College Roundup: Big Upsets Are The Talk Of The Town

While many people count unpredictability as one of college football's most appealing traits, there are some things that you can rely upon as certainties each season. As sure as the leaves changing colors and Brent Musberger referencing point spreads, you can depend on an overhyped Cal Bears team to collapse as soon as they're placed in a showcase game. They are the Pac-10's version of the Clemson Tigers- a team that is perenially listed among the 'sleepers' that are ready for a breakout season and is given a boost by those same writers into the AP top 10. And yet, just as soon as their fans start thinking that maybe this year will be different than other years, the team falls apart in epic fashion. This year, it was the Oregon Ducks that had the honors, demolishing Cal, 42-3, in a game that the Bears had given up on by halftime. Now, their exposure as a fraud will somehow be used to indict the entire Pac-10 as being overrated, even tho it was another Pac-10 team that took Cal down. Ahhh, such are the joys of investing so much emotion in a sport that determines its champion via popularity contest.

Cal wasn't the only highly ranked team to go down in defeat this weekend. College fans around the country once again owe Iowa a huge debt of gratitude for sparing a weary nation from a Penn State appearance in a National Championship game. Hopefully, we can go another year without having to watch a Big 10 team roll over in a BCS title game. Unfortunately, fans can't rest too easily just yet, as so many top 10 teams already have a "1" in the loss column that a team that lost early, Ohio State, could sneak back into things.

Another one loss team whose BCS dreams have been revitalized is the Notre Dame Fighting Holtzes, who rallied to beat Purdue in a rare game in which Charlie Weis wasn't the worst coach in the stadium. That honor went to Purdue head man Danny Hope who upon seeing a frenzied Notre Dame scurrying to the line to spike the ball, opted to call a timeout to save their opponent a down and give them an opportunity to draw up two plays to win the game. When Notre Dame is cashing their BCS check for 17 mil, they should be sure to send something nice over to West Lafayette.

Miami went into Blacksburg and showed that they aren't quite back to being "Tha U" just yet. But it wasn't really much of a shocker, because I don't think people really expected them to return to elite status in one year. This kind of thing is a process. To put it in terms that Miami fans will understand: it's like when your players are runnin' trains on coeds. At first, maybe they can snag a coed in a quad somewhere. Start playing better, and they might just get one will go into the lobby with you. That's about where they're at right now. But they'll get to that 7th floor. Just give them time.

Elsewhere in the state of Florida, Gator fans briefly feared the worst when football Messiah, Tim Tebow, was laying motionless on the turf after receiving a blow to the back of his head at the end of a vicious sack. Tebow now finds himself in a hospital bed, but football announcers across the country expect him to rise again in three days.

Ohio State Fans Have Reason To Cheer (Until Early January, At Least)

While everyone else was busy sweating those #5 vs #12 matchups in their brackets, high school phenom quarterback Terrelle Pryor was conducting a press conference in which he finally made the anti-climactic announcement that he would be attending the "University of Ohio State." After months of deliberation, during which Michigan, Penn State, and Oregon had all been pursuing him, Pryor realized that huddled in the warmth of Jim Tressell's sweater vests is where he wants to be.

It's understandable that Pryor took his time in making such an important decision in his career. When you look at all the factors, it really does make sense that he would elect to go to Ohio State. Here are just some of the reasons that Pryor ultimately chose to be a Buckeye:

10. All of Pryor's classes at Jeannette High School qualify for college credit at OSU.

9. The only way a Rich Rodriguez quarterback can make it to the NFL is as a wide receiver.

8. Found it too difficult to maintain focus around the Oregon cheerleaders. He won't have such problems in Columbus.

7. Got Freaked out by Joe Paterno's Friday night invitation to feed off of the blood of the living.

6. Heard there might still be some bottles of Grey Goose leftover in Maurice Clarett's old locker.

5. Ever since he was a little boy, Pryor dreamed of one day losing a big game to an SEC school.

4. There's nothing to do at Penn State other than party, play football, and hook up with coeds....whoops.

3. Not very excited about Mike Belotti's "no ACL, no problem" policy with his quarterbacks.

2. Michigan already has their "high school phenom turned NFL flop" legacy established with Drew Henson.

1. When Kirk Herbstreit holds you close and looks at you with those baby blue eyes, how can you possibly say no?

Touchdown Jesus and Ann Arbor Got Worked Over At the Football Orgy

Now that the hangover has lifted and the dust has settled, it's time to take a quick look back at what was a very entertaining opening weekend of college football:

