The Heisman Trophy race is looking wide open for 2024. Three of the four finalist this year, including winner Jayden Daniels of LSU, are out of eligibility. The other, Marvin Harrison Jr. of Ohio State is likely to jump to the NFL as a junior. Heading into next season there are fewer obvious candidates for an award that has been dominated by quarterbacks, especially transfer QBs. Among those to watch: Alabama's Jalen Milroe, Georgia's Carson Beck and former Oklahoma and UCF quarterback Dillon Gabriel, who plans to play a sixth season of college football at Oregon.
Seventh-ranked Texas is leaving the Big 12 with bookend championships. Quinn Ewers set a career high by throwing for 452 yards with four touchdowns in a 49-21 victory over No. 19 Oklahoma State in the Big 12 championship game. The Southeastern Conference-bound and 12-1 Longhorns won the title in the league's inaugural 1996 season, plus 2005 and 2009. Ewers completed 35 of 46 passes and his touchdowns went to four different receivers. The biggest one was 362-pound defensive tackle T'Vondrea Sweat, the Outland Trophy finalist who lined up as a tight end.
Seventh-ranked Texas is the Big 12's last remaining hope to make the four-team College Football Playoff. The 9-1 Longhorns are still also trying to clinch a spot in the conference championship game. They play at Iowa State on Saturday in a matchup of two of the league's top defenses. Also in the Big 12 this week, 23rd-ranked Kansas State plays at Kansas in a Sunflower Showdown matching 7-3 teams. This will be the 113th consecutive year the rivals have met, the fourth-longest uninterrupted FBS series.
Dillon Gabriel threw a 3-yard touchdown pass to Nic Anderson with 15 seconds left and 12th-ranked Oklahoma won a battle of unbeatens 34-30 over No. 3 Texas on Saturday in their last Red River rivalry game as Big 12 members before moving to the Southeastern Conference.
The No. 24 Jayhawks and No. 3 Longhorns meet Saturday with both teams 4-0, and it will be Kansas QB Jalon Daniels' game-winning, scrambling 2-point conversion pass to Jared Casey in overtime in 2021 that will get talked about all week.
The hype is coming for the Texas Longhorns like it hasn't in years. That's what happens when you knock off Alabama on the road and get your first win over a top-five team in 15 years. The Longhorns, who vaulted seven spots to No. 4 in the AP poll following that 34-24 win, seem determined not to get swept up in it. It's still early September, after all. Alabama fell from third to 10th. As wide receiver Xavier Worthy said, "We're on to Wyoming." That's the next, much less-hyped matchup.
Texas jumped to No. 4 in The Associated Press college football poll after beating Alabama and the Pac-12 became just the second conference to place as many as eight teams in the AP Top 25. Georgia received 55 first-place votes to remain the clear No. 1. Michigan is No. 2, with two-first place votes. No. 3 Florida State moved up a spot and received three first-place votes. Texas received two-first place votes. The Longhorns are in the top five for the first time since starting the 2010 season at No. 5 while Alabama dropped to No. 10.
