It’s a little hard to believe, but the college football regular season is slowly coming to an end. With so much on the line, let’s catch up on everything that’s happened since Saturday’s action ended.
Guess Who’s Back
Two weeks after taking a leave from the LSU football team to attend to personal issues, linebacker Michael Divinity is back with the Tigers. It’s unclear if he’ll play this week against Arkansas after missing games against Alabama and Ole Miss. But Divinity is back at practice, and after the LSU defense gave up over 600 yards of offense against Ole Miss, having him back couldn’t hurt.
Stick Around
BYU has given head coach Kalani Sitake a contract extension that will keep him with the Cougars through the 2023 season. His previous deal only ran through the 2020 season. BYU has scored big wins this season over Tennessee, USC, and Boise State.
Despite slipping up and falling to 2-4 at one point, the Cougars became bowl eligible after winning their fourth game in a row this past weekend. BYU has already accepted an invitation to play in the SoFi Hawaii Bowl.
I’m a QB, Coach
It’s been a rough year for Miami quarterback Tate Martell. After transferring from Ohio State, he finished third in the three-way quarterback battle in preseason camp and entertained the idea of playing wide receiver. However, he’s not been good enough to have the ball thrown his way as a receiver.
Martell has now decided to focus solely on playing quarterback moving forward. He thinks that a full offseason dedicated to getting better as a quarterback will help his chances of getting on the field next season.
We’ll See
Oklahoma receiver CeeDee Lamb was undoubtedly missed during last week’s close call against Baylor, and his status for this week’s game against TCU remains up in the air. The Sooners haven’t disclosed his injury, only saying he has a “medical issue,” with head coach Lincoln Riley saying that Lamb’s status is “up in the air.” Lamb participated in warmups before the Baylor game but did not play.
No More Divisions
The American Athletic Conference has announced that it will go without two separate divisions for the 2020 and 2021 seasons. The move is in response to Connecticut leaving the league so it can play football as an independent and rejoin the Big East in other sports, specifically basketball.
The 11 remaining teams will continue to play an eight-game conference schedule but without divisions dictating matchups. Presumably, the top two teams in the standings will participate in the conference title game, though the AAC hasn’t commented on that.
The league says it will go with this format for the next two seasons, leaving the door open to add a 12th team at some point, although there has been no stated interest in adding a 12th member.
One for the Record Books
One of the highlights of the weekend was a Division III attendance record being set by Ithaca and Cortland, who moved their annual rivalry game to MetLife Stadium and drew a record 45,161 fans. Ithaca and Cortland, both upstate New York schools, make up one of the more famous D3 rivalries, the Battle for the Cortaca Jug. In front of the massive crowd, Ithaca beat its rivals for the third straight year, winning 32-20.
