In the meantime, a full weekend of college football has passed us by, and as is always the case, it’s awesome to have it back again. You know how sometimes you wish you could have more of something that you really like but can’t control? But then the next time you experience that thing after a long wait, you realize how much more you appreciate it as a result of having gone without? That’s kind of how I feel this weekend every year. Football just wouldn’t be the same if it was somehow staggered within its different levels (i.e. pro, college, high-profile high school games) so that it was ALWAYS being played.
To that end, we didn’t have a whole lot of shocking upsets to kick things off this year. Perhaps most notably, unranked Utah squeezed past No. 15 Pittsburgh 27-24 in overtime Thursday in Salt Lake in a tense, exciting clash that felt very much like it could have been a bowl game.
It’s never easy to start your season on the road, and that stadium was LOUD and fired up for the Utes to pull out the win. The Panthers come into 2010 with big expectations. Last year they won more games than any Pitt team since 1981 (when a guy by the name of Dan Marino was their QB). And now just one game in, their national title hopes are essentially dashed. Tough stuff.
Another dramatic moment of the opening CFB season came when No. 21 LSU barely hung on to beat No. 18 suspension-ravaged North Carolina. Considering the disciplinary action, the Tigers probably should have cruised, but the game was in Chapel Hill, so that always makes things a tad more difficult. The Tarheels had a chance to tie and possibly win on the last couple of plays as their final two TD pass attempts from inside the red zone fell incomplete. It was interesting to see the Replacements give it such the old ‘College Try’ and almost succeeding.
But the crown jewel of the opening weekend came Monday night on Labor Day - and this opening CFB weekend saved the best for last. No. 3 Boise State showed why it belongs in the national championship discussion with a donnybrook of a 33-30 victory over No. 10 Virginia Tech in front of a largely Hokies-partisan crowd at Fed Ex Field in Landover, Md. (Washington Redskins’ home field). The Broncos jumped out to a 17-0 first-quarter lead, squandered it and then fought tooth and nail to win this contest, which it so desperately needed to do to remain a national title contender. It doesn’t help that BSU is likely to only play one more ranked team in the regular season (Oregon State). I don’t want to revisit the tired old “playoff vs. bowl season” discussion, but I think we can all agree that we hope not to see Boise get screwed should they go undefeated. Weekly drama in this crazy-arse Division I-A world of college football.
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