On the Line: For Sark, either you beat your rival or your season is a complete failure

Indiana is going to Eugene not to compete, but to win. Turns out, you don't go from what Indiana was to what it's become if only the head coach carries a brash confidence with him everywhere he goes.

"I still feel like I left both of those games thinking, 'Man, we weren't that far off,'" defensive coordinator Bryant Haines told CBS Sports of IU's losses to Ohio State and Notre Dame last season. "I felt like the margin of error was just so small. I think we can compete with those teams and I thought we did compete well in moments. I think if anything, it validated us. We can beat Ohio State. I still think we can." 

Defensively, Indiana held its own against the 2024 national finalists, but the offense didn't hold up its end of the bargain. Kurtis Rourke completed eight passes for 68 yards in the Hoosiers' 38-15 loss in Columbus last November. 

If this Indiana team is better, it's because the quarterback is better. In fact, Saturday's tilt between No. 7 IU and No. 3 Oregon (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS) may very well feature the top two trigger men in the 2026 NFL Draft. IU's Fernando Mendoza leads the nation in efficiency (min.: 70 attempts), hitting 73 percent of his passes for 9.9 yards per attempt with 16 touchdowns against a single pick. Oregon's Dante Moore does everything current Cleveland Browns starter Dillon Gabriel did last year, just in a bigger frame with a stronger arm. He's the nation's No. 5 passer, with numbers nearly identical to Mendoza's, compiled against a more difficult schedule. 

Dan Lanning is 22-1 at Autzen Stadium -- his only loss came at the left hand of a former IU quarterback and a current NFL starter, Michael Penix. Mendoza will have to play like an NFL starter on Saturday, but if he does, IU will be favored until a likely date with Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship with the No. 1 seed in the CFP on the line. A long way from Point A to Point B, sure, but that's what's at stake for Indiana on Saturday.

The good news for Mendoza? His defensive coordinator and his head coach absolutely think they're going to win this game.

Vanderbilt did not follow the Vanderbilt Blueprint for beating Alabama, but maybe Missouri can. Diego Pavia hoisted 35 passes to 12 runs in last week's 30-14 Alabama victory, while running back Sedrick Alexander logged all of four carries. (I'm aware Alabama's defense had something to do with all of the above.)

Missouri, though, has the SEC's best rushing attack -- by nearly 80 yards per game. Ahmad Hardy is the nation's leading rusher, turning just 103 carries into 730 yards and nine touchdowns; he's third in the nation in yards per carry among all players with at least 65 carries, and he has 103. His backups Jamal Roberts and Marquise Davis have 550 yards and five touchdowns between them, and quarterback Beau Pribula has picked his spots as a runner, punishing South Carolina for 72 yards on nine carries. 

So, one of two things will happen when No. 8 Alabama visits No. 14 Missouri (noon ET, ABC). Either Mizzou will score the biggest win of its SEC membership -- the Tigers are 0-5 vs. the Tide, losing by a combined 195-52 -- or Alabama will further establish itself as the team to beat in the SEC this season. With a win, Alabama would be 3-0 in SEC play with wins over teams ranked No. 5, No. 16 and No. 14 at kickoff. 

Who needs a win more in the Cotton Bowl, Steve Sarkisian or Brent Venables? The answer is not as obvious as you might think. For starters, let's wind the clock back to Oct. 6, 2001. Specifically, the 2:06 mark of the fourth quarter on Oct. 6, 2001.

When Roy Williams Superman-ed the ball to Teddy Lehman, he clinched the win for Oklahoma and dropped Mack Brown to 2-2 in Red River. A Texas coach has not been above .500 against OU since then. That includes Sark, who lost his first Red River game and enters Saturday 2-2, having won two of the last three. Texas has also not beaten OU in back-to-back years since 2008-09. (Those wins pushed Brown's mark up to 6-6; he would finish 7-9). Gaining the upper hand over Oklahoma is Job 1 of any Texas coach, and it's something the program has failed to accomplish for almost the entirety of this century. Halting the bad juju of the first five games and the feel-good story out of Norman wouldn't erase the debacle in Gainesville, but it'd be a heckuva palate cleanser.

Furthermore, Texas's next three games after Saturday are at Kentucky, at Mississippi State, and then No. 20 Vanderbilt at home. They're off before their Nov. 15 trip to No. 10 Georgia. Obviously, a long, long way to go between here and there -- starting with solving Oklahoma's defense -- but win Saturday and Texas will leave the Fair Grounds feeling like it's got a great chance to still be in the thick of the SEC and CFP races in the middle of November.

Lose, however, and this season will enter a full-on tailspin mode. Texas will move to the front of the conversation of biggest preseason disappointments in college football history. The focus will shift from who -- players and coaches -- will be jettisoned after this season for a 2026 rebound season, and the fan base will wonder if 2025 is just 2010 2.0, back when the Horns fell into a decade-long abyss. Those days were supposed to be behind them; could they really be back again, and so soon? 

As for Venables, well, it's been more than a decade and a half since an Oklahoma coach has neither arrived nor left Dallas without the Golden Hat. Even John Blake went 1-1-1 against Texas. At 1-3, he'd be off to the worst Red River start by an OU coach since Gary Gibbs dropped his first four from 1989-92. 

