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College football scores, winners & losers in Week 9: Oklahoma back in control of Big 12

College football's playoff race is beginning to take form as the season heads into November

Who said Week 9 of the college football season wasn't going to have any good games?

If anything, there's an argument that Saturday was among the busier days of the season in terms of eventful games and highlights. Divisional races are beginning to take shape and so is the College Football Playoff race. There are teams like Washington State, Northwestern and Virginia that continue to surprise. All three may make their conference championship games. Then there are others like Wisconsin, Washington and Miami that continue to underachieve.

Nov. 3 may be this year's marquee weekend, but Week 9 still had plenty of storylines. From big wins by Georgia, Kentucky and Clemson to ugly losses by Texas and Washington, a lot happened around college football. Let's get you caught up with all things through Winners and Losers.

Winners

Oklahoma: The Sooners handled Kansas State 51-14, but that's not why they're big winners. That would be because Texas lost to Oklahoma State 38-35. Now, every Big 12 team has a loss heading into November. Of all the teams still realistically in the Big 12 Conference Championship Game race, Oklahoma is easily playing the best. Chances are, it'll be in Arlington come the first weekend of December. It's the rest of the top half of the Big 12 standings that's a little tougher to decipher. Know this, though: there are a lot of crossover games involving Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia, Iowa State and Texas Tech in the next four weeks.

SEC East showdown: The SEC will host two of Week 10's most important games. Of course, there's Alabama-LSU, which will understandably garner the most eyeballs. But with Kentucky's thrilling walk-off touchdown over Missouri to win 15-14 coupled with Georgia's 36-17 thrashing of Florida, the upcoming Georgia-Kentucky game in Lexington gets some shine, too. The winner will have a grip atop the East division and both teams only have one conference game left in which they will likely be heavy favorites. So, yeah, you could say there are some stakes.

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Washington State quarterback Gardner Minshew: The Cougars were coming off a huge win vs. Oregon in Week 8, so a road trip to Stanford seemed like a perfect letdown spot. And for one half of football, it seemed that way. The Cardinal had a 28-17 halftime lead, but Washington State quarterback Gardner Minshew was lights out in the final 30 minutes. He finished the night with 438 yards passing on 40-of-50 attempts with three touchdowns. Washington State may not just be the best team in the Pac-12 North ... it might be the best team in the Pac-12. And Minshew has at the very least earned a spot in the Heisman Trophy conversation. In a huge game, he was superb when it mattered.

Northwestern: The Big Ten West was a four-team race coming into Saturday with Northwestern, Purdue, Iowa and Wisconsin. Purdue and Iowa both lost cross-divisional games against Michigan State and Penn State, respectively, and Northwestern upset Wisconsin 31-17. That puts Pat Fitzgerald's team alone atop the West at 5-1. Not a bad place to be for a team that lost three games in September. Fitzgerald continues to get the most out of his teams.

Conference doormats: Hey, it's been a rough go lately for the likes of Kansas and Oregon State. Combined, they were 3-11 and winless in conference play coming into Saturday. Kansas finally got over the hump against a nosediving TCU, 27-26, thanks to a butt fumble. Oregon State came from a whopping 28 points down in the third quarter to beat Colorado 41-34 in overtime. When the suffering has been this great, such dramatic wins are perfect remedies.

Losers

Texas (the state): Yes, the Longhorns' loss to Oklahoma State was rough, but at least they weren't the only Texas team to have a rough day. Texas A&M made Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald look like a great passer again in a 28-13 loss. TCU fumbled (again, via buttocks) the game away against Kansas. Texas Tech dropped a road game at Iowa State 40-31. The state's power teams had an awful time in Week 9, leaving room for the best team at the moment to be ... Houston?

Florida (also the state): Don't worry, things weren't much better in Florida with the Gators, Seminoles, Hurricanes and Bulls all losing by double digits. Even FAU's slide under coach Lane Kiffin continued on Friday with a 21-13 loss to Louisiana Tech. So Florida's best team in Week 10 was ... FIU? The Panthers beat lowly Western Kentucky 38-17.

