College football Week 7 storylines: Oregon vs. Indiana for new No. 1? Billy Napier continues quest to save job

Almost every week after a particularly big game, we love to collectively pronounce the victor as the nation's new top team.

We did it for Ohio State's win over Texas. We did it for Oregon's road win at Penn State. And Miami's victory over in-state rival Florida State. 

Let's just get ahead of it this time: Whichever team emerges victorious out of the weekend's best game between No. 3 Oregon and No. 7 Indiana on Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET on CBS and streaming on Paramount+ Premium) should be the new No. 1 team in the country.

Both teams already have bonafides to justify it even before adding a top 10 win to the mix. Oregon is already receiving first-place votes and has crushed most of the competition it has faced this season. It didn't directly lead to Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy's firing, but the embarrassing 69-3 result all but eliminated any job security he had left. The Penn State win has lost a little luster with the Nittany Lions' loss to UCLA, but Oregon still deserves serious credit for winning on the road in a raucous environment. 

Indiana's resume has similarities. The Hoosiers crushed then-top 10 Illinois 63-10 in a historic win that reminded everyone Curt Cignetti and Co. were not going to just be a one-year wonder. Indiana secured its own challenging road win the following week in a tough bout against Iowa. 

Oregon's Dante Moore and Indiana's Fernando Mendoza are not only two of the Big Ten's best quarterbacks but two of the nation's elite. Both are legitimate early Heisman Trophy contenders through six weeks. Mendoza leads the Big Ten in quarterback rating, while Moore ranks fourth. Their stat lines are remarkably similar, too, as Mendoza has thrown for 1,208 yards, 16 touchdowns and an interception, while Moore is at 1,210, 14 touchdowns and an interception. 

Talent Tracker: Dante Moore vs. Fernando Mendoza is QB duel between a 5-star baller and a former Yale commit

Andrew Ivins

This game features two dynamic coaches in Cignetti and Dan Lanning who aren't afraid to be bold and brash in talking about their teams. It has brilliant coordinators on both sides of the ball, including two recent Broyles Award finalists in Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein and Indiana defensive coordinator Bryant Haines. 

It's must-see TV in every way. 

And on Sunday once the dust settles, get ready to consider the winner as the new top dog at the midway point of this season. 

More Week 7 storylines …

Deja vu in Gainesville?

A year ago, speculation was rampant about Florida coach Billy Napier's job security and what he could do to keep his job. Florida AD Scott Stricklin gave Napier a vote of confidence ahead of the Texas game -- a 49-17 loss -- and then the Gators ripped off four consecutive wins, including over No. 22 LSU and No. 9 Ole Miss. Napier kept his job and Florida entered this season as a trendy playoff pick. 

Napier is again back on the hot seat with speculation rampant about whether he'll be able to keep his job. There has been no public vote of confidence, but Napier is again trying to fight his way to survival with wins over top 25 opponents. It started with last week's crucial win over then-No. 9 Texas that bought him a little goodwill. He gets a chance to add to that this weekend at No. 5 Texas A&M. 

Even with the Texas win, Florida is still only 2-3 on the season and has remaining games against the Aggies, No. 4 Ole Miss, No. 10 Georgia, No. 12 Tennessee and No. 25 Florida State. He doesn't necessarily need to win all of them, but he's going to have to keep racking up marquee wins if he's going to be the Gators' coach in 2026 and beyond. Napier is well-liked within the Florida administration and hasn't lost the locker room, but everyone is aware that a losing season isn't going to cut it in Gainesville. 

The three most recent Florida coaches before Napier all had considerably better records than the current coach's 21-22 -- Dan Mullen (34-15), Jim McElwain (22-12) and Will Muschamp (28-21) -- and yet none made it to a fifth season. Napier proved he could do it once, but the search industry is watching with an eager eye on whether he can somehow improbably pull it off again. 

Pretender or contender fight in Columbia 

Missouri has won 15 straight games at home but hasn't beaten a top 15 team like Saturday's opponent No. 8 Alabama since 1976. The undefeated No. 14 Missouri Tigers look like a playoff contender but have largely beaten up on teams they were supposed to thus far. Its biggest test, by far, will be a surging Alabama team coming off wins over previously undefeated Georgia and Vanderbilt. 

