College football roundup

From The Associated Press

No. 5 Oklahoma crushes Texas Tech’s BCS title hopes

NORMAN, Okla.—Make way for a Sooners surge.

San Bradford and Oklahoma are on their way up in the national championship race, and Texas Tech sure came down with a mighty fall.

Bradford threw for 304 yards and four touchdowns, and DeMarco Murray and Chris Brown combined to run for five more scores as the fifth-ranked Sooners brought an unceremonious end to No. 2 Texas Tech’s run toward perfection in a 65-21 blowout Saturday night.

The question now is this: Did the Sooners (10-1, 6-1 Big 12) do enough to make up for that loss to Texas?

The Longhorns have held a trump card since the annual Red River Rivalry game in October, having beaten Oklahoma 45-35 on a neutral field at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

Ohio State defeats Michigan, yet again

COLUMBUS, Ohio—It took five big plays to give Ohio State an unprecedented fifth straight win over rival Michigan.

Noted Wolverines nemesis Chris “Beanie” Wells had two of those, including a 59-yard touchdown run and 134 yards rushing to help the 10th-ranked Buckeyes beat their archrivals 42-7 Saturday, the first time in 105 meetings that they’ve strung together five wins.

Ohio State’s margin was the biggest by either team in the rivalry since Woody Hayes was prowling and growling on the sidelines in a 50-14 rout of Michigan in 1968.

Freshman phenom Terrelle Pryor threw two TD passes, Brian Hartline caught two scoring passes and Dan Herron ran for two more scores to give the Buckeyes (10-2, 7-1) their third win in a row and a share of their fourth straight Big Ten title.

“If you watched their films, the teams they played did not run four yards, five yards, four yards, five yards,” said Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, now 7-1 against Michigan. The lopsided defeat put a fitting cap on the worst season in Michigan’s 129 years of intercollegiate football.

No. 7 Penn St. headed to Rose Bowl

STATE COLLEGE, Pa.—Regardless of whether he stays or goes, Joe Paterno has Penn State back atop the Big Ten and headed to the Rose Bowl.

Daryll Clark threw for career-highs of 341 yards and four touchdowns and a stingy defense held Javon Ringer to a season-low 42 yards as the No. 7 Nittany Lions clinched BCS bid with a 49-18 victory against No. 17 Michigan State on Saturday.

Coaching again from the press box because of a sore hip, Paterno surely smiled after Penn State (11-1, 7-1) secured a share of the conference title and the school’s first trip to Pasadena since 1995.

Whether it was JoePa’s last game at Beaver Stadium remains unclear, as the Hall of Famer doesn’t have a contract after this season. Both he and the school president have said Paterno doesn’t need one to stay on a job.

BCS-bound Utes beat BYU

SALT LAKE CITY—Utah is BCS bound once again.

Brian Johnson passed for 303 yards and four touchdowns and the eighth-ranked Utes completed a perfect regular season by beating No. 16 BYU 48-24 Saturday, winning the heated state rivalry and taking the undisputed Mountain West Conference title away from the two-time defending champion Cougars (10-2, 6-2).

Utah (12-0, 8-0) forced six turnovers by BYU quarterback Max Hall, including a career-high five interceptions, and went unbeaten in the regular season for the third time in school history. The last Utah team to do it was the BCS Busters of 2004, which was 11-0 before winning the Fiesta Bowl.

The Fiesta is one of the possible bowl destinations for the Utes, who were already No. 7 in the BCS standings and now just have to wait for the announcement Dec. 7.

Utah fans couldn’t wait to celebrate and charged the field with 29 seconds left.

Syracuse shocks Notre Dame 24-23

SOUTH BEND, Ind.—Syracuse couldn’t pull off a big win in time to save coach Greg Robinson’s job. The Orange did nothing to help Notre Dame’s Charlie Weis in the area of job security, either.

Cameron Dantley, son of one of Notre Dame’s basketball greats, threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to Donte Davis with 42 seconds left to lead Syracuse to a 24-23 victory Saturday against the stunned and disheartened Irish.

Fifth-year Irish senior linebacker Maurice Crum Jr., who spent a year playing under Tyrone Willingham, said it was the worst loss of his career.

The Orange trailed 23-10 in the fourth quarter before rallying as Notre Dame struggled mightily on offense. The Irish (6-5) came away with just six points after starting four times inside the Syracuse 23-yard line, including three times in the third quarter when they settled for a field goal.

The victory allowed Syracuse (3-8) to avoid a third 10-loss season in four years under Robinson, who was fired last week, effective the end of the season.