Five Top-Eight Teams Fall Saturday
No. 1 and No. 2 go down on the same day, and the kick that beat Georgia came off the foot of a young man who almost didn't get to kick again.
Week 7: five of the top eight fall.
THE MOMENT
Athens, Georgia. Three seconds left. The No. 1 team in America is on its own field, and a sophomore kicker is walking out to end its night.
Auburn had trailed, tied it, lost the ball, and gotten it back on a fumble with a minute to play. Now Alex McPherson stood over a 34-yard field goal with the whole sport watching. He swung. The ball went through. Auburn 27, Georgia 24, and before the night was over, No. 2 Notre Dame would fall in Provo, No. 5 Indiana, No. 6 Alabama and No. 7 Texas would fall too, and the top of college football would look like a house after the storm.
Five of the top eight, gone in one Saturday. But this page is not about the storm. It is about the kicker.
THE FREEZE
Joy is loudest when it has survived something quiet first.
THE HUMAN
Two years ago, Alex McPherson was not trying to beat Georgia. He was trying to weigh enough to play football.
Ulcerative colitis took 55 pounds off him, down to 110. In December 2024 he went through a six-hour surgery to remove his large intestine, and the surgeons placed a stoma on his left side, positioned so that he could still kick with his right leg. Later came a Crohn's disease diagnosis on top of it. He came back anyway, kicked through the 2025 season, and was honored with the FWAA Courage Award. Saturday night in Athens, he kicked the first game-winning field goal of his career, against the No. 1 team in the country, in the loudest stadium in the South.
That is not a kicker's story. That is the whole reason we watch.
THE SACRIFICE
Every one of those scores has a ledger under it.
Ohio State won the game of the day in the Big Ten and lost its quarterback doing it, Sayin left with a right shoulder injury, came back to the sideline in a sling, and will miss several weeks. A true freshman finished the biggest win of the season. Florida State lost its leading rusher, Ousmane Kromah, carted off with a leg injury, and on the next play his quarterback scored and held up "3" and "2" to the sky, for No. 32. Florida won at Texas with a backup quarterback, Tramell Jones Jr., making his first career start. Tennessee beat Alabama behind a backup-turned-starter of its own, George MacIntyre, a kid from a family of Tennessee fans, playing the rivalry he grew up watching on television. And Alabama, Alabama lost for the second straight week, something that program had not done in the regular season since 2007.
Upsets are never free. Somebody's season always pays.
THE RECEIPT
- No. 1 Georgia falls
- No. 2 Notre Dame falls
- Alabama second straight loss
SCOREBOARD
The day, plainly. Auburn 27, No. 1 Georgia 24, Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton accounted for all three Bulldog turnovers, the last a fumble forced by Cody Sigler with 1:04 left that set up the winning kick; Auburn's first win in Athens since 2005, ending a nine-game losing streak in the series. No. 8 BYU 28, No. 2 Notre Dame 24, Bear Bachmeier's three-way night in Provo (see my full column on that one). No. 4 Ohio State 19, No. 5 Indiana 15, Julian Sayin's 38-yard touchdown to Jeremiah Smith on fourth-and-1 in the fourth quarter; Smith's 39th career touchdown catch tied a Big Ten record; Indiana's 22-game winning streak ended when Nick Marsh's apparent go-ahead catch in the final minute was ruled out of bounds. No. 3 Miami 43, Florida State 35, in double overtime, Darian Mensah to Malachi Toney, Toney throwing the two-point conversion, and Bryce Fitzgerald's interception in the end zone on fourth-and-31 after a Florida State touchdown was erased by holding. No. 14 Tennessee 26, No. 6 Alabama 10, DeSean Bishop: 32 carries, 159 yards, both Tennessee touchdowns; the Vols' defense allowed 201 total yards. Florida 27, No. 7 Texas 24, 24 unanswered points, a fourth-and-12 conversion before halftime, and a sack-fumble forced by Myles Graham with 1:58 left; Texas' second straight loss, by the identical score.
NOTE 1
The rest of the Top 25: Texas Tech 53, Arizona State 25 · Ole Miss 31, Missouri 3 · Utah 27, Colorado 24 · UCLA 17, Wisconsin 7 · Kentucky 21, Oklahoma 13 · Houston 35, Oklahoma State 32 · LSU 31, Mississippi State 0 · SMU 23, Virginia 13 · Wake Forest 41, California 7 · Northwestern 24, Michigan State 21. Around the country: Oregon scored with 28 seconds left to beat Nebraska 17-14, and Michigan held off Penn State 21-18 in Ann Arbor.
THE VOICES
The thing I'm most proud of is that nobody flinched.
Our guys never flinched. They had a different look in their eye.
Auburn's coach, Alex Golesh, said the quiet part: "The thing I'm most proud of is that nobody flinched. That's the sign of a team that believes in each other." Florida's Jon Sumrall admitted his team had flinched in recent weeks and then grew up in Austin: "We kept fighting... Our team grew today, because we fought." Tennessee's Josh Heupel kept it to defense and pride: "Great win. Defense, suffocating, elite performance. Really proud of those guys." Ohio State's Ryan Day, holding a win and an injured quarterback in the same pair of hands: "Our guys never flinched. They had a different look in their eye." And Miami's Mensah, after two overtimes and his first interception as a Hurricane: "This is what great teams do, find a way to win."
Five coaches and quarterbacks, five versions of the same sentence: we did not break.
THE TAKE
FINAL VERDICTThe argument shows will spend the week ranking the wreckage. Fine. Rankings are arithmetic. What Saturday actually proved is older and simpler: the top of this sport is not a throne, it is a shift somebody has to work, every week, against people who have been preparing for that one night their whole lives.
And when the biggest moment of the biggest day landed, it did not land on a five-star or a favorite. It landed on a kicker who two years ago weighed 110 pounds with a surgeon's roadmap on his body, a young man for whom just standing on that field was already the victory. The field goal was the second miracle. The first one was that he was there to kick it.
What did your hardest year ask of you? Alex McPherson answered his between the uprights, with three seconds left, at the home of No. 1.
Some Saturdays take the giants down. The great ones tell you who was standing underneath.
Andre D. Williams
More than the final score. DRE'S TAKE: the story behind the performance.
Credits: Scores via NCAA.com, USA TODAY, AP, and SI; quotations, Alex Golesh via AuburnTigers.com, Ryan Day via FOX Sports, Darian Mensah and Josh Heupel via the Associated Press, Jon Sumrall via AP/Sportsnet; McPherson medical comeback via FWAA and NBC Sports.
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