College Football Finally Begins

This first full college football weekend finally happened. It must be fall.

What did we learn? Well, Miami looks like a favorite to win the ACC. Florida looks as bad as last year. Notre Dame has almost locked up the #5 playoff seed. Ohio State continues to be Ohio State. USC and LSU might have reasonable defenses. And so much more…

• The #4 Texas Longhorns opened their season with a 52-0 win at home over Colorado State. Longhorns’ starting QB Quinn Ewers was 20-for-27 for 260 yards with three touchdowns and one interception. But if you visited The Athletic around 9:30pm CST Saturday night, the top story had a picture of Arch Manning with a headline that read, “Arch Manning scored first TDs of college career vs. Colorado State”. In fact, if you performed a Google news search, the top four headlines were all about Arch Manning. Manning finished 5-for-6 passing for 95 yards with one throwing and one rushing touchdown. Oh, it’s going to be awful to be Quinn Ewers if the team struggles at all this season. The fans want to win above all else, but they would prefer to do it with Manning behind center.

• You know how sometimes you are watching a game and a player gets injured and they won’t show a replay of the injury because it is too grotesque to watch?  That doesn’t seem to apply to players getting sick on the field. ABC caught Texas A&M QB Conner Weigman throwing up on the field. They not only showed a replay of it. They showed it in slow motion.

• It wasn’t very long ago that Clemson was winning national championships in football and Dabo Swinney was considered among the best coaches in the game. Then the transfer portal came along, and Swinney decided he would be the only non-military academy program to not use the transfer portal. When Clemson faced Georgia in Atlanta in Week 1, it looked like two programs with different approaches. Georgia is really good, but should they beat Clemson by 31 points? Whatever the reason, everyone is going to point to the offense and Dabo not using the transfer portal as the reason Clemson is falling behind. It’s hard to say they are wrong. And college football fans are declaring the Clemson dynasty over.

• The story at Penn State this season is new Offensive Coordinator Andy Kotelnicki who was the OC at Kansas the past few seasons under Lance Leipold. There was a lot of excitement Saturday when the Nittany Lions won at West Virginia 34-12. Fans are excited about the explosiveness of this offense compared to what they had last year. But are people getting a little ahead of themselves? Last year, Penn State opened the season at home against West Virginia and won 38-15.  They put up 478 yards of offense last season. Saturday they put up 457 yards of offense. I’m not saying that the Penn State offense won’t be improved this season, but compared to essentially the same opening game as last year, they did basically the exact same thing on offense.

• As I watched games Saturday night, Ole Miss kept catching my eye. Every time I saw a score update, Ole Miss was piling on more and more points. It’s not that I expected this to be a close game, but what grabbed my attention was that I thought Lane Kiffin was trying to score 100 points. I mean, it was 52-0 at halftime. It was 73-0 after three quarters. In the end, Ole Miss defeated Furman 76-0. The Rebels put up 772 yards of offense, which means absolutely nothing going forward. I mean, it was Furman. They aren’t going to compete with Ole Miss. But I really thought Ole Miss was going for 100.

• The season started about as bad as it could have for Florida, and you have to wonder if head coach Billy Napier is going to make it through the season. The gators hosted rival Miami and lost 41-17. Miami out-gained Florida 529-261in total yards. Often criticized Florida QB Graham Mertz was just 11-for-20 passing for 91 yards and a 19.1 QBR before top recruit DJ Lagway entered the game. Florida will get one game to try to figure things out at home against Samford before they host Texas A&M. It could be a long season in Gainesville.

• Let’s not talk just about how much Florida is struggling. We have to talk about how good Miami was Saturday, especially QB Cam Ward. Ward went 26-for-35 passing for 385 yards and three touchdowns and one interception.

• In the first two weeks, we have seen two vastly different starts for teams thought to be ACC favorites. Last week in Ireland, Florida State lost to Georgia Tech. This week, Miami dominated Florida in the Swamp. Now, there is a long way to go, but things couldn’t have started better for the Hurricane.

• Break up the Iowa offense! Iowa led just 6-0 over Illinois State at halftime. I just had to laugh knowing this is Iowa football as usual. I thought that if new OC Tim Lester had the same 25 points-per-game requirement in his contract that Brian Ferentz had in 2023, he might be in trouble. But then the Hawkeyes put up 34 points in the second half to win this game 40-0! Are you kidding me? 40 points for an Iowa offense? I realize that Illinois State is not a top notch opponent, but Iowa just doesn’t do this. So, I looked back at previous Hawkeye seasons to see how often this happens. Well, they scored 41 points against Western Michigan in their third game last season. Their next highest point total last season was 26 points against Michigan State. In 2022, they didn’t score more than 27 points in a game. It’s early, and I don’t expect Iowa to be an offensive juggernaut this season, but for at least one half, Hawkeye fans got to see what it felt like to have a team that can score.

• North Carolina got the win at Minnesota on Thursday but lost QB Max Johnson for the rest of the season with a broken leg. UNC head coach Mack Brown told Conner Harrell, “You’re really, really good. Go win the game” when Harrell had to replace Johnson. Johnson was just 2-for-4 for 34 yards passing, but Omarion Hampton rushed for 129 yards in the Tar Heels victory.

• We learned Sunday that former Nebraska head coach Scott Frost is being hired by the Los Angeles Rams in what they are saying is a “multifaceted role” with the team. Frost took his success in turning around UCF and turned that into a 16-31 record as the Cornhuskers’ head coach in parts of five seasons. Nebraska fans still refer to those five years as years they can never get back.

That’s So Sanders

Colorado got by in their first game, but not without questions. The Buffaloes hosted a tough North Dakota State team. NDSU cut the deficit to five points with under three minutes to play. The Buffaloes got a first down that would have allowed them to take a knee on three plays and run out the clock. But, as we might expect from a Deion Sanders team, they saw one-on-one coverage and decided to throw the ball instead. Yes, it’s important to continue going for first downs late in the game to run out the clock, but not when taking a knee three times ends the game. Say it with me. That’s! So! Sanders!

In Other News…

Apparently, Taylor Swift is drawing up plays for the Chiefs’ offense. Patrick Mahomes said that the team might have to put one of her plays in the game plan. Yes, it has gotten so boring for the Chiefs that they are having one of the most successful singers of all time design their plays.