We\u2019ve only had one week of a full slate of games, and it seems like there\u2019s already plenty to talk about.\u00a0 To wit:<\/p>\n
With #15 Houston\u2019s 33-23 win over #3 Oklahoma, and Wisconsin\u2019s 16-14 upset of #5 LSU, it marks the first time since 1972 that two AP preseason top-5 teams were beaten in their first game of the season (#1 Nebraska lost to UCLA 20-17; #4 Arkansas lost to USC, 31-10).\u00a0 We almost had two other top-5 teams go down before Clemson held on to beat Auburn and Florida State rallied to beat Ole Miss.\u00a0 In addition, #10 Notre Dame was beaten in overtime by an unranked Texas, meaning two top-10 teams lost to unranked opponents.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t give one a lot of faith in those preseason polls , does it?<\/p>\n
With a 24-7 win over Massachusetts, Florida won their first game for the 27th<\/sup> straight year, the longest current streak in the country.\u00a0 The last time the Gators lost an opening game was a 24-19 loss to Ole Miss in 1989. However, two other such long winning streaks were snapped.\u00a0 USC, which hadn\u2019t lost a season opener on the field since 1997 (14-7 to Florida State; the Trojans vacated a 63-17 win over Hawaii in 2005), lost to Alabama 52-6. Missouri lost 26-11 to West Virginia, breaking a 14-game streak (the Tigers lost in former coach Gary Pinkel\u2019s first game in 2001 to Bowling Green, 20-13).<\/p>\n The SEC is often recognized as the best of the Power 5 conferences. However, its reputation was somewhat tarnished in the first week.\u00a0 The conference had seven teams lose their first game; that\u2019s the most SEC teams ever to lose their first game.\u00a0 The previous record was six, last set in 1995. SEC teams had non-conference losses to ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Conference USA, and Sun Belt teams (at least they went 2-0 against the Pac-12). In addition, there were close wins against Conference USA and Sun Belt teams. The \u201cSEC\u201d chants aren\u2019t quite as loud right now as they\u2019ve been in years past.\u00a0 However, they do have one bright spot: they were the only conference to post three wins against ranked opponents this week.\u00a0 In addition to Alabama\u2019s win over then-#20 USC, Texas A&M beat then-#16 UCLA, and Georgia beat then-#22 North Carolina.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve mentioned plenty of times in this space before about how service academy football has a special place in my heart, so I feel obligated to point out this little tidbit: each of the major service academy teams won their opening game this year (Army 28-13 over Temple; Navy 52-16 over Fordham; Air Force 37-21 over Abilene Christian). That makes each team 1-0 for only the second time since the turn of the millennium (2013 was the only other time).<\/p>\n Other interesting notes: Washington State lost to an FCS team in its opener for the second straight year, 45-42 to Eastern Washington. The Cougars still managed to finish 9-4 with a bowl win last year, so perhaps all is not lost\u2026other FCS winners over FBS teams included Northern Iowa (25-20 over Iowa State) and Richmond (37-20 over Virginia).<\/p>\n Congratulations to TheColombian<\/strong>, who takes week one in a tie-breaker victory over In Accord<\/strong>!\u00a0 Each finished with 225 points. Shame! Shame!<\/strong> and notlastagain<\/strong> tied for third with 220 points.<\/p>\n After the sheer number of great matchups and exciting games that were on the docket in the opener, it might be a little tougher to come by interesting games this week.\u00a0 But, hey, it\u2019s still college football!\u00a0 There are 23 games on our schedule this week, so a lot of points are at stake.\u00a0 The first game this week is Louisville at Syracuse (\u201cin a classic ACC matchup\u201d, he said, coughing), Friday, September 9 @ 8 PM ET<\/strong>, so make sure to get your picks in by then!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019ve only had one week of a full slate of games, and it seems like there\u2019s already plenty to talk about.\u00a0 To wit: With #15 Houston\u2019s 33-23 win over #3 Oklahoma, and Wisconsin\u2019s 16-14 upset of #5 LSU, it marks the first time since 1972 that two AP preseason top-5 teams were beaten in their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}