But what I love the most about watching Taylor is the way he throws the ball. (I know, this makes me sound like a grizzled scout who trusts his hand-timed 40-yard dash over the electronically timed one and has never actually used a computer.) The man makes throwing a football 50 yards look easy.

I swear, the ball comes out of his hand faster than his hand is actually moving at the point when he releases the ball. I know that’s not physically possible, but it feels true. Others have said the ball “leaps out of his hand,” “flies out of his hand,” and “jumps out of his hand” so I think we’re all observing the same impossible phenomenon.

But on top of that, he’s just a perfect QB prospect: 6-foot-4, 230 pounds, and fast. He had eight rushing touchdowns in limited playing time last season; this year he’s got 14 passing touchdowns and two interceptions, but only one rushing score.

Unfortunately, the same question keeps popping up: Will Mississippi State be able to hold on to Taylor for another year? Surely, he’ll be the top prospect in the transfer portal at the end of the season, and Mississippi State isn’t made of money. (Nick Saban openly speculated about this on College GameDay yesterday.)

But honestly? I think he might stay. Taylor is from Macon, Mississippi, a town of 2,400 in Noxubee County, about a half-hour away from Starkville in East Mississippi. His mom and a series of uncles and aunts went to Mississippi State. He committed to MSU when its head coach was Zach Arnett and held firm on that commitment through his high school career — despite Arnett being fired in 2023. (The new coach, Jeff Lebby, drove to see Taylor the day he got hired.) Taylor’s stock skyrocketed as his high school career went along. He rose to become a 4-star prospect and a top-10 QB in his class and picked up offers from Georgia and Texas A&M. But he stayed committed to Mississippi State then, and he might just do that again.

And I think Mississippi State understands that if it loses this kid, it’s going to be a generational setback for the program. Make sure he stays, the other 21 positions will sort themselves out. Chiefs legend Chris Jones said this week he’d be contributing to Mississippi State’s NIL efforts to make sure Taylor stays. (Maybe Dak Prescott can chip in, too.)

Also, how could Taylor leave the school with the world record for simultaneous cowbell-ringing? Mississippi State claimed a new record Saturday night, with over 41,000 simultaneously ringing cowbells:

There were 61,000 in attendance, but apparently 20,000 of them were just chilling and not clanging. (ESPN noted that late arrivals to the stadium did not count.)

You might be wondering: How is it possible that Mississippi State, a school famous for its passionate cowbell-ringing, didn’t already hold the Guinness World Record for cowbell-ringing? Well, turns out it did. However, that was for a 5,000-person pep rally in 2015 — and anybody who has ever watched any Mississippi State game knows there are frequently more than 5,000 clangs happening at once.

Mississippi State apparently tried to get Guinness World Records to come out to identify how many cowbells were being rung at any individual game, but Guinness wanted to put every potential clanger in one section of the stadium — and wanted to charge Mississippi State $35,000.

That’s too much. They’re gonna need that money to keep Kamario Taylor.

So Mississippi State got an off-brand Guinness competitor, Elite World Records, to simply count the number of cowbells that entered the stadium.

Anyway, sorry for the brief foray into the details of world record certification … but is there anything more College Football than trying to tweak a series of factors to get acknowledged as the best at one specific thing?

When Mississippi State plays Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl, we might be watching the best QB prospect in the 2027 NFL Draft (Trinidad Chambliss) and the best QB in the 2028 NFL Draft (Taylor).

Taylor will have some chances to prove his worth with Mississippi State’s upcoming schedule: Alabama, LSU, Oklahoma, and Texas. (🎶 one of these things is not like the others… 🎶) I don’t think Mississippi State is gonna win all of those games … but it’s gonna get one. And I just wanted you to know about Kamario Taylor before it happened.

There’s only one thing left to say: Be safe, be smooth, and have a great night.

First, that injury. Real bad. Football is dangerous enough when guys aren’t swooping in to intentionally smash the heads of sliding quarterbacks into the ground. The USC player who hit Moore (and was seen chuckling about it on the sideline) has been suspended by USC.

Moore is expected back “later this season.” We shouldn’t sugar-coat it: He was taken to the hospital after a traumatic brain injury. Football can wait.