While Lloyd Carr will deservedly be on the hot seat after the Wolverines' historic loss, it was actually poor coaching by Appalachian State that provided viewers with such a frenetic finish. Trailing 32-32 with no timeouts remaining, App State drove down to the Michigan five yard line for a first down with 30 seconds remaining in the game, at which time Michigan called timeout. Even tho App State didn't have a timeout to rely on, 30 seconds would have been plenty of time for the Mountaineers to run a play up the middle (or more conservatively, take a knee), then line-up and wait to spike the ball with little time remaining so that the field goal attempt would be the last play of the game. Or at the very least, force Michigan to burn one more timeout before kicking the field goal. Instead, coach Jerry Moore elected to kick the field goal on 1st down and left 26 seconds on the clock for Michigan to respond. Then with 15 seconds left and Michigan at their own 34 and needing to go deep, App State called a defense that somehow allowed Mario Manningham to be single covered running down the sideline for a 46 yard bomb that put Michigan in field goal range. Fortunately for the Mountaineers, their kick block team was able to salvage the upset victory; however they never would have been put in that position in the first place if it weren't for some very shoddy coaching decisions...

If you're a Wolverines fan still mourning this weekend's loss, perhaps you can find solace in this glass-half-full stat: Never has a top 25 team that lost to a I-AA team not won the national championship in that same year. So see? There's still hope.

The person most disappointed by Michigan's early loss is Jim Harbaugh, who undoubtedly believed that he had a few years to make an impression at Stanford in order to get consideration to be Carr's successor at Michigan. Now it appears that Carr has to be given the boot sooner rather than later, and I doubt that's enough time for Harbaugh to establish himself. However despite a 45-17 loss, Jim Harbaugh's debut has to be considered a success if for no other reason than that unlike his predecessor, Walt Harris, Harbaugh actually appeared to be aware that there was a football game being played on the field; and the object was to score points while preventing the other team from doing the same. In Palo Alto, that's progress...

The best development to come out the UCLA-Stanford game for Bruins fans may have been that Kai Forbath, UCLA's kicker, missed two field goal attempts. Perhaps now, whenever the Bruins get inside an opponent's 30 yard line, Karl Dorrell may have to actually focus on getting the ball in the end zone instead of being satisfied with just reaching field goal range...

I'd like to apologize to Brady Quinn for all the times when I suggested that he was just a product of Charlie Weis's system at Notre Dame. As we all saw Saturday, the system really isn't all that great...

I'd also like to apologize for dreaming of a 0-8 start for the Irish. I was selling their ninth opponent, Air Force, short. The Falcons certainly have enough talent to keep the Irish winless through nine...

Notre Dame fans are really wishing that Darius Walker had returned for his senior year. For that matter, Darius Walker really wishes that Darius Walker had returned for his senior year. I don't know just how good of a year the Irish could have had with Walker on the team, but for Darius it would have had to have been a better year than sitting on the practice squad for the Houston Texans will be...

"Everyone just go deep" stat of the day: Tim Tebow threw for 300 yards. On only 13 completions...

There have only been two wide receivers to ever win the Heisman trophy award, and both of them also returned punts (Tim Brown 1987, Desmond Howard 1991). It's a longshot, but with his performance against Tennessee on national tv, DeSean Jackson just put his name in contention to become the third.

Colin Cowherd is now part of one of ESPN's announcing teams, and while I'll admit that I was rooting against him, I also must admit that as far as ESPN talking heads being put in the booth go, Cowherd is vastly superior to his NFL counterpart, Tony Kornheiser. Cowherd chose to work the game as a straight-forward analyst, and while I don't think his qualifications in that arena are any stronger than those of anyone reading this site, I'd still rather hear someone with that approach as opposed to someone just looking for moments to squeeze in the one-liners they wrote down the night before...

Finally, you might think that there isn't a food in existence that corpulent Kansas head coach Mark Mangino doesn't enjoy. But as it turns out, he isn't the biggest fan of hot dogs (audio, NSFW but quite entertaining...Hat tip: Every Day Should Be Saturday):