College football winners, losers in Week 3: Arch Manning, Travis Hunter star, Florida State hits new low

Thanks to a unique calendar, every team has two bye weeks this year. Week 3 was one of the first casualties of the change, with seven AP Top 25 teams on a bye. Only two games all weekend featured a pair of ranked teams – No. 14 Kansas State against No. 20 Arizona on Friday and No. 6 Missouri against No. 24 Boston College on Saturday. 

But sometimes when the college football slate feels the weakest, weird results happen. No. 1 Georgia needed all 60 minutes just to survive Kentucky. Missouri had to overcome a slow start against Boston College. No. 15 Oklahoma was lucky to outlast Tulane. No. 16 LSU barely escaped Columbia with a win over South Carolina. 

While the games may not have ended in upsets, they did change the national picture dramatically. For some teams, like those from the non-power conferences, leaving some major scratches is enough to make their identities known. Here are the biggest winners and losers of college football’s Week 3. 

Winner: The Group of Five

Don’t look now, but the Group of Five has put together an unbelievable week. UNLV got the party started by beating Kansas on Friday, picking up its second win against a Big 12 team on the season. On Saturday, Memphis shocked former coach Mike Norvell and his Florida State squad 20-12. Georgia State used a late surge to shock Vanderbilt 36-32 and Toledo crushed Mississippi State 41-17. 

Of course, all of these wins are only a cherry on top to the historic Northern Illinois upset against Notre Dame in Week 2. At a time when it feels like major college football is trying harder than ever to bury the non-power leagues, these schools refuse to be ignored. 

It’s great for college football, especially in an era when a Group of Five team will make the 12-team College Football Playoff. At this point, there are serious contenders coming from all five leagues. 

Loser: Kentucky coach Mark Stoops

Kentucky coach Mark Stoops must have been auditioning for the job at his alma mater (Iowa) when he headed into one of the biggest opportunities of his career. The Wildcats trailed Georgia just 13-12 with three minutes remaining and barely 10 yards to get into field goal range. A fourth-and-13 is by no means easy, but Stoops inexplicably punted the ball back to the Bulldogs instead of trying to win the game. 

Naturally, Georgia quarterback Carson Beck hit Dominic Lovett for a 33-yard pass to get near midfield right away and the upset attempt was effectively over. Kentucky didn’t even get the ball back until nine seconds remained in the game. Of course, Stoops trusts his defense. If he trusts his defense so much, he should trust them to get a stop after a potential turnover on downs. There’s a pretty good chance that Stoops will never have a better opportunity to beat a blue blood like that for the rest of his career. 

Hunter’s pathway to competing for the Heisman Trophy is still difficult as a primarily defensive player, but his performance against Colorado State makes things interesting. Hunter caught 13 passes for 100 yards and two touchdowns in the 28-9 win. He added an interception, five tackles and another pass breakup on defense. These are the kind of special, truly two-way performances that will give him a chance. 

After three weeks, Hunter has 30 catches for 342 yards and five touchdowns to go with 11 tackles, a tackle for loss and an interception. Those are good numbers for a player on either side of the ball; they’re silly for someone playing both. The task gets much more difficult as Colorado heads into Big 12 play next week, but the Buffaloes’ star is legitimately giving himself a chance at a Heisman run. 

Winner: Bounce-back teams

Notre Dame became the first top-five team to ever lose to a MAC opponent last week, but the Fighting Irish came into Week 3 motivated. In a rivalry game that has often been lopsided against Purdue, Notre Dame dropped an all-timer in a 66-7 win, the biggest in the history of the series. The Irish had two 100-yard rushers and hit 42 points before halftime. 

Across the country, Texas Tech followed up disappointing performances against Washington State and Abilene Christian by beating the dirt out of North Texas. The Red Raiders similarly took a 49-7 lead into halftime and ultimately dropped a 66-21 win over the Mean Green. 

Even Alabama was able to follow up a disappointing performance against South Florida by cruising to a 42-10 win over Wisconsin  behind four touchdowns from QB Jalen Milroe. Sometimes a program just needs to exorcise some demons; unfortunately, Wisconsin, North Texas and Purdue felt the results. 

West Virginia took a 10-point lead with four minutes remaining in the game and appeared poised to escape the Backyard Brawl with a big win. In fact, it seemed decided that the Mountaineers would win for the second year in a row. Pittsburgh had only four total yards in the second half heading into the final minutes. And teams were 150-0 this season when leading by double digits with four minutes left in the game.

Instead, Pittsburgh quarterback Eli Holstein somehow engineered an insane pair of touchdown drives over the course of minutes as WVU blew the game 38-34. Losing a game is frustrating enough, but losing this game is a disaster waiting to happen. Beating Pitt 17-6 last season helped kick off the best season of the Neal Brown era. All the good vibes are leaving the station in Morgantown; that’s how fast things can turn in a rivalry game. 

The first real snaps of the Manning era arrived after Quinn Ewers went out with an abdominal injury. Somehow, they exceeded expectations. Manning scored touchdowns on two of his first three plays in live action against UTSA and reached the end zone five times overall. In addition to four explosive passing touchdowns, Manning gave the Longhorns a little something extra with a 67-yard rushing score. 

Let me be clear: Ewers is the starting quarterback at Texas. He might miss the next game, but he will be back in the starting lineup as soon as he is healthy. Still, it’s exciting to see that Manning is more than his famous name. He looks like a star when it’s his turn to take over at Texas. 

Loser: Florida State

Truly, nothing could have prepared Florida State for this start. The Seminoles became the first team in history to go from a preseason AP top 10 team to 0-3 with three straight losses against unranked opponents. This time, it was Norvell’s old team (Memphis) handing the Seminoles an embarrassing 20-12 loss. 

The biggest reason Florida State is a loser? There’s just nowhere to go from here. Making a bowl game suddenly looks awfully difficult. Charleston Southern is now potentially the only guaranteed win left on the board. After bringing 40 new players into the program over the offseason — including 17 transfers — the DNA of the 2023 ACC championship team is essentially gone. 

UCLA probably isn’t that good, but Indiana has had an incredible start to the Curt Cignetti era. The Hoosiers amazingly moved to 3-0 after eviscerating UCLA 42-13, starting and ending the game with 14-0 runs. Quarterback Kurtis Rourke has lived up to every expectation after transferring from Ohio and had a 300-yard, four-touchdown day. The Hoosiers have a manageable schedule featuring Maryland, Purdue, Michigan State and Washington. Could a magical bowl trip be on the table? 

Daniels had to work hard just to give himself a chance to get back on the field after a nagging back injury kept him out in 2023. Unfortunately, his return has gone about as badly as possible. In shocking back-to-back losses against UNLV and Illinois, Daniels threw five combined interceptions in games that were decided by a combined nine points. Simply put, his rust and decision-making has made him a shell of the player he was when he seemed ready to take over the Big 12. The small relief is that Kansas has yet to start Big 12 play, so the issues are fixable. However, the Jayhawks cannot win with this version of Daniels. With Jason Bean in the NFL, the staff has nowhere else to turn. 

Winner: Washington State

Washington State capped off its big week of rebuilding the Pac-12 by beating hated rival Washington in the first nonconference Apple Cup in generations. Quarterback John Mateer is a chaos agent and had three touchdowns in the win to beat the Big Ten’s Huskies and remind the country that the Cougars are still on the map. Washington State has been sneaky impressive over the first few weeks, beating Washington and crushing Texas Tech. With road games against Boise State and Fresno State ahead, Wazzu might have a serious pathway into the AP Top 25.