Raiola has had a roller-coaster of a career so far. (A Raiola-coaster?) He was a 5-star prospect, rated as the No. 2 QB in the country, and it was considered a coup when he went to Nebraska, the same school as his father, longtime NFL offensive lineman Dominic Raiola. He wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t great, either. (And a lot of people made fun of him for copying Patrick Mahomes’ aesthetics and warmup routines.)

Raiola’s Nebraska career ended with — believe it or not — a season-ending injury at USC last season. The Huskers were winning that game when Raiola went out; as proof to my point about how rare good backup QBs are: Raiola’s backup went 5-for-7 for 7 yards (not a typo!) and USC came back to win.

It feels to me like Oregon is establishing something seemingly impossible in the modern era of college football: a backup quarterback pipeline.

Moore was also a 5-star quarterback prospect who started a bit too early. He began his career at UCLA and underperformed before transferring to Oregon to be Dillon Gabriel’s backup in 2024. "It's OK to be developed, it's OK to wait your turn," Moore said. "At the end of day, I hope people look at my story in the future and be like, 'It's OK to do it. It's OK to sit back and learn.'" When he finally played, Moore’s elite talent finally shone through. Moore was considered one of the top prospects in the 2026 NFL Draft but decided to return for his senior year. (My fingers are super-duper crossed that this concussion doesn’t affect his draft stock one bit.)

Raiola wanted to walk the same path. He swapped early hype and expectations at Nebraska for a reserve role where he could quietly develop. He’s been thrust back into the spotlight a bit earlier than expected.

If Moore is out for an extended period … Oregon plays Nebraska in three weeks. It’s not quite Lane going back to Ole Miss, but it’s gonna be something.

As for USC. Yikes. If you can’t beat an Oregon team that’s been struggling so far this season, in the Coliseum, after knocking their QB out in the first quarter …. when are you ever going to beat Oregon?

Simmons fell short of the all-time FBS record for sacks in a game — that’s a three-way tie between Louisville’s Elvis Dumervil, WMU’s Ameer Ismail, and Miami (Ohio)’s Ivan Pace Jr. — but I do think he has the all-time SEC record. I do see a couple of SEC players in the NCAA record book with 4.5-sack games … Myles Garrett and Jadeveon Clowney, both future No. 1 picks. Pretty good company!

However, you’ve gotta give credit to the whole Texas line. At least two of Simmons’ sacks were cleaning up after other players got hands on Brandon and he somehow escaped; Simmons also got pressures out of a QB spy role where he held back at first and rushed once Brandon got into trouble.

After his second sack, Simmons was flagged for pretending to unzip his pants and pee all over the Tennessee field:

(It’s so funny to me that Simmons shrugged like “A penalty on me? For WHAT?” after the celebration. Did you think the refs didn’t see you? Your celebration was, like, 8 seconds long, you did multiple rotations, and you made sure to give yourself an invisible 29-inch penis.

Maybe you could’ve gotten away with it if you hadn’t given yourself the 29-inch penis.

It’s entirely possible Simmons was just trying to check how good of a teammate he is — Texas famously distributed a pee-color chart to its players in 2017; players with clear pee had “championship hydration levels” while players with yellow-to-orange pee were listed as “selfish teammates” and “bad guys.”

The official call given by the ref was “simulating using the restroom,” which is very polite. (Clearly, he was peeing on the field and had no intent of actually using any sort of restroom.) Technically, that’s not a penalty in the NCAA rulebook, although it does say that refs can penalize players for “celebratory actions that are demeaning to the game or an opponent.” I guess peeing on your opponent’s field is pretty demeaning.

Simmons may have set the SEC sack record, but he’s not the first SEC player to be pee-nalized: Ole Miss famously lost the 2019 Egg Bowl after Elijah Moore pretended to be a peeing dog on a potential game-tying touchdown. Moore’s peenalty was more costly, as the kicker Ole Missed the ensuing extra point and lost by one; Texas simply got another stop on Tennessee a few plays after Simmons was flagged.

Texas remains the No. 1 team in the country … but I’m gonna be honest, I’m not crazy impressed with the Longhorns … or with Arch Manning, who didn’t throw a touchdown in this game. They’ve beaten Ohio State by one and Tennessee by four. I’d probably have Georgia or Notre Dame ranked No. 1 right now … but luckily they invented this “College Football Playoff” thing that will force all these good teams to play one another by the end of the year.