Is Missouri as good as the stats seem to say? Led by star running back Ahmad Hardy, the Tigers average 292 rushing yards per game (third-best nationally) and rank in the top 10 in rushing success rate and rushing explosive rate. That could be bad news against an Alabama defense that looked better against Vanderbilt but has still struggled to defend the run all season. Defensive tackle Tim Keenan, who played his first game of the year against Georgia, helps there, but still looks like he's not quite 100% yet. 

Missouri's showdown with Alabama -- 50 years in the making -- gives Tigers chance to climb SEC hierarchy

Brandon Marcello

Since that shocking, season-opening loss to Florida State, Alabama has improved and won four consecutive games. Quarterback Ty Simpson has been terrific and has played Heisman-level ball the last few weeks. The Crimson Tide are telling a story of resiliency, of bouncing back after getting punched in the mouth, and it has resonated. But road games were Kalen DeBoer and Alabama's kryptonite a year ago, and an 11 a.m. CT kick in Columbia doesn't get the juices flowing quite like a night game in Sanford Stadium. This will be a real challenge for Alabama.

Is Alabama fully back on track to being a playoff-caliber team like we expected? Are Eli Drinkwitz's Tigers for real and more than a paper tiger? This one should tell us a lot about both teams and potentially redefine what is currently a pretty wide open SEC race. 

The gauntlet ahead for South Carolina 

Coming off a 9-4 record a year ago, South Carolina entered the 2025 season at No. 13 in the country and with hopes of getting into the playoff behind quarterback LaNorris Sellers. It hasn't quite gone according to plan with the Gamecocks already 3-2 and approaching a five-game gauntlet that will define the season. Consider South Carolina's next five games: at No. 11 LSU, No. 6 Oklahoma, No. 8 Alabama, at No. 4 Ole Miss and at No. 5 Texas A&M. Four games against top 10 opponents and one just on the outside in this weekend's opponent. That is a brutal, brutal stretch. But when you already have losses to Vanderbilt and Missouri, you need to win at least one of those to have a shot at just making a bowl game this season. 

The Gamecocks were one of 2024's best stories, and there is some high-level talent on the roster, but it's not easy to consistently beat the SEC's elite teams. Over the next five games, South Carolina can either reassert itself in the national conversation or slip away into irrelevance within the SEC this season. 

Salty Talty

Each week this space will be my airing of grievances, my opportunity to let the audience know what has been really grinding my gears. Hopefully it'll be mostly college football-related, but it's a good bet travel, family and other day-to-day life annoyances will find a way in. 

The tweet almost immediately evoked outrage. 

The tweet accomplished the impossible: It brought together Oklahoma and Texas fans against it during Red River Rivalry week. Fans of plenty of other SEC schools piled on about how bad it was, too. 

The tweet was clearly poorly worded and deserved derision, but the actual idea the story was trying to get at -- one that few probably read before reacting to the tweet -- is an interesting one, though. 

Texas quarterback Arch Manning is a college junior, and the rules have always been different for college players. They are, after all, just "kids" and for many years have been treated less harshly than professional athletes who might make mistakes. 

Manning is indeed a college student, but unless you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he's probably better compensated than you are. He appears in multiple national advertisement campaigns, including the now ubiquitous Warby Parker ads. Already 21 years old, he's a year younger than NFL quarterbacks J.J. McCarthy and Jaxson Dart, who have both already faced criticism that comes with being a professional athlete. 

Is criticizing Manning's poor play really off limits in a college football era where football players now make millions? The criticism of Manning has been unfair, not because a college student should be blameless, but because the offensive line deserves more of the ire. 

As the college football world evolves with revenue sharing and major NIL money, so too do the rules of engagement. You should still never tweet anything mean at a player, and we'd all benefit from showing others more grace. However, we've reached a point where infantilizing young men who are accumulating generational wealth feels outdated. They aren't just college kids playing for room and board now; some are now burgeoning media moguls. They host podcasts, they appear on national commercials and try to grow their personal brand. 

Musicians like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber have faced intense scrutiny since they were teenagers, but it was accepted in that world as just part of the territory. The bigger the sport gets and the more that athletes put themselves out there with social media posts and endorsements, the more they seem to open themselves up to critique. 

Any claim that Arch Manning is now synonymous with failure is just flat out egregiously wrong. But being able to say a multi-millionaire athlete isn't living up to the hype shouldn't feel quite as out of bounds.