Connelly: How Jim Harbaugh flipped the script on Ryan Day and other Rivalry Week lessons

Bill Connelly is a staff writer for ESPN.com.

Congratulations, Michigan. You did it two years in a row. Kudos, Kansas State. You get a shot at a TCU rematch. Well done, Utah. Can you take down USC a second time? My compliments, Purdue. Divisions are outdated and dumb, but snaring a Big Ten West title while you still can is better than not doing it!

A “Hear! Hear!” to UCF and Tulane. May your rematch in New Orleans be as fun as your first foray a few weeks ago. Good going, Ohio. Maybe this is the year you finally take the MAC. Props, Troy. You haven’t lost since that Hail Mary against Appalachian State. Hooray, North Texas! May your second trip to San Antonio go slightly better than the first.

Congrats to you, too, Caleb Williams. Avoid throwing about seven interceptions in Las Vegas on Friday night, and you’ll be lifting a pretty big trophy in a couple more weeks.

Rivalry Week did everything it was supposed to do: entertain us with tight (and often completely nonsensical) rivalry games, determine the remaining conference title game bids and tell us who’s probably going to win the Heisman. It separated wheat from chaff, handed out a couple of College Football Playoff (and Big Ten West!) elimination losses to teams that turned out to be too flawed to remain in the conversation … and gave us whatever the hell UCF-USF was. It was a delight from start to finish. Let’s walk through some of the biggest takeaways from college football’s biggest weekend.

Ryan Day has become Jim Harbaugh

There might not be a stronger narrative device in sports than a nice rivalry streak, and going all the way back to the first few meetings between Michigan and Ohio State, there might not be a rivalry more driven by streaks than The Game.

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