Well that was fun, wasn’t it? Here are 15 thoughts from a weekend that somehow surpassed the hype.
1. How long had we been talking about this weekend? How often do we hype things up in this sport only to then get disappointed? Somehow, this crazy September Saturday delivered. Hell, it started delivering on Friday, with three games all decided by three points or in OT, including a 14-point fourth-quarter comeback in Corvallis that ended past 2 a.m. ET.
2. Then we got Saturday, which began with Illinois upsetting USC (told ya!) and with Jeremiyah Love putting on a show at noon ET, continued with Indiana avoiding a letdown (and avoiding a cover!) at Kinnick in the afternoon, and peaked with dueling slugfests in Athens and Happy Valley at night. (Let’s not forget BYU coming back to beat Colorado in a game that ended at 1:30 a.m. ET, either.) Alabama (11:13 p.m.) and Oregon (11:14) won on the road at almost the exact same time, sending hundreds of thousands of fans home disappointed deep into the night.
3. Start with Bama. We picked the Crimson Tide in the preseason to reach the national title game — losing to Penn State, funny enough — and boy has Kalen DeBoer’s program already lived a couple of different lives through the season’s first month. From the letdown at FSU to owning Kirby Smart once again (Smart is 1-7 against Bama), the Tide have become must-watch TV every week. They have temporarily quieted talk about whether DeBoer is the long-term fit for Tuscaloosa, but as we all know, that can change in a week’s time: After all, Vanderbilt is next.