College Football Week 4: Wake Forest’s Louisville Upset, Alabama A&M Ends 47-Year Drought, 17 Officiating Blunders in One Game & More

College football is the gift that keeps on giving. Every week, there are upsets and big storylines, no matter how mundane the schedule may look at first glance, and Week 4 was no different.

From a big time top-25 upset to Middle Tennessee’s coach finally making a stand against the referees, here were some of the biggest storylines from Week 4 of the college football season.

Down Goes No. 16 Louisville

The Louisville Cardinals came into the season with high expectations. They were the No. 24 team in the nation and had to kick off the year against No. 9 Ole Miss, and they took the Rebels to the wire before losing on a last-second field goal. Even with the loss, Louisville fans felt good about their team, which put up 469 yards of offense and 38 points.

The Cardinals cruised through the next two weeks, knocking off Villanova, 59-13, and No. 16 SMU, 41-31. Lincoln Kienholz was playing like a Heisman Trophy candidate, and with a 2-1 Wake Forest team coming to town, they felt pretty good about their chances of starting 3-1. But it all unraveled in front of their home crowd.

The first half of this game was a shootout, with the Demon Deacons taking a 24-21 lead into halftime, but Louisville quickly tied it at 24 in the third quarter. Both teams would exchange field goal late in the third, making it 27-27 heading into the final 15 minutes, but after a turnover on downs and back-to-back missed field goals that could’ve tied the game at 30, the Cardinals dropped their second game of the season to Wake Forest, 30-27.

Kienholz played pretty well, throwing for 324 yards and a touchdown while adding two scores on the ground, but Louisville’s defense and special teams just couldn’t get the job done. Now, they basically have to win out to have any chance at claiming the ACC crown and earning a spot in the College Football Playoffs.

James Franklin & Virginia Tech Remain Unranked After 4-0 Start

Penn State fired James Franklin after the disappointing 2025 season, when the Nittany Lions finished 7-6 despite starting as the No. 2 ranked team. Despite all the success Franklin had in State College, he could never get over the hump, and ultimately it led to him leaving the team after 12 seasons with the team.

Franklin could’ve had pretty much any job in the country, but he decided to take the Virginia Tech job to try to restore a once-great program back to national relevance. And so far, he’s doing a pretty good job. Through four games, the Hokies are 4-0 with wins over VMI, Old Dominion, Maryland and Boston College. Their quarterback, Ethan Grunkemeyer, has over 1,000 yards and 10 total touchdowns with zero interceptions and a near-75-percent completion rate, but they also have two running backs that have combined for 615 yards and eight scores through four games. He has started the revival of this program, but this is just the beginning.

This week, the Hokies will host the 4-0 Pitt Panthers in a game that will tell us a lot about Franklin’s team. Outside of a narrow win over UCF in Week 2, the Panthers have handled business, winning their other three games by 14+ points, so this is no easy test for VT.

VT vs Pitt will actually be the first matchup in modern college football history between two 4-0, power conference teams that are both unranked.

That’s a pretty crazy stat, but one of them could be ranked after this week. We’ll see if Franklin can get VT ranked for the first time since 2021.

Boise State Enters Top-25 With Big Win Over WMU

The Boise State Broncos were the Group of 6’s representative in the College Football Playoff two years ago, but missed out after a disappointing 9-5 season last year. However, they just missed out on the preseason AP Poll and showed voters they were right to have them in the top-30 after narrowly losing to No. 2 Oregon, 34-27 in Week 1. Despite the loss, Boise State moved up and was the first team out of the rankings in Week 1, but they hadn’t quite been able to sneak into the top-25 this season. That was until this week, when they jumped up to No. 22 after a 32-7 win over Western Michigan, who, if you remember, should’ve beat Michigan in Week 1 if it weren’t for one of the biggest officiating blunders I can ever remember.

As it stands, Boise State is the highest-ranked Group of 6 team, and if the CFP started today, they’d be in for the second time in three years. But the season doesn’t end today, and they have to keep winning. They should be favored in all of their games moving forward, but nothing is guaranteed in college football, so if they want to go dancing again this year, they have to keep their foot on the gas. But right now, they’re in a great spot.

