Pull the strings on the backs of the Toledo football coaches and their well-schooled players, and they say all the right things.

They are taking it one week at a time, looking neither back on their landmark beatdown of Mississippi State nor beyond their big game Saturday night at Western Kentucky.

“Yesterday's home runs don't win today's games,” coach Jason Candle said.

But, fortunately, the rest of us do not have to respect the process.

We can let our imaginations run wild.

The reality: Yesterday’s home run has set the table for tomorrow’s … walk-off grand slam.

Fresh off their Southern-fried licking, the Rockets are one of just four Group of Five teams who are undefeated with a victory over a power-conference opponent, along with Memphis, Northern Illinois, and UNLV.

That distinction would have been a big deal any year.

This season — with the top G5 team guaranteed a spot in the new 12-team playoff — it is monumental.

Toledo is in the honest-to-God mix to punch its midnight blue and golden ticket.

Are we getting ahead of ourselves? Of course.

We probably ought to wait until Halloween before stringing the Christmas lights.

But enough about my neighbor.

What is sports if not an exercise rooted in hope?

What is football?

We eat up the draft and free agency in the pros and recruiting and … free agency in college almost as intently as we follow the games, because there is always next year, until, magically, the stars align just so and this year is next year.

Could this be the year for Toledo?

Or Bowling Green?

Here’s the great paradox of the expanded playoff — which for the first time ever assures leagues like the Mid-American Conference a seat at the head table — coinciding with the NIL and free agency era:

There has never been a more unsettling time to be a Group of Five football fan.

There has also never been a more exciting one.

Go ahead, Rockets fans, you have our unsolicited permission to dream a little.

Know that you won’t be alone.

Asked after Toledo’s 41-17 thumping of Mississippi State if it may be time to begin thinking about the playoffs, athletic director Bryan Blair smiled.

“I probably thought that this spring, if I’m being honest,” he said. “You see the talent on the roster, you start looking and saying, ‘You know what, we’ve got a chance, right?’”

Right … maybe.

At least — at a time when UT as an institution needs all the help it can get — it’s invaluable to be in the national conversation.

Let’s join it and take a way-too-early look at the G5 race, beginning with the other big-boy-slaying unbeatens:

■ No. 23 Northern Illinois (2-0): The Huskies have the best pelt with their win at Notre Dame — the MAC’s first victory against an AP top-five opponent — and are the lone ranked G5 team.

But they have a hell of a road ahead, with trips to North Carolina State, Miami (Ohio), and BG, along with a monster home showdown against Toledo. Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde cheekily asked on Twitter: “Which is the bigger game Oct. 19: Texas-Georgia or Toledo-N. Illinois?” Forty-eight percent of 2,683 respondents said the Toledo tilt. Take College GameDay to DeKalb, cowards!

■ UNLV (3-0): G5 teams have five wins against Power Four schools. The Rebels have two of them: a 27-7 win at Houston and a 23-20 win at Kansas. So, great start, but, like with NIU, the path ahead is uphill both ways. UNLV still has games against Syracuse and Oregon State on top of its treacherous Mountain West schedule.

■ Memphis (3-0): The Tigers just joined the club in beating Florida State (0-3) and probably have the best chance of running the table as the clear frontrunner in the AAC. Their toughest remaining game: at Tulane on Nov. 28.

Other teams in the germinal discussion include Boise State (1-1), Liberty (3-0), and — what the hey? — Bowling Green (1-1). (If the Falcons pull off their biannual stunner at Texas A&M on Saturday, they certainly ought to be ahead of Liberty, which is again exercising its freedom to play everyone but the Wapakoneta School of Welding. We need the Flames repping the G5 again like we need a sequel to Dude, Where’s My Car?)

And then there is Toledo.

The formula for rising to the top of the G5 hierarchy traditionally requires a power-conference victory — unless you are Liberty last season — a league championship, and no more than one defeat.

The Rockets’ real work is yet ahead, of course, beginning Saturday in a coin-flip game at Western Kentucky, a Conference USA contender.

I think back to the last time Toledo set the table with a win over an SEC team, in 2015, when it beat No. 18 Arkansas — then Iowa State the next week — on the way to a 7-0 start. The Rockets had the inside track to the Peach Bowl, only to lose two of their final four conference games.

The moral: Winning every game is really freaking hard (Toledo has not done so since 1971).

Still, the golden-bricked road has to start somewhere, and you can’t diminish the magnitude of checking that first box.

Think about what Toledo — which, by the way, has as many wins vs. SEC teams since 2015 as Ohio State does since 1989 (two) — just did.

Tear down Mississippi State if you must, but there are plenty of struggling brand-name teams, and I don’t see other G5 schools hammering them.

In all the other G5-vs-P4 wins this season, the mid-majors won by a combined 27 points. Toledo won by 24, and it could have doubled that margin — against an SEC school that wouldn’t have recruited a single one of its players out of high school.

That’s remarkable.

And, yes, it suddenly makes things a whole lot more interesting.

“Make no bones about it,” Blair said. “This was a great win, but this turns up the heat on us and the pressure on us every week to show up and be the best version of ourselves. We’ll see if the guys are up to the test. I think they are.”

If it’s too soon to start seriously thinking about the playoffs, it’s not too early to begin dreaming.

First Published September 18, 2024, 7:45 p.m.