Washington: Usually every week there's at least one "what in tarnation?" result. That was No. 15 Washington's 12-10 loss to Cal. You don't need me to recap what happened -- and if you're a Washington fan, you probably don't want to relive it anyway -- to know this was the college football equivalent of trying to fold a fitted sheet. Just know that coach Chris Petersen benched starting quarterback Jake Browning for Jake Haener, who played two possessions, went 1-of-4 and threw a pick-six before Browning re-entered the game. Something's terribly wrong in Seattle.

Preseason top-10 teams: While we're talking about Washington, now is a good time to remind you that preseason polls are fine if they're only viewed as fun talking points and nothing more. Because, really, they don't mean anything. As ESPN's odds guru Chris Fallica pointed out, four preseason top-10 teams -- Auburn, Miami, Washington and Wisconsin -- are either unranked or could very well get there soon. Every single one of those teams has three losses and most of them are trending hard in the wrong direction.

Mark Richt: And while we're talking about Miami, let's talk about Richt. The Miami coach is embattled following a 27-14 loss to Boston College on Friday night. Namely, Richt's critics are spotlighting the quarterback situation with Malik Rosier and N'Kosi Perry, along with the general offensive ineptitude (the Hurricanes averaged four yards per play). Rosier's ups and downs are well-documented and he had a particularly abysmal night with a couple of interceptions and about 4.2 yards per attempt. But this has been a mismanagement job weeks in the making that is now starting to cost Miami. And it's starting to tick off some of the program's biggest alums.

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2018 World Series: Red Sox keep proving they are much more than high-priced star power

The Red Sox supporting cast dazzled in Game 4 to give them a 3-1 lead

LOS ANGELES -- Falling into the trap of thinking the Red Sox were all star power and overly-high-priced talent could happen pretty easily to those who don't pay attention to the ballclub on a daily basis. After all, just look at who they've got.

J.D. Martinez just won an award for being the best hitter in the American League. He's a top level slugger in baseball on a nine-figure deal that is actually not paying him enough for what he provides.

Mookie Betts might well win the AL MVP this year.

Chris Sale will be toward the top of the AL Cy Young ballot, as he is most years.

David Price has a $200M-plus contract. He's won a Cy Young and finished as the runner up once.

Craig Kimbrel is arguably the best closer of his generation -- second after Kenley Jansen, if not first, but there's little reason to carry this debate now -- and if he gets a lot more longevity, he could end up in the Hall of Fame.

The next tier down features over-shadowed types that could be stars on other teams like Rick Porcello (who has won a Cy Young), Andrew Benintendi and Xander Bogaerts.

Yes, that's a lot of dollar signs, hardware and star power.

You don't win 108 games and get to within one win of a World Series with a collection of stars, though. You win with a team. The Red Sox aren't here without the names listed above. They aren't even close. How they filled around all this star power is what has them where they are, though, and the also-rans shined in the Game 4 victory over the Dodgers that put them within one win of the World Series championship.

"I mean that's something we've taken pride in all year," Mitch Moreland said of the Red Sox being more than just the stars. "We've won 108 games, and obviously we've got some guys, MVPs and that-type guys on our team. But it's taken all 25 of us to get where we are today. And we put ourselves in this position, something that we worked for since Day 1, and we're feeling good right now. It's something that we've kind of counted the days down and the wins down. So we've got one more to go and that's our goal right now."

Before getting into the Game 4 specifics, let's give another shout-out to Nathan Eovaldi for his unbelievable performance in extra innings in Game 3. Who knows how Game 4 turns out without that. He starts this list. He began the season on the disabled list for the Rays. He's been a major part of getting a 3-1 lead in the World Series in relief, despite being a starting pitcher.

Winners

Losers

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