Conner Weigman Goes Off For 6 TDs in Massive Win

December 27, 2025, Houston, Texas, USA: Houston Cougars quarterback Conner Weigman 1 runs the ball during the Kinders Texas Bowl between the University of Houston Cougars and the LSU Tigers at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, on December 27, 2025. Houston USA – ZUMAp213 20251227_znp_p213_144 Copyright: xLynnxPenningtonx

Conner Weigman has had his ups and down in college football. He started his career at Texas A&M, and in 2022, he appeared in five games, totaling 896 passing yards and eight touchdowns with zero interceptions. He earned the starting job in 2023 and was off to a hot start, completing 69 percent of his throws for 979 yards and eight touchdowns with two picks in 3.5 games, but he broke his foot, which caused him to miss the remainder of the season. He returned to the Aggies in 2024 and earned the starting job again, but wasn’t the same, throwing three touchdowns to five picks while battling through a shoulder injury he suffered in their first game of the season.

After 2024, Weigman transferred to Houston, where he finally played a full season, totaling over 3,400 yards and 36 touchdowns with nine interceptions. Now he’s back for a final season with the Cougars, and he’s off to an incredibly hot start, largely thanks to his six-touchdown performance last weekend.

Houston traveled to Georgia Southern to face the Eagles, and Weigman was surgical, completing 77.3 percent of his throws for 239 yards and four touchdowns while adding two more scores on the ground. Through four weeks, Weigman has totaled over 1,000 yards of offense with 14 total touchdowns and one interception. We got a glimpse of Weigman’s true ceiling during his first two years at A&M, and now, three years later, we’re seeing it all come together in Houston.

MTSU Flags 17 Missed Holding Calls in Loss to Jacksonville State

If you watch any sort of sports, you know that referees are capable of ruining an entire game. One missed call doesn’t typically change the outcome of a game, but when the refs miss 17 calls, something is up.

Middle Tennessee lost a 23-13 game to Jacksonville State this past weekend, but this was a one-score game until the final two minutes. MTSU had an opportunity to tie this game late, but their head coach, Derek Mason, feels they weren’t given the proper chance to fight for victory due to the referees missing 17 holding calls against Jacksonville State.

After their game, Mason watched every play and sent in video of 17 plays where one of his defensive players were being held, but it wasn’t called. If the refs had made the proper call, Mason feels Jacksonville State’s offense would’ve been much less efficient, and MTSU probably would’ve won the football game.

Two HBCUs End Massive Droughts

Alabama A&M and Jackson State University are two of the biggest HBCUs in the nation, and both of their football teams did something they hadn’t done in a long, long time this past weekend.

Let’s start in Alabama, where the Bulldogs pulled off their first win over Florida A&M since 1979. These two schools have a pretty storied history. They played 13 times from 1965 to 1979, with Florida A&M winning 11 of those matchups, before renewing their series in 2021. Since their renewal, the Rattlers had won all five of their matchups, but the Bulldogs pulled off the second-biggest win in the series’ history, knocking off Florida A&M, 40-21.

But Alabama A&M weren’t the only ones that ended a long drought this past weekend. Jackson State, who, until a few years ago, was coached by Deion Sanders, knocked off South University, 35-17, to help them advance to 4-0 for the first time since 1996. Despite all the success they had under Sanders, they never started the season with four straight wins, but for the first time in 30 years, the Tigers are undefeated through the first month of the season.

The Protect College Sports Act Explained

The Protect College Sports Act has been in motion for a while now, but on Monday, September 28th, it passed the U.S. Senate with an overwhelming majority in a 77-22 vote. The PCSA will now move to the House of Representatives, where it will need at last 218 of the 435 votes to pass. The House is not scheduled to vote on any bills until after November’s elections, and if it isn’t voted on before the new Congress takes over in January, the process will have to start from the beginning. But one step is down, which means it’s getting closer and closer to passing.

So what is the Protect College Sports Act? Well, if you haven’t noticed, college athletics have been going downhill. College sports has become an unregulated war zone where teams are throwing ludicrous amounts of money at 18-22 year old kids to play for their school and players are suing the NCAA left and right for extra eligibility and there’s basically nothing the NCAA can do to stop it. Ever since NIL became a thing, college sports has become unrecognizable, and the PCSA hopes to bring it back to its former glory.

The PCSA isn’t trying to stop schools from paying players, but one of its main goals is to place a cap on how much teams can pay their athletes to help create a more even playing field. Professional sports have a salary cap, so college sports should too. It will also give athletes the opportunity to transfer just one time without penalty, and reinforce the NCAA’s new rule giving athletes a five year window to compete in college sports after high school.

There’s plenty of other changes the PCSA is planning to make, but those are the main points. It seems like a step in the right direction, because right now, it’s like the Wild West out there.

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