence on the national stage.
Kentucky has had some surprisingly interesting QBs over the years, from Tim Couch and Jared Lorenzen to Andre Woodson and Mike Hartline, but in ‘21 they were led by maybe their most talented of all, Will Levis. While Levis didn’t really challenge Couch’s school record for PAR (150.5 in 1998), UK ended up notching just the program’s fourth 10-win season ever. And then, of course, Georgia was a dominant powerhouse in 2021, with QB Stetson Bennett ultimately leading coach Kirby Smart’s stacked roster to the program’s first national title since 1980.
Did they play? Yes. 😤 As previously mentioned, UGA and UK play every year — and few of their games have come with more anticipation than the 2021 edition, after Kentucky was 6-0 with wins over Florida and LSU in the two weeks beforehand. Unfortunately for the Wildcats, though, the No. 1 Bulldogs came out strong in front of their home fans, building a 14-0 lead in the second quarter and then breaking the game wide open with 16 unanswered points after halftime to win 30-13. Now this year’s Kentucky squad will try to turn the tables on another No. 1-ranked UGA team, this time in Lexington.
This year’s matchup: Saturday, 7:30 PM ET, ABC/ESPN+
🏈 LSU-South Carolina: 2011-13
LSU has consistently been a good-to-great SEC power for a long time, and they were around the peak of their talent by the early 2010s under coach Les Miles. South Carolina, however, was only sporadically anywhere near that level until the 2000s-era arrival of two coaching legends — first, Lou Holtz (who in 2001 guided SC to only its second 9-win season ever), and then the Ol’ Head Ball Coach himself, Steve Spurrier.
It was against that backdrop that we arrive at the 2011-13 seasons, each of which played a role in the rivalry’s peak — both from afar and up-close. LSU’s 2011 squad (with Jordan Jefferson and Jarrett Lee at QB) was one of the program’s best ever, only getting tripped up in the national title game rematch against Alabama. Moving forward in 2012-13 with Zach Mettenberger under center, the Tigers were not quite as good but still went 20-6 overall. And Spurrier’s Gamecocks won 11 games each year over that span — remember, they’d only even cracked nine wins once before the 2000s — mostly led by the productive Connor Shaw at QB, peaking among the AP Top 4 in both 2012 and 2013.
Did they play? Yes (once). 😤 After his first big breakout season at South Carolina in 2011, Spurrier went into 2012 with a more experienced QB and real expectations. The Gamecocks started the year 6-0, including a 35-7 win over longtime Ball-Coach victims UGA, which vaulted SC to No. 3 in the poll going into the LSU game at Death Valley. South Carolina even led 14-10 headed into the fourth quarter, but an electrifying 50-yard TD run by Tiger RB Jeremy Hill helped to ruin the Gamecocks’ national championship aspirations.3
This year’s matchup: Saturday, 12:00 PM ET, ABC/ESPN+
🏈 Oregon-Oregon State: 2000
The Civil War rivalry between Oregon and Oregon State has taken some strange turns over the years. U of O and OSU were on relatively equal footing early in their head-to-head history, with the Beavers actually leading 37 wins to 32 (with 2 ties) through the 1974 contest. Then Oregon State fell off, Oregon eventually got much better under Rich Brooks and then (especially) Mike Bellotti, and the rivalry mostly belonged to the Ducks for the 25 years leading up to 2000.
Former Miami coach Dennis Erickson helped OSU improve quickly upon his arrival in 1999, however, and Jonathan Smith was in the middle of it as the Beavers’ best QB by PAR since Erik Wilhelm in the late ‘80s. (Throwing to future NFL WRs Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh helped, too.) Oregon State opened up 2000 with 4 straight wins (beating No. 8 USC), and a 3-point loss at Washington4 on a late missed FG was followed by 5 more wins in a row heading into the Civil War game. Meanwhile, Oregon seemed to be breaking through to a new level in the Bellotti era; they were on their way to the program’s first 10-win season ever with junior QB Joey Harrington leading the charge.
Did they play? Yes. 😤 Everything collided in the annual meeting on Nov. 18 in Corvallis. Smith threw a pair of long first-quarter TDs to Robert Prescott to help OSU open a 17-0 lead, which Oregon would never recover from as Harrington committed six turnovers. In the process, the Beavers dashed the Ducks’ hopes of going to the Rose Bowl — but then had to watch as Washington’s win later that night also denied OSU its own trip to Pasadena. Still, so great was the combined Oregon effort in 2000 that SI put Harrington and star Beavers RB Ken Simonton on the cover of its preview issue the following year (see above).
This year’s matchup: Saturday, 7:30 PM ET, ABC/ESPN+
Filed under: College Football, QB U
Yes, I’m using the same email as for Baseball Bytes, LOL.
I guess technically you would call it that, even though the Bulldogs are 63-12-2 against UK all-time.
A flat, 44-11 drubbing by Florida at Spurrier’s old stomping grounds, The Swamp, didn’t help a week later.
Who also had a stellar year, beating Miami (who beat FSU) and only losing once, to Oregon on the road. (Come to think of it, I really should do a post on the crazy clusterfuck that was the 2000 college football season.)