AP Top 25 Takeaways: USC and Michigan play instant Big Ten classic, realizing dream of realignment

Games like USC-Michigan will help college football fans adapt to the demise of the Pac-12.

The 11th-ranked Trojans and 18th-ranked Wolverines played a regular-season game for the first time in 66 years and it was an instant Big Ten classic.

With no functional passing game, Michigan mashed and dashed to a 27-24 come-from-behind victory at the Big House against its new conference rival from the West Coast.

“I think it was just a classic, back-and-forth fight,” USC coach Lincoln Riley told reporters after his team played tough but could not quite close out the defending national champions.

When conference officials and television executives came up with the idea of a Big Ten West Wing, this is exactly what they had in mind.

“Can’t believe we’re stuck with this game when we could be watching SC play Cal in front of 40,000 empty seats,” Fox Sports executive Michael Mulvihill posted on X.

Fox shares the Big Ten’s rights with CBS and NBC.

USC-Michigan was on CBS and no doubt drew a monster audience that will make the network’s suits thrilled with their $350-million-a-year investment.

But that’s how they get you: With USC at Michigan going down the wire on a sunny Saturday in front of 110,000 fans. With No. 6 Tennessee at No. 15 Oklahoma in the Sooners’ first Southeastern Conference game, played later Saturday night.

It’s cold but true. The games always seem to deliver.

More than a year after the Pac-12 fell apart, its traditional members scattered to other power conferences, all this realignment is producing some weird stuff.

On Friday night, Stanford made a cross-country trip to Syracuse to play its first game as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

It is fair to ask: What is the point of all this?

Then the Cardinal and Orange play a thriller, won by Stanford with a walk-off field goal, and the absurdity of it all fades and fans forget the greedy and destructive off-field decisions the people who run college football so often make.

Around the country

No. 7 Missouri was taken to the brink by Vanderbilt, and escaped with a double-overtime victory that ended with the Commodores missing a short field goal that would have tied it and kept the game going. … Florida got a win at Mississippi State that might buy coach Billy Napier at least a few more weeks. The school is without a president and there isn’t a lot of upside in firing a coach in September and opening up a transfer portal window for the players. The Gators do have an open week before their next game against UCF in the Swamp on Oct. 5. As for the Bulldogs (1-3), they look as if they are starting from scratch in Year 1 under coach Jeff Lebby. … Since leaving Georgia behind in Week 1, No. 21 Clemson has been unstoppable. The Tigers have bounced back from that humbling loss by outscoring Appalachian State and N.C. State by a combined 101-20 — in the first half. Even taking degree of difficulty into account, Clemson’s offense and QB Cade Klubnik have been unrecognizable from last season. Before kicking a field goal on the last play of the first half against N.C. State, the Tigers scored touchdowns on 14 of 15 first-half possessions over the last two games. … Both James Madison’s old coach and JMU with a new coach remain unbeaten. Former Dukes coach Curt Cignetti has Indiana at 4-0 for the first time since 2020 after another blowout, this time against Charlotte. The Hoosiers have outscored their opposition 150-23 so far. Meanwhile, JMU under former Holy Cross coach Bob Chesney moved to 3-0 by dropping 53 points on North Carolina in the first half, the most ever allowed by the Tar Heels in a half.

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Follow Ralph D. Russo at https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP

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