Brian’s College Football Top 5: Week 14

Photo by Alex Slitz from Getty Images

And that’s it.

We still have conference championships, bowl games, and the playoff, but the college football regular season is officially over.

It always goes by too quickly.

But we still have work to do, as there are five teams deserving of praise before we head to the postseason.

In fact, there’s even more than five!

Honorable Mentions: Delaware Blue Hens & Missouri State Bears

Because of Delaware and Missouri State being in their first year of FBS play, they are ineligible for postseason play.

That is, unless there aren’t enough bowl eligible teams. If there aren’t, and they both have 6 wins, that is waived and they can go bowling.

And of the 82 bowl eligible spots, there are only 80 bowl eligible teams.

So congratulations to Delaware and Missouri State! You’re going bowling!

Honorable Mention: Duke Blue Devils

Duke is 7-5 and going to the ACC title game.

Hilarious.

5. California Golden Bears

And the reason Duke is heading to Charlotte is because the California Golden Bears upset SMU thanks to an incredible performance from Cal QB Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele.

A big win for Cal, just one week after firing head coach Justin Wilcox.

That’s how you head into bowl season on a high.

4. Kent State Golden Flashes

It’s a bummer we now have enough bowl eligible teams, because no 5 win team deserved a bowl more than Kent State.

Mark Carney took over this job late in the offseason, and inherited a team who won one game in the previous two seasons, and went 5-7.

It’s amazing the job he has done there.

3. Navy Midshipmen

Everyone thought Navy would go 7-0, and then likely be 7-4 heading into Army-Navy.

After all, they faced North Texas, Notre Dame, USF, and Memphis in four straight weeks. That’s a grueling schedule.

And they did lose to North Texas and (obviously) Notre Dame, but a huge upset win over USF got them to 8-2, and a Thanksgiving night upset over Memphis moved them to 9-2 and a shot at the American Conference title game that they just fell short of due to tiebreakers.

Still, an awesome season for Navy once again.

Blake Horvath deserves a trip to NYC for the Heisman Ceremony.

2. New Mexico Lobos

Another team that just fell short of the conference title but deserves tons of respect is New Mexico.

9 win seasons for New Mexico don’t happen often, and they certainly don’t happen in year one of a new head coach.

But Jason Eck deserves all the credit in the world for a 9 win season after an overtime win over San Diego State.

Would it be cool if they went to the Mountain West title game? Sure.

But it’s an amazing season regardless.

1. Texas Longhorns

Texas playoff hopes were hanging by a thread going in to Black Friday’s matchup against arch rival Texas A&M.

But those hopes are a little stronger after a good performance from Arch Manning and a GREAT performance from the Longhorns defense.

I still think Texas misses out of the playoff (which will lead to many hot takes), but that doesn’t take away a dominant win over A&M to spoil their perfect season.

Or, it shouldn’t.

I bet it will, though.

This playoff kind of sucks, doesn’t it?