COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEK EIGHT:
Georgia Tech, Louisville, Four In-State Teams
Among DG’s ACC/NC “Fun Facts & Shout-Outs”
(Weekly Video = Posted At Bottom)
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Oct. 20, 2025)
While the focus of our “This Week In College Football” show is forward-looking as often as possible, we always take a glance back at the previous weekend in college football, too, and sometimes we’ll offer some quick mentions to those making impactful headlines on the gridiron, especially in the Atlantic Coast Conference and/or across North Carolina.
With that in mind, below are our Week Eight “Fun Facts and Shout-Outs,” brought to you by our good friends at Jimmy’s bar and King Neptune restaurant in Wrightsville Beach.
Jimmy’s has a full bar, nightly drink specials and live music 365 days a year(!). (It’s a great place to watch a game, too.) Right next door, King Neptune has become one of the best restaurants in the entire greater Wilmington area.
Week Eight “Fun Fact #1″
This week’s Fun Fact comes from a long-time ACC member from beyond the Bold North State: Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets are off to their first 7-0 start since … 1966, meaning almost 60 years ago.
In 1966, the Jackets were in their 22nd and final season under legendary head coach Bobby Dodd. That Tech team ended up playing in the Orange Bowl and finishing #8 in the national polls.
If you’re a younger person and perhaps don’t recognize or fully appreciate the name Bobby Dodd, that’s the same man who led Tech to a 12-0 season and the national championship in 1952, back when the Yellow Jackets were still members of the Southeastern Conference. Since 1988, Dodd’s name has been on the Ramblin’ Wreck’s home field in Atlanta.
At this point, it has been more than a decade since Georgia Tech merely finished a season in the national Top 25, and in the Yellow Jackets’ first three seasons under head coach Brent Key, they never finished better than 7-6 overall.
Yet here they are — 7-0, ranked #7 in both major polls, and heavily favored in Atlanta against Syracuse this week to get to 8-0.
The Jackets are not a dominant group this season — in many advanced team metrics, they don’t even rank among the top 25 nationally — but they have been elite on special teams, very productive on offense and “good enough” on defense thus far.
They also have benefited from a relatively weak schedule — their best victory to this point was probably their 27-18 win last week against Duke in Durham — and they needed an egregious officiating error late in regulation to survive a game at unranked Wake Forest with a 30-29 overtime victory.
Nevertheless, 7-0 is 7-0, and making the right kinds of history is something to be celebrated.
Remember, among the FBS programs in North Carolina, NC State hasn’t won an ACC championship since 1979, UNC hasn’t captured one since 1980, and Duke hasn’t claimed that crown since 1989. Beyond the ACC, East Carolina hasn’t finished a season ranked in the national Top 25 since 1995.
No matter what happens with Georgia Tech the rest of the way — the Yellow Jackets still have potentially challenging games at NC State and against Pitt and Georgia in Atlanta — this year’s team already has made first-time-since-1966 history with its 7-0 start, and that definitely deserves a Fun Fact-style tip of the cap.
Now on to this week’s shout-outs, which include coaches and players from Louisville, Duke, ECU, NC State and Western Carolina.
#1—Shout-out to Louisville and especially third-year head coach Jeff Brohm, who has the Cardinals back in the Top 25 after their 24-21 victory at previously undefeated Miami, which had been 5-0 and ranked #2 in the polls going into that game.
In the history of Louisville football, the Cardinals had played 18 true road games against top-10 opponents, and they had lost all 18, by an average margin of 26 points. This time, though, they out-coached their opponent even more than they out-played their opponent, and that’s a huge tribute to Brohm and the rest of his staff.
There are multiple angles to the extremely important coaching aspect of this story.
Louisville scored touchdowns on its first two possessions at Miami, and after the game some of UM’s defensive players said the Cardinals did a handful of things offensively that were not indicated on video during any of the Cards’ previous games. By the time the Hurricanes made the necessary defensive adjustments to those things they had never seen before, Louisville had a 14-0 lead — in a game they ended up winning by only three points. That’s a sign of great coaching.
Meanwhile, Louisville’s defense — going against Miami’s sixth-year senior quarterback Carson Beck, the Georgia transfer some had started to describe as a Heisman Trophy candidate — became the first unit ever to intercept the veteran QB four times in a single game, while also stuffing the Hurricanes’ high-powered rushing attack. That’s also a reflection of great coaching.
Finally, after lining up for a chip-shot field goal attempt, Louisville executed a fake that got the Cardinals a first down inside the Miami one-yard line. That led to a touchdown, meaning the Cards got seven points on that drive — instead of three — in a game, again, that they ended up winning by only three points. That’s great coaching, too.
None of these coaching observations is intended to take anything away from the Louisville players.
