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Normally Missouri’s stunning 41-10 capitulation at Texas A&M would have subjected Truman to a harsh national spotlight.

That was a complete meltdown. The Tigers suffered a complete emotional and physical collapse after a series of unfortunate officiating calls and game breaks went against them at College Station.

Normally that would be headline stuff when the No. 9-ranked team absorbs that sort of merciless beating. Instead, the Tigers fell into the “also killed� paragraph in national stories about the college football weekend.

No. 1 Alabama lost at Vanderbilt. No. 4 Tennessee lost at Arkansas. No. 10 Michigan fell at Washington. No. 11 USC lost at Minnesota. No. 22 Louisville fell at home to SMU.

No. 8 Miami needed a miraculous rally to squeeze out a 39-38 victory at Cal. This was another wild weekend during a wild season of college football.

The transfer portal and NIL dollars have created a chaotic competitive landscape. Programs are in constant flux – even in midseason, as UNLV coach Barry Odom saw when his starting quarterback bailed over his NIL dispute.

College football has become utterly unpredictable. This is why Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia could say this with a straight face after helping to dispatch the Crimson Tide:

“This is what I came here for. Came here to win big football games. Our ultimate goal is to go to the College Football Playoff, and so we want a chance at the national championship. Just how everyone else does. This is just a step in the way, and we just got to keep getting better. There’s still little mistakes out there that we got to clean up. But you know, any given Saturday, anything’s possible.�

And as this weekend proved, he’s not wrong about that. That doesn't excuse Missouri's brutal performance Saturday, but it offers some comforting context.

College football is a free-for-all.

Here is what folks were writing about all of this:

Will Backus, : “For the first time in a long time, there are no elite college football teams. Yet. And before you hop into my DMs, Texas and Ohio State fans, just know that your favorite teams are on a different level than everybody else.  Even so, it's hard to label any program as far and away the best team in the sport. Yes, the Longhorns and the Buckeyes should be applauded for taking care of business thus far. Texas' win against Michigan was very impressive, even.  But it still feels like both teams have left a lot on the table. Week 7, when Texas has to play No. 19 Oklahoma and Ohio State travels to No. 6 Oregon for its first game against a ranked opponent all year, will be a real litmus test for where those squads are actually at.  Otherwise, there's genuine parity around the nation. Eight ranked teams lost during a wild Week 6 slate, including five in the top 11. Seven of those results came against unranked teams. Both No. 1 Alabama and No. 4 Tennessee fell on the road against unranked opponents in Vanderbilt and Arkansas, respectively. It's the first time in SEC history that two top-5 teams have lost to two teams outside of the top 25 in the same day.  All of this in a year where 12 teams make the College Football Playoff. Suddenly that race looks a whole lot more interesting -- and way more crowded. So much for the regular season not mattering anymore.” 

Andy Staples, : “Alabama lost to Vanderbilt. Had a similar loss happened to an eventual Big Ten champ in the four-team CFP era, Nick Saban would have gone on SportsCenter to explain how that loss should disqualify that team from consideration. But Alabama had one of the best wins of the year just last week when it beat Georgia, which has one of the other best wins of the year against Clemson. Those good wins have to count for something. I suspect the CFP selection committee will agree. We’re seeing some bad losses this season, but in the 12-team playoff era, I bet good wins will trump bad losses. That’s good for Notre Dame, which has an absolutely atrocious loss to Northern Illinois but has a win at Texas A&M that looks better every week. That’s also good for Alabama, which remains in the projected bracket despite losing to the Commodores for the first time since 1984.”

Matt Hayes, USA Today: “All of those one-possession games, all of those one- possession losses. Had to even out at some point, right? Welcome back to the sunny side of the street, Sam Pittman. Arkansas' snakebitten coach of the last two seasons – with double-digit losses in one-possession games (two this season) – finally got a breakthrough win Saturday night in a 19-14 victory over No. 4 Tennessee. It took a late defensive stop after Tennessee let Arkansas backup quarterback Malachi Singleton score to set up the final drive, but the Hogs won a game of significance under Pittman for the first time since the 2021 season. Arkansas did it by overcoming a dropped touchdown pass, a missed field goal, two failed fourth-down conversions and only 13 points in four trips to the red zone. It was the first time in SEC history that two top-five teams were upset on the same day. Vanderbilt stunned No. 1 Alabama on Saturday afternoon. The upsets of Alabama, Tennessee and No. 9 Missouri mean every league team except Texas has at least one loss. It also means the weekly winnowing of elite teams vying for College Football Playoff spots has begun. Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, LSU, Missouri, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Oklahoma all have one loss, and all play multiple games against each other over (and unbeaten Texas) the next two months.�

