An old adage in college football is that, on any given Saturday, anything can happen. Anybody can beat anybody.
And that certainly holds true in the current season.
Rick ClevelandHow else to explain these occurrences? On Sept. 26, Florida slaughtered Ole Miss 52-28. On Oct 3, Missouri clobbered Florida 45-17. But on Oct. 17, Ole Miss belted Missouri 31-3.
In a matter of three weeks, Florida whipped Ole Miss by 24 points, and Missouri whipped Florida by 28, yet Ole Miss browbeat Missouri by 28.
It’s enough to make you dizzy. I mean, how does this happen? Team A was 24 points better than Team B, and Team B was 28 points better than Team C. Yet Team C beat Team A by 28 points. This does not compute.
But this is not an anomaly, either. Elsewhere in the SEC this season, Alabama slammed South Carolina by 31 points, 49-18. Tennessee trounced Alabama 26-10, yet South Carolina, just this past Saturday, defeated Tennessee 27-24. You’ll get a headache if you think about it too much.
Take some aspirin, because it’s not just happening in the SEC, either, as we shall see.
Earlier this season, Troy slammed Southern Miss 55-34. It was like men vs. boys. The next week, Louisiana pounded Troy 33-6. But then a week later, this past Saturday, Southern Miss stunned Louisiana 35-31.
Southern Mississippi quarterback Landry Lyddy (18) throws during an NCAA college football game in Hattiesburg, Miss., Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026. Credit: AP Photo/Matthew HintonWhen results are this disparate, you figure there’s got to be a reason, a common thread. Having reported on college football for six decades or so, I figured that reason was turnovers. Experience tells me that when upsets occur, the turnover differential is most often the reason.
So I went back and looked at the nine results listed above. And I was partially correct. Not once among those nine decisions did the losing team win the turnover battle. In five cases, the winners were at least plus-2 in turnovers, but in the other four games, the turnovers were even.
The one common factor in all nine games? The home team won. Like Dorothy from Kansas once said, over and over, “There’s no place like home.”
In college football, the home team does enjoy a definite advantage. You could look it up. I did. So did renowned college football expert Phil Steele, who found that over the past five seasons home teams have won 64.2% of Division I football games.
Nevertheless, I have heard TV pundits attribute such surprising turn-arounds as those discussed above to the modern version of college football with its unlimited free agency. For most teams, there is now wholesale turnover in rosters between seasons. It stands to reason that especially early in the season coaches are still getting to know the players and vice versa. Players are still learning new formations and new systems. There’s bound to be a period of adjustment when results are uneven and strange things happen.
That might seem like sound reasoning, but it doesn’t explain why this kind of stuff has been happening since long before college players were making more money than college presidents and changing schools faster than girlfriends.
Take 1970, for instance, 56 years ago. Ole Miss beat Alabama 48-23 in Jackson. Alabama beat Mississippi State 35-6 in Tuscaloosa, but State beat Ole Miss 19-14 in Oxford. Furthermore, that same season Ole Miss beat Memphis by 34 points, and Memphis beat Southern Miss by 33 points, yet Southern Miss beat Ole Miss by 16 points. Sounds crazy, but it happened.
And it happened long before that. One hundred years ago, Tulane beat Ole Miss 6-0. And Mississippi State Tulane 14-0. But Ole Miss beat Mississippi State 7-6. Homefield advantage? The home team won only once in those three games.
In college football, there’s only one explanation, which is: Go figure.
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