We’ve talked all season about sophomore Isaac Brown — a guy Brohm signed out of the Miami high school ranks (how’s that for some tasty icing on top of that win over the Hurricanes) — as one of the best running backs in the entire ACC. We’ve talked all season, including during last week’s preview of the Louisville-Miami game, about senior Chris Bell as one of the best wide receivers in the entire country.
Both Brown and Bell, by the way, were signed and developed by Louisville straight from the high school ranks — they’re not transfers —and both had very good games at Miami. Brown ran 15 times for 113 yards against his hometown Hurricanes. Bell had nine receptions for 136 yards and two touchdowns.
In the end, of course, coming up with a plan that enables your best players to show why they’re your best players also is a tribute to great coaching, so — again — kudos to Brohm and his staff for their absolutely brilliant contributions to their program’s history-making triumph at #2 Miami last Saturday.
#2—Shout-outs — closer to home — to a handful of players at Duke, East Carolina and NC State for putting up the kinds of numbers that, here at midseason, place them among the top 10 statistical leaders nationally (by category) in the FBS ranks, which is not easy to do at a level of college football that now includes 136 teams.
At Duke, quarterback Darian Mensah is second nationally with 316 passing yards per game, and he’s tied for eighth in the country with 17 touchdown passes. The Tulane transfer has lived up to the hype and to his multi-million-dollar paycheck during his first season in Durham; as just a redshirt sophomore, he’s definitely on the NFL’s radar. Meanwhile, senior wide receiver Cooper Barkate — a Harvard transfer who developed into an FCS All-American during his time in the Ivy League — has continued his remarkable success with the Blue Devils, ranking eighth nationally with 92 receiving yards per game. On defense, senior end Vincent Anthony Jr. — a product of Jordan High School in Durham who now has 35 career starts for hometown Duke — ranks eighth nationally with 10.5 tackles for loss and 10th nationally with 6.5 sacks through the Devils’ first seven games.
At East Carolina, quarterback Katin Houser is ninth nationally with 284 passing yards per game. A redshirt junior who transferred to ECU from Michigan State prior to last season, Houser is a former four-star high school prospect from California who was entirely a backup during his two years with the Spartans. A 6-foot-3, 225-pounder, he clearly has clicked with second-year ECU offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach John David Baker. That pairing played a central role in rescuing the Pirates’ topsy-turvy 2024 season from near-disaster, and now that same duo is one of the main reasons — along with a solid and well-coached defense — why the team still has high hopes for a strong finish here in 2025.
At NC State, sophomore quarterback CJ Bailey ranks ninth nationally in throwing accuracy with a 72 percent completion percentage, redshirt sophomore running back Hollywood Smothers — a Charlotte product who transferred to the Wolfpack from Oklahoma prior to last season — ranks ninth nationally with 105 rushing yards per game, and fifth-year senior linebacker Caden Fordham ranks ninth nationally with about 10 tackles per game.
If the Pack can somehow lick its wounds and recover emotionally from its ugly loss last week at Notre Dame, then play well at Pitt this week, it definitely can become a team that’s good enough to beat Georgia Tech in front of the home fans at Carter-Finley Stadium on Nov. 1.
#3—Finally, shout-out — at the FCS level — to Western Carolina, which has become one of the Bold North State’s most fun teams to watch under fifth-year head coach Kerwin Bell, a former Florida Gators quarterback and long-time offensive guru who led Valdosta State to the Division Two national championship back in 2018.
This year’s Catamounts rank seventh nationally in total offense, at about 490 yards per game, and they have one of the most exciting players in the FCS ranks in Taron Dickens.
A redshirt sophomore quarterback, Dickens has been “shouted-out” many times this season, including on various national platforms, especially after he set the all-time, all-divisions NCAA record with 46 consecutive completions during a comeback victory over Wofford.
Dickens is only 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds, but he’s now completing almost 80 percent of his passes and averaging almost 400 passing yards per game, two insanely impressive numbers that would lead the entire nation if Dickens had played enough games to qualify.
When Dickens missed the Catamounts’ first three games this season, while dealing with eligibility issues, they went 0-3. Since his return to the lineup, they’ve gone 5-0, while averaging more than 42 points per game.
Among the 32 NCAA football programs in North Carolina, the teams with the best chance to win their conference this season may be NC Central and Western Carolina, both FCS programs, although it won’t be easy for either team.
The Catamounts are a perfect 4-0 in Southern Conference play, and now they have an open week, but then they have to tackle perhaps the toughest two-game stretch of their league schedule — at Chattanooga on Nov. 1, then home against nationally ranked Mercer on Nov. 8.
Western is seeking its first-ever football championship in the SoCon, a league the school joined way back in 1976, so the Catamounts definitely will be worth watching for multiple reasons — in Cullowhee and otherwise — as they continue to chase both that elusive SoCon title and a rare trip to the FCS playoffs.