Steve Godfrey, Washington Post: “Even in a sport that advertises uncertainty as a feature and not a bug — just look at some of the other results around the country Saturday night — there is virtually no precedent for what happened to the Crimson Tide in Nashville. In turn, there is a litany of new and unbelievable stats: For one, Vanderbilt scored 13 total points against Alabama during the entire 17 years Nick Saban coached the Tide (in four games). On Saturday, the Commodores led 13-0 in the first quarter against new Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer. The win moves Vanderbilt Coach Clark Lea’s overall SEC record to just 3-23 in his fourth season. It also comes just three weeks after the Commodores lost to a rebuilding Georgia State program, 36-32. In fact, Vanderbilt’s defense allowed fewer total yards to the Crimson Tide (394) than to the Panthers (426) . . . Alabama lost the turnover battle Saturday, committed more penalties and gave up about twice as many rushing yards on defense as it could manage on offense. Under DeBoer, Alabama violated Saban’s first law: It was inconsistent emotionally. The hangover from last week’s fireworks fight with Georgia was evident. And while such a gaffe in focus is understandable coming from a group of college kids, it’s the exact kind of variable Saban all but eliminated in his nearly two decades in Tuscaloosa.�

Dan Wolken, USA Today: “It is far too soon to tell whether Kalen DeBoer is going to be a good enough football coach for Alabama, but he’s going to do wonders for the state’s diamond-producing industry. Every Saturday in the fall under DeBoer’s watch, there are going to be enough clenched fists, jaws and other orifices within a 300-mile radius of Tuscaloosa to make De Beers consider a rebrand. That’s just how DeBoer rolls. It’s always going to be a high-wire act. Through five games as Nick Saban’s replacement, we are seeing all the same stuff – good and bad – that we saw from DeBoer’s teams at Washington. Bold playcalling that borders on reckless at times. Receivers making video game plays down the field. Defense that is often, um, questionable. And games that resemble the last few laps of the Indy 500 when everyone is exhausted and the drivers just throw all strategy out the window and start passing each other, hoping that they end up in front when the finish line comes. DeBoer won eight football games that way last year at Washington, and it often didn’t matter how good or bad the competition was. But it was enough to get the Huskies to the national championship game, which earned DeBoer an offer to replace Saban at college football’s preeminent program. But there’s a little thing called regression to the mean, and it hits like a bout of food poisoning that gets you out of bed in the middle of the night and makes you never want to eat another meal in your life.  When you live as dangerously as DeBoer has done at both Washington and Alabama, you will eventually end up bent over a toilet.�

David Hale, : “For the Commodores, there were so many small storylines that felt, in retrospect, like genuine foreshadowing. There was coach Clark Lea's promise in the summer of 2022 that Vandy would one day be the best program in the country. He might as well have told the assembled masses at SEC media day that Saban was going to retire and start riding around in a van with his dog solving mysteries. It was nonsensical. And yet, here we are, witness to Vandy toppling the No. 1 team in the nation. It was less than 11 months ago that Pavia and Jerry Kill led New Mexico State into Jordan-Hare Stadium and utterly embarrassed Auburn. Now, both are at Vandy – (Diego) Pavia as QB, Kill as advisor to Lea -- and they've beaten Bama too . . . That Kill has helped turn around both New Mexico State and Vandy in consecutive years is probably enough evidence to warrant sandblasting Jefferson off Mount Rushmore and carving out Kill's likeness instead.”

Stewart Mandel, The Athletic: “The new cross-country Big Ten has staged nine conference games thus far featuring a pair of schools located at least two time zones apart. The visiting teams are 1-8 in those games. No. 11 USC (3-2, 1-2 Big Ten) has been on the wrong end of two of them after a mistake-riddled 24-17 loss at Minnesota (3-3, 1-2). After the Gophers drove 75 yards for the go-ahead score with 56 seconds left, Minnesota freshman Koi Perich picked off Miller Moss, the Trojans QB’s second interception of the fourth quarter. It marked the fewest points USC has scored since a 17-14 win at Oregon State in Lincoln Riley’s first season. It looked almost nothing like the offense we saw hang 28 second-half points at home against Wisconsin the week before, and now the Trojans are already in must-win territory next week when they host No. 7 Penn State.�

MEGAPHONE

“As far as the game went, independent of the way I feel right now, we expected to win that game. It’s not shocking to me. I was going to be emotional no matter what, ’cause it’s a big win and to capture that stadium and as we’re kneeling the ball out you know just a picture in my mind of what the dream is. That is the dream. That’s why I came here. “That’s what I came here to do, and there are days where you feel like you’re really close, and there are days where you feel like you’re miles away. And to have that actualized for the moment, was special and something I’ll never forget.�

Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea.