And it isn't even close.Think about it. On the bad days, college football has its fallback of tradition and pageantry and regional fervor. On the good days? Incredible football. On the great days? An epic weekend like this. More are sure to come.
South Florida beat West Virginia on a magical night Friday. Oklahoma fell to Colorado. Texas fell to Kansas State. LSU was shook up and stunned in the first half against Tulane before rallying. Florida and Auburn are locked in a spectacular matchup in The Swamp tonight (seriously, tune in to that).
Michigan State took Wisconsin to the brink and embarrassed the Badger rush defense. Washington pushed USC around in the first half. Cal against Oregon was decided on the game's last play after a magical fourth quarter. Rutgers lost at home to freaking Maryland. Illinois stunned Penn State! Indiana put Iowa to shame and recalled the legacy of coach Terry Hoeppner. Michigan displayed its vulnerability once again to the spread offense.
All these elite teams had ruinous days, but will still have glorious seasons.
In the meantime it's been an amazing day of football. The variety of offenses and defenses on display, the game's young stars (anyone see Arrelious Benn tear up Penn State?), everything was magical today. Keep in mind this was supposed to be a slow weekend, a yawning tune-up to next weekend's star-studded matchups like Florida/LSU and Texas/Oklahoma.
College football fans showed up to a business meeting today and a big ol' party broke out.
Did you see Florida State beat Alabama? You gotta know that meant a hell of a lot to lifelong Alabama fan Bobby Bowden.
Who needs neatly packaged three-hour games between teams running the same exact offense and defense? We got soul and magic, games between the service academies and every Saturday from September until December.
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Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. You forgot to mention that Notre Dame fell to a school record 0-5. When Quinn left, so did the offense.
Posted at 1:32AM on Sep 30th 2007 by James Madill
2. Today WAS the greatest day in college football history. (At least, since I started watching it.) I have to believe this. As an aside... South Florida, Cincinnati, and UConn are atop the big east. In other news, the world has spun of it's Axis and we are hurling towards the sun.
Posted at 1:34AM on Sep 30th 2007 by themutedecho
3. Just goes to show how many of the x-sperts still make their weekend picks by big name association and not by a "what have you done for me lately" method. Go Cincinnati Bearcats!
Posted at 10:14AM on Sep 30th 2007 by LarryR
4. Adding on to everyone's two favorite teams to talk about that you failed to mentioned...you forgot that Michigan almost got severely embarassed again, this time by a Northwestern that lost to DUKE and was pounded by Ohio State. But maybe you're just wanting to talk about the top 10. Still, those weren't the only games that showed why college football is the best (although I'm not sure it's more exciting than kind of sad to see a bunch of top teams get their @sses beat, unless you have a "personal stake," i.e. you're a fan of the underdog or you hate the best bets).
For me, about the only thing that would have made yesterday better is if USC had lost. Can't stand them and Florida. But I truly think their day is coming.
Posted at 11:48AM on Sep 30th 2007 by nunya
5. Is everybody forgetting the Buckholes from the Big 11? 5-0 even if they haven't played a team with a winning record. How bad is the Big 11? Mr. Rogers has got to be upset with his out of conference schedule, will come back to haunt him if they can win out. Power rankings from ESPN has Big 11 5th out of 6 conferences but what a slap in the face to the ACC. Slowest conference in D1 right now, what happened?
Posted at 12:37PM on Sep 30th 2007 by KGar