Week 1: Utah, Fresno State big winners
Last year, I started a weekly look at the college football landscape, plus a few personal observations and some travel adventures. I didn’t go anywhere this week except Owen Field, so that will have to wait. The football will not.
BIGGEST WINNERS FROM WEEK 1:
10. Jim Harbaugh: The old Colt quarterback is becoming a heck of a coach. His second Stanford team beat Oregon State 36-28. Prediction: Harbaught eventually will join his brother, John, as an NFL head coach.
9. Neutral sites: The two biggest games of the day were played off campus. Missouri-Illinois in St. Louis and Alabama-Clemson in Atlanta. We’re going to see more of this, not less. Sorry, E.Z. Million. 8. Oklahoma State: Cowboys popped Washington State 39-13 in Seattle, and suddenly OSU’s season outlook improves. Eight wins doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
7. Mark Sanchez: The USC quarterback completed 26 of 35 passes for 338 yards and three TDs on a far tougher stage than most big-time quarterbacks Saturday — at Virginia.
6. Turner Gill: The Buffalo U. coach narrowly missed out on getting hired at Nebraska, and Gill keeps showing he can produce. His previously-awful program continues to improve. It beat UTEP and old fox Mike Price 42-17.
5. Kevin Craft: The third-team UCLA quarterback, handed the reins because of preseason injuries, threw four first-half interceptions but hung in there and led a 27-24 overtime upset of Tennessee.
4. Sun Belt Conference: The most beleaguered league in college football had another miserable record, going 1-5 in non-conference games, but that one win was memorable. Arkansas State upset Texas A&M 18-14, spoiling Mike Sherman’s debut as the Aggie coach and giving the Sun Belt some notches in its belt not supplied by Troy.
3. Skip Holtz: Lou’s son left his first head-coaching spot, UConn, to be his dad’s aide at South Carolina. Skip probably thought he would take over the Gamecocks; instead Steve Spurrier got that job and Skip settled for East Carolina. But a 27-22 upset of Virginia Tech gives Skip a 21-17 record at East Carolina and a 54-40 record overall. Some school will come after Skip Holtz. 2. Nick Saban: The Alabama coach isn’t all that popular. A guy from Bama told me the other day he hopes Saban doesn’t die, because they’d have a tough time finding six men to be pallbearers. But Saban is a heck of a college coach. His Crimson Tide spanked Clemson 34-10.1. Mid-majors: Two teams staked an early claim for being the 2008 version of Boise State or Hawaii. Utah went to the Big House and beat Michigan 25-23. Not a huge upset, but surprising, and enjoyable, for those of us off the Rich Rodriguez bandwagon. And Fresno State went to Rutgers and won 24-7. This month, Fresno hosts Wisconsin and goes to UCLA. Don’t rule out Fresno State winning both.
GOOD EATS
I’ve sort of made it a tradition during football season that when I’m not on the road, I like to take the family down to Campus Corner in Norman for dinner on Friday night. It’s always a good atmosphere, because there’s always energy and a buzz. Gets me in the mood for Game Day. Well, Friday night, my nephew, who is working on his Ph.D. in Chicago, flew in for a surprise visit and asked for the whole family to get together. He wanted to go to Texas Roadhouse.
Texas Roadhouse has excellent food, but when you’re talking about a large gathering, it’s a terrible place to dine. Way too loud. So I ate about 15 great hot rolls and a steak kabob, then let the music and racket rattle my brains for 90 minutes.
This Friday: Campus Corner.
TEN BIG LOSERS FROM WEEK 1
10. Hawaii: The Rainbows lost 56-10 at Florida, this coming off a 41-10 Sugar Bowl loss to Georgia. Good thing Hawaii doesn’t play Tennessee next week. 9. Northern Illinois: The Mid-American Conference Huskies lost to Minnesota 31-27 on a touchdown scored with 22 seconds left. MAC victories over a Big Ten foe are rare; take advantage when you can.8. Chuck Long: The affable ex-Sooner coordinator faces another long year at San Diego State, after a 29-27 loss to I-AA Cal Poly. Long is 7-18 with the Aztecs.
7. Competitive games: 70 Division I-A games were played in Week 1; more than half, 36, were decided by at least 25 points. Only 14 of the 70 were decided by single digits. 6. Sylvester Croom: The Mississippi State coach was a 2007 star, taking the Bulldogs to the Liberty Bowl and beating Nick Saban en route. But Miss. State lost 22-14 at Louisiana Tech, and suddenly, Croom’s alma mater, Alabama, no longer wishes it had hired Croom.
5. Tyrone Willingham: He looked like Dead Coach Walking in Washington’s 44-10 loss at Oregon. Willingham almost got fired after last season. He’s going to need some big upsets (OU?) to save his job.
4. Steve Kragthorpe: Wonder if Kragthorpe misses Tulsa? He was a disappointing 6-6 last year, after taking over a program that was 12-1 with an Orange Bowl victory the season before. Now comes a 27-2 loss to arch-rival Kentucky.
3. ACC: Discounting victories over I-AA foes, the Atlantic Coast Conference went 2-4 in Week 1. Boston College beat Kent State and Wake Forest beat Baylor. But South Carolina routed N.C. State 34-0. Bama rolled Clemson. USC throttled Virginia. And East Carolina upset V-Tech. The ACC will challenge the Big East as the worst conference. They make the Big Ten look good.
2. Big East: Quite possibly the worst day in any league’s history. The Big East went 0-4 against foes outside of Division I-AA. Kentucky embarrassed Louisville 27-2. Fresno State spanked Rutgers 24-7. Pitt lost to a Mid-American Conference school. And Northwestern routed Syracuse 30-10. 1. Dave Wannstedt: Pitt’s 27-17 loss to Bowling Green signals what figures to be Wannstedt’s final season coaching his hometown university. The last time Bowling Green took the field, it lost 63-7 to Tulsa in the GMAC Bowl.
Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel.
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Berry,
Sportswise, there are few things as humbling as being on the wrong side of an ESPN “instant classic”? (Tenn, VT, etc) It seems like OU has been on the wrong side more often than on the good side. In fact I can only remember one, the 2000 Nat’l; Camp game.
Those games are shown over and over.
Mike Bergman
Hereford, AZ