Weekend College Football Recap

Now, that’s football! The first weekend of college football is in the books and even though this might be somewhat early, Miami and Florida State do kick-off on Monday night, taking a look at what happened this past Thursday and Saturday, could certainly help us get ready for next week’s big time college football betting games.

A lot happened on Thursday night that sort of carried over to Saturday. With LeGarrette Blount of the Oregon Ducks being suspended for the entire season, things couldn’t have gotten more interesting on Saturday. Oh, my fellow college football fans, but it did! Sam Bradford, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner for the #3 ranked team in the nation, the Oklahoma Sooners, was knocked out of the game and could miss up to four weeks with a shoulder injury. The Sooners lost that game, by the way.

Some other teams fared much better. The #4 ranked USC Trojans were playing San Jose State, but what they did to the Spartans, with Freshman quarterback Matt Barkley starting, was absolutely amazing.

Florida, Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame, Nebraska and LSU all did what they had to do, and were expected to do, on Saturday. Ohio State? Not so much.

Here’s a run down of what happened this week in college football.

Most Impressive Victory – - #4 USC

The Trojans get the nod even though they were 33 point favorites over San Jose State. Why? Because they started a Freshman quarterback and he played fantastic. Sorry, but to be impressive you have to face some sort of big change or adversity in the first week and get through it. USC did that. Barkley was fantastic as the Trojans rolled to a 56 to 3 victory. It looks like the L.A. Football Factory is in good shape.

Honorable Mentions

#14 Boise State over #16 Oregon – - Yes, the game was awful, but Boise State kept a team that averaged an insane amount of points per game last year to 8. Then, after Blount threw the punch, the Boise State players kept their cool.

#9 Oklahoma State over #13 Georgia – - I don’t care what anybody says, playing an SEC team in the first game of the season takes guts. The Cowboys kept playing hard and pushing until things finally went their way in this game. I said before this weekend that the Oklahoma State Cowboys would be the biggest threat to Texas in the Big 12 this year. With what happened to Oklahoma on Saturday, I’m ready to say, “See? What did I say!”

Michigan over Western Michigan – - Remember what I said about adversity? Michigan and Coach Rich Rodriguez have gotten more bad press coming up to the 2009 NCAAF Season than any other team and coach in the nation. They weren’t playing against Penn State, but it is impressive how the Wolverines kept Western Michigan to only 7 points and racked up 35 on their end.

Tennessee over Western Kentucky – - How’s that for a debut! Tennessee is awful, right? Wrong! The Volunteers put up 63 points in Coach Lane Kiffin’s first game as an SEC coach. Mark my words, this team is going to be a handful for Florida and Tim Tebow in a couple of weeks. Tennessee has a pro head coach and a pro defensive coach. The pro defensive coach, Lane’s dad Monte, is why this team is going to be very good this year. Watch. Just watch.

Top Upset

#20 BYU over #3 Oklahoma – - In reality we all should have seen this coming. Oklahoma has a re-tooled offensive line and BYU is solid football program. So, why didn’t we? Some of us did, I’m sure. The rest of us bought into the hype. We’re so used to Oklahoma being dominant that we forgot the first rule of college football: as your offensive line goes, so goes your team! Even with Bradford back, the Sooners are virtually toast. The Big 12 is just too tough this year and it’s going to take at least 6 to 8 weeks for that offensive line to gel, well after the Red River Shoot-out against Texas.

I’d Be Worried If I’m…

#6 Ohio State got lucky again Navy. Are you kidding me? I see two issues for the Buckeyes this year. They have a new offensive line, like Oklahoma, and won’t be able to give Terrelle Pryor the pass protection he needs and…Terrelle Pryor. Why is Pryor an issue? Ohio State’s system has always been drop back passing and run it up the gut rushing. With Pryor, because of his skill set, I see the Ohio State coaches getting out what they do well in order to use Pryor effectively. It’s not working.

Luckily if Ohio State plays #22 Iowa, they might look like a team of NFL Pros. Iowa was god awful, not just awful, but god awful in their one point victory over Northern Iowa. Iowa’s defense is okay but their offense is putrid.

I have to put #3 Oklahoma in this category too because, well, they lost to BYU. The Sooners will win some games but 4 to 5 losses isn’t out the realm of possibility with this group of guys. Again, it’s the offensive line.

Finally, #8 Oregon has to make the list. The problem I see for this team isn’t that they will be without LeGarrette Blount. It’s that they couldn’t put up points on the blue turf against a team that is known to give up a lot of points. If Oregon’s offense isn’t working, they will lose a lot of games in 2009.