Cougars Pull It Off and Cowboys, Tide Roll: College Football Week One Recap

(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Week one has come and gone and left us with a pile of unanswered questions, expectations, and bodies (the latter courtesy of one LeGarrette Blount). What week one really taught us was that preseason rankings mean absolutely nothing, squat, zilch, nada, and this may be one of those crazy seasons where anything is possible every week. But then again, so is almost every year.

The big story of the weekend is the condition of Oklahoma’s Heisman-winning quarterback, Sam Bradford and how long it’ll take for him to return to action. It is safe to say though, without Bradford, Oklahoma is a shell of the team they were last year (not to take any credit away from BYU, more on them a bit later on).

Sure, a Bradford-less Oklahoma can waltz over the likes of Idaho State and Tulsa, but a less than 100 percent Bradford-led Sooners may find bit more trouble going against the likes of Oklahoma St. and Texas, which is very bad news for the Sooners title chances. They can still get there if they run the table, but they need a healthy Bradford for it.

Now, regardless of who was under center, BYU deserves all the credit in the world for pulling the upset, their defense looked good even when Bradford was playing and seemed to turn it up a notch during the final quarter, when the game was on the line. The fact that Oklahoma was playing a Redshirt-Freshman during all of the second half means little the way the Cougars D was playing.

And America, meet Max Hall.

For two years all Hall did was help BYU to a 22-5 record, doing it all in relative obscurity. Saturday was his coming out party, and his 23rd win was his biggest. The last scoring drive was beautifully executed and showed the kind of player Hall is. The line of recent Quarterbacks from smaller schools leading them to national prominence is long (Colt Brennan, Nate Davis, Brian Johnson, among others) and Max Hall just joined it.

The Mountain West is quickly becoming the “other conference,” the one that is as good as a BCS conference, but is not one. Really, with the likes of Utah, BYU, and TCU, this cannot be considered one of the “small” or “weaker” conferences and if one of these teams goes undefeated, I see no reason why they should not be ranked as high as an undefeated team from, say, the Big Ten or the ACC. Once more, the BCS proves itself ineffective, and it’s only week one.

The week did begin on Thursday, with a snoozer between NC State and South Carolina, which doesn’t even merit a recap. Then ESPN promised an embarrassment of scoring between Boise St. and Oregon, and let’s just say that there was not much scoring (or even first-downs) but there was plenty of embarrassment on the Oregon side, during and after the game.

The Ducks were completely and thoroughly dominated all game long by a more disciplined, better coached and just better Boise State team. Afterwards Mr. Blount, who said they (Oregon) owed Boise St. an a**-whooping, and proceeded to back his comments by rushing for -5 yards, took matter into his own hands and dropped a Boise St. player dumb enough to mess with a 6’2” 240lbs. pissed off man with a single right straight, then went all Artest on the Boise fans and had to be contained by the police.

Sportsmanship week is kind of ironic now.

Jokes aside, Oregon did the right thing suspending Blount for the season and effectively ending his college career.

The next big piece of news has to be Oklahoma State and their performance against Georgia. We knew Mike Gundy was a man, we knew he was 40 (he kind of forced it on us) but now we know he has a defense good enough to go along with his high-powered offense.

The Cowboys’ D held Georgia to only three points after giving up a score in their first drive and did a great job while the offense was trying to get in rhythm. Now, it is true that this is a new Georgia offense, but it was an impressive performance nonetheless, and all the hype about Oklahoma State may be indeed justified.

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