College football Week 6 takeaways — Oklahoma’s free fall, Tennessee’s test, Heisman rankings

Week 6 of the college football season was … odd. Quarterback injuries made for strange viewing experiences.

Alabama was able to fend off an upset bid from Texas A&M without defending Heisman winner Bryce Young. Kentucky wasn’t so lucky, falling to South Carolina without Will Levis. Kansas nearly kept up with TCU thanks to a brilliant performance from backup Jason Bean, in for Jalon Daniels. Oklahoma got its Red River Showdown doors blown off without Dillon Gabriel. Arizona State upset Washington with former walk-on Trenton Bourguet at the helm and Texas Tech threw a serious scare into Oklahoma State with a third-string quarterback. Louisville backup Brock Domann potentially saved coach Scott Satterfield’s job with a solid performance in a win over Virginia. Et cetera.

For quite a few important teams, this was a survive-and-advance week, one in which we lost only one unbeaten team — oh, what could have been, Kansas — and gave us as much oddity as useful information. But storylines still emerged; they always do. Here are six particularly interesting takeaways from the second Saturday in October.

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What on earth has happened to Oklahoma?

Texas 49, Oklahoma 0

It’s difficult to underachieve against the spread for a particular period of time because the books adjust. If a team is worse than expected, the bar will keep being lowered until equilibrium is found.

Sometimes, however, a collapse comes so swiftly that it takes a while to find equilibrium. Sometimes you pull a John Mackovic. Or a Turner Gill.

Which brings us to Oklahoma.

Largest underachievement vs. the spread in a three-game span for a once-ranked team, last 30 years:

1. 1997 Texas (-110.5 points)

2. 2011 Texas Tech (-107.5)

3. 1999 UCLA (-101.5)

4. 2005 Colorado (-99.5)

5. 2022 Oklahoma (-98)

Having posted SP+ projections against the lines for about a decade now, I can confidently say that the books are smarter than they’ve ever been. The lines are extraordinarily hard to beat in volume, even compared to just a few years ago. And they have not been able to keep up with the velocity of Oklahoma’s collapse.

Just three weeks ago, Brent Venables’ first Sooners team was 3-0 and coming off of a rousing rivalry win at Nebraska. Favored by 10.5 points, the Sooners had won by a 49-14 margin, and they were 13.5-point home favorites against a Kansas State team that had just lost to Tulane.

• Sept. 24: Kansas State (+13.5) 41, Oklahoma 34

• Oct. 1: TCU (+5) 55, Oklahoma 24

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