Vegas may have Oklahoma an underdog, and John Mateer is unlikely to play, but losing in this spot would still be a funnel cake to the face for Venables considering the state of his defense and Sark's offense.

Speaking of the actual game. After OU survived Auburn on Sept. 20 I joked that Venables would spend the next three weeks concocting a game plan to confuse and harass Arch Manning that was so diabolical it could be classified as an act of terrorism. And Venables may very well do that, but I no longer view that as necessary.

If you're Oklahoma, I think you play this game as vanilla as vanilla gets. OU leads the nation in TFLs and sacks per game. They're first on third down. Texas is 116th on third down, and Florida ran through their offensive line like 4-day-old chili. Sark and/or Arch have been unwilling and/or unable to engage in the short and intermediate passing game, a hallmark of the Ewers offense.

Play Cover 3, let your defensive tackles obliterate the interior of the Texas O-line, wait for the Longhorns to give the ball back to you by punt or turnover, and win the game 24-10. 

Additional Games:

-- No. 24 South Florida at North Texas (7:30 p.m. ET Friday, ESPN2): North Texas picked a great time to have one of the biggest games in school history, the Friday night before Red River. A win pushes North Texas to 6-0 and possibly into the AP Top 25 for the second time in program history. As a Denton native, there were two times I can remember when the Mean Green captured the attention of their fan base -- the Darrell Dickey run in the early 2000s (28,000 packed old Fouts Field to see the Mean Green hammer Baylor 52-14 in 2003) and the late 2010s under Seth Littrell. But in neither of those eras did North Texas have a realistic shot to play for a national championship. 

For the first time ever...DATCU Stadium is SOLD OUT!#GMG🦅 pic.twitter.com/BagNjA1YPh

— UNT Football (@MeanGreenFB) October 9, 2025

-- Rutgers at Washington (8 p.m. ET Friday, FS1): Beating a dead horse, but I don't care. Rutgers is flying cross-country to play Washington at 5 p.m. local time on a Friday so the game can air on FS1. The conference and its TV partners are making the B1G schools earn those TV dollars.

-- No. 1 Ohio State at No. 17 Illinois (noon ET, Fox): Ohio State has allowed two touchdowns through five games, and zero through eight red zone trips. A fun idea: both team's offenses begin every possession at the Ohio State 20-yard line. Who wins?

-- Pitt at No. 25 Florida State (noon ET, ESPN): The season Florida State envisioned after Aug. 30 is not the season they're having on Oct. 11. Two questions: Can Mike Norvell get Thomas Castellanos (3 TDs, 4 INTs in the last two games) to stop throwing the ball to the other team? And can Norvell get his team energized to play a noon game a week after the primetime date with Miami? 

-- UCLA at Michigan State (noon ET, BTN): Was last week a flash in a pan or a new identity for UCLA? And if the visitors get up early, do the boo birds fly out of the Spartan Stadium upper deck? 

-- Stanford at SMU (noon ET, The CW): Bravo to the ACC and its TV partners for A) scheduling an SMU home game the same day as Red River, and B) putting that game at 11 a.m. local, and 9 a.m. Pacific time. Of all the games to air on "regular" TV this season among Power 4 teams, here's betting this has the smallest TV audience. Really well done all around.

-- Northwestern at Penn State (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1): All things considered, I think this will be the least energized Beaver Stadium is for a home game since some time in Joe Paterno's 4-7 campaign way back in 2004. From that season on, Penn State was either good, really good, or building toward being really good. This Nittany Lions team is still good, we think, but what are they building toward? Who in the blue and white gets Nittany Nation excited right now?

-- Nebraska at Maryland (3:30 p.m. ET, BTN): This strikes me as a game Nebraska should win 28-10 but instead has to hang on with all its might to win 20-16. We'll see if I'm right.

-- No. 22 Iowa State at Colorado (3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN): An absolute must-win for Matt Campbell's charges with No. 18 BYU and No. 21 Arizona State coming to Jack Trice Stadium after Iowa State's upcoming idle week.

-- No. 15 Michigan at USC (7:30 p.m. ET, NBC): A massive moment for Lincoln Riley and USC, who cannot be 4-2 with road trips to South Bend, Lincoln and Eugene still ahead. Both of these teams run for more than 225 yards per game, but Michigan so far has been better against the run than USC. (Shocking, I know.) Until proven otherwise, I don't see USC as the team doing the shoving of a big-boy Big Ten program in crunch time. 

-- No. 10 Georgia at Auburn (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC): A circle the wagons moment for Hugh Freeze if there ever was one. You've had two weeks to lick your wounds and figure out how to move the football following two bruising losses in Norman and College Station. You're at home, at night, in front of a national primetime audience. Your defense has played good enough to win both of those games, but the offense was non-competitive. That's Freeze's side of the ball, obviously. In an admitted make-or-break season, this is a make-or-break game. 

-- South Carolina at No. 11 LSU (7:45 p.m. ET, SEC Network): Watching LSU's linebackers chase after LaNorris Sellers should be excellent theater. I'm not sure the rest of this game will be described as "excellent," but it will be entertaining. 

-- No. 21 Arizona State at Utah (10:15 p.m. ET, ESPN): Arizona State has played three games vs. the Power 4, decided by four, three and three. They are 2-1 in such games. Utah has played three games vs. the Power 4, decided by 33, 33, and 34. They are 2-1 in such games. I like Arizona State in a close one.