Here is a recap of everything that happened in the final week of the regular season so you can be prepared for the Sunday dinner and Monday water cooler conversations. 

1. Ten of 13 FBS teams are going bowling

In what we predicted could be a potential down year for the state, the 13 FBS teams combined for a 93–63 record (.596). Two teams, Texas and SMU, are playing for a conference championship, which is more than the number of teams who’ll be looking for a new head coach (Rice).

(Update: Sam Houston is now also searching for a head coach, as KC Keeler has accepted the Temple job. So the correct phrasing should be more teams are playing for a conference championship than had to fire their coach.)

2. The Texas Longhorns are the best defense in the nation

Texas beat Texas A&M at its own game: running the rock and playing defense, winning games via fistfight in a phone booth. Tre Wisner exploded for a career-high 186 yards, and Texas’s defense proved it was the most consistent in the nation by allowing zero offensive points.

Down 17-7 with over four minutes to play, Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko went for a 4th and goal on the one-yard line instead of cutting it to a one-score game with a field goal because he knew his offense wouldn’t get a better chance to score. Frankly, they’d only made it that far because they started the possession in the red zone after a blocked punt. Ethan Burke’s tackle for loss was a microcosm of the entire game - the Armament Race on Texas’s roster beat the Aggies over the 13-year-long Cold War.

3. Texas A&M needs to go Portaling at Wide Receiver

Texas’s defense allowed zero Texas A&M offensive points, and the cornerbacks (Thorpe Award finalist Jahdae Barron and Maalik Muhammad) against Texas A&M’s wide receivers was the biggest advantage. The longest pass caught by a wide receiver was 12 yards, and Noah Thomas led the group with three catches for 31 yards. Quarterback Marcel Reed spent most of the night scrambling because there was rarely a receiver with separation.

In four games against ranked teams this season, Texas A&M has passed for over 200 yards just once. There’s enough sample size to know another weapon needs adding.

4. Penalties will doom SMU in the ACC Championship if not fixed

An ugly truth inside SMU’s otherwise stress-free 38-6 win over Cal - a season-high 17 penalties for 137 yards. This game wasn’t an outlier, either. SMU is 130th in the nation with 75 penalty yards per game. 

In his postgame press conference, SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee cited a study that found it’s a myth the least penalized teams win. Instead, it’s the timeliness of penalties that hurt. But especially concerning for SMU are the unsportsmanlike conduct penalties that gift teams a new set of downs and a free 15 yards. It doesn’t matter against Cal, but it could haunt them against Clemson in the ACC Championship. 

“There’s a couple times we’ve got to look the other way,” Lashlee said. “The second guy usually gets caught. They hit you, you hit back, you get the penalty. So I’ll have to look and see.Yeah, I’m worried about it.”

5. Sam Houston gets perfect Senior Day

Sam Houston’s senior class won an FCS National Championship, experienced the greatest calendar year in football history in 2021 when it won 21 straight games, and became the program’s first bowl team. But Sam Houston head coach KC Keeler had to mention the valley they experienced, which made the mountaintop of a 20-18 win over Liberty mean so much more.

“There’s so much character on this team,” Keeler said. We’re sending these guys off with a lot of great memories, and one of the greatest is going to be the 3–9 to 9–3. Those words speak volumes.”

Those words represent the 2022 season when they had to redshirt all their playmakers to give them an extra year of FBS eligibility, then the 2023 season when they started 0–8. They weathered that storm stronger and intact, losing just one starter to the Transfer Portal, and this season was possible because of it.

6. Joey McGuire puts himself in historic company

Texas Tech’s 52-15 victory over West Virginia marked its eighth of the season. Joey McGuire is now the first head coach since Jim Carlen (1970-74) to win at least eight games in two of his first three seasons. He is also the first head coach to win eight games in the regular season since Mike Leach in 2009.

7. Baylor offense should be Big 12 Championship caliber next season

I know, way, way, WAY too early to talk about next season. Give Baylor more than 48 hours to enjoy a six-game winning streak that saved head coach Dave Aranda’s job. 

But this offseason will be the most important of the Aranda era… again. The first order of business is retaining first-year offensive coordinator Jake Spavital. They’ll also need to fend off suitors for quarterback Sawyer Robertson, who threw for 310 yards and four touchdowns in a 45-17 win over Kansas, and 1,000-yard rusher Bryson Washington. If they return behind an offensive line that will return four starters, Baylor should be among the preseason Big 12 favorites in 2025.

8. North Texas defense punches its bowl bid

The Eric Morris era thus far has been a giant ‘IF.’ North Texas could win eight or nine games if this defense could be middle of the pack in the American Athletic Conference. Switch that ‘if’ to a ‘because’ after Saturday. Eric Morris is coaching in his first bowl game at North Texas because his defense held Temple to 1-of-16 on 3rd down attempts and a second half shutout in a 24-17 win.

9. Texas State's season: Still a success

Just because Texas State entered the 2024 season on a hype train of conference championship favorite and College Football Playoff dark horse doesn’t mean there’s no massive difference between finishing 7–5 and 6–6. The Bobcats clinched back-to-back winning seasons for the first time as an FBS program in a 45-38 win over South Alabama.

GJ Kinne is now 15–10 in his first two seasons with the program. Texas State’s FBS record before him was 40–92. Of course, Kinne does have the Transfer Portal, NIL and better University alignment working for him. But his team is consistently more competitive than the program has been and shows flashes of a future G5 powerhouse.

10. UTSA finishes winless on the road for the first time in program history

UTSA suffered double digit season-ending injuries, finished winless on the road (including three losses to teams who fired their head coach before year’s end) and still made a bowl game. The 6–6 record marks the most losses for UTSA in the Jeff Traylor era, and it may be the coaching job he’s most proud of considering all they had to fight through to get to six wins.