Patrick O'Connell's season needed a back-nine escape, and he found one. The golf majors yielded 505.1 and 22nd, worth 230 placement points.
The rescue was necessary because damage had spread across the card. The NBA read went 2-of-5 and tied for 214th, while the Lightning managed only 24.7 inside an NHL card that finished 207th. The World Cup added 187th.
There had been real upside before the slide. Oregon's run returned 78 and pushed O'Connell to 34th in the CFP, while NFL Survivor held at a tied 86th.
Golf outweighed the World Cup miss and supplied a 14-place rescue. That left 1277.5 points; the rank was 119th. The fairways did not erase the holes in O'Connell's season; they changed which part deserved the headline.