It was another fun Saturday (and Friday, and Thursday for that matter) in college football, and as always I had my pad and pen in hand, writing down all the sights and sounds that needed documentation.

For those of you who might be reading my “20 Thoughts,” for the first time this isn’t necessarily strictly analysis of this past Saturday in college football, you can find that anywhere.

Instead this is about the fumbles, bad hairdo’s, goofy plays and awful announcing that separated this Saturday from all others. And with it being a holiday weekend, there’s even a special guest appearance from my grandma.

Enjoy!

1. First things, first: To all of you who’ve been waiting for this column, I want to apologize. I always like to have it done at the very latest Monday morning. However, I took a little “Aaron Time,” yesterday to go see the Blind Side , so I didn’t get cracking on this until late today.

Anyway, the movie was phenomenal, and for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, it’s a must. Check back here at AaronTorres-Sports.com some time next week, as I plan on doing a full-fledged review.

2. Now, moving on to the weekend: I hate clichés, I really do. They’re boring, annoying and usually unfounded. Just because my starting quarterback says, “We’re only worried about our next opponent,” doesn’t mean I believe him. Dude you’re playing Montana Tech in two days, don’t lie to me!

But as far as one of sports oldest clichés, “Throw out the records when these two rivals meet,” well, it may have gained some traction this weekend. I mean, you know, considering that Georgia beat Georgia Tech, Mississippi State beat Mississippi, NC State beat North Carolina and South Carolina beat Clemson—all as underdogs.

Oh, and I also heard something about Auburn and Alabama playing a good game, and Texas struggling against Texas A&M, too. Maybe that was my imagination though.

3. Beyond clichés, I also hate comparing conferences: But come on, how can you not when two middle of the pack SEC teams beat down the two BEST teams in the ACC? I mean seriously, we all knew the ACC was bad, but Georgia Tech losing at home to Georgia? Really? The same Georgia team that couldn’t get out of its own way against Kentucky on their home field two weeks ago? Really?!?!

A month ago, I thought the ACC was making strides overall as a conference. Now? I’m not so sure.

4. On a similar note: Everyone’s saying the Pac-10 is the best conference in college football, and this is a “down,” year for the SEC.

Well here’s my argument against that. How can a conference be down when by any measurement you take, seven of its teams are significantly better than last year (Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, South Carolina and Tennessee), only three teams are discernibly worse (Georgia and Vanderbilt for sure, and Ole Miss just a little bit), and you have two undefeated top five teams at the end of the year? How?

5. Moving on to the Iron Bowl: I’m not going to talk about it a lot here, considering I spent over 1000 words breaking it down here , late into Friday night.

All I’m going to say is this: What impresses me most about Alabama isn’t their record or their stats. It’s that 85 guys with different skill sets, that were recruited under two different coaching regimes have come together for one common good.

That is a testament to the Alabama players and more so, the coaching staff. The more I think about it, the more I begin to wonder if any coach other than Nick Saban could have put them in this position.

6. Let’s talk some Palmetto football: Want to know the biggest reason why South Carolina had won just one of their previous four games coming into the Clemson rivalry this weekend?

They hadn’t forced a single turnover during that entire stretch. Not one.

They forced three Saturday and got the win. Coincidence? I don’t think sooooo.

7. Even though Clemson lost, I still like Dabo Swinney: One thing I noticed about Swinney is, even after Clemson turned the ball over, not once, but twice in the first half, he remained upbeat and encouraging.

That’s the biggest difference between him and his predecessor Tommy Bowden. Had that been Bowden on the sidelines after the second turnover, he would have had one of those, “Man, I really hope my Athletic Director was in the bathroom for that one,” looks on his face.

To me, that’s the main reason why Clemson struggled with adversity these last few years: The old coach lacked confidence in his players, and it bled into their team psyche. The new coach believes in the guys on the field, and now the Tigers are headed to their first ACC Championship.

Again, this is not a coincidence.

8. Aaron’s prediction that was sure to go wrong…That did: If you read my annual weekend wrap-up last Monday I predicted a Nevada victory over Boise State. Umm… whoops.

Obviously it didn’t happen, and honestly it wasn’t even close. Boise literally controlled the game from the opening kickoff (which Austin Pettis returned for a touchdown), to the final whistle, and the final score of 44-33 wasn’t indicative of how far apart these two teams were all evening long.

More importantly, what was most impressive to me wasn’t the Boise State offense, but a defense that held the Wolfpack to 33 points, which doesn’t sound impressive, until you remember that Nevada had scored at least 50 points in their previous three games. If anything, it proved that Boise can play with any of the big boys that they’re being discussed with for a BCS bowl, whether it’s Iowa, Penn State, Oklahoma State or Miami.

We always defend big conference schools by saying, “You can only beat the opponents on your schedule,” and Boise has done that every step of the way. I hope we give the small school the same benefit this year.

9. Let’s talk Heisman: On a Sunday night edition of College Football Live , Jesse Palmer said something really important that I wanted to make sure to re-emphasize (for the eight people that may be reading this), “The Heisman Trophy is not a career achievement award.”

It shouldn’t be awarded December 12 based on the fact that Colt McCoy has more wins than any other quarterback in the history of the sport, or that Tim Tebow may have three National Championships by the end of the year. It should be awarded to the best player in college football during the 2009 season and only the 2009 season.

(I’d also like to add my own caveat: The Heisman Trophy is also supposed to represent a season’s worth of work. It should not be given to the guy who got hot in the last month, or really hot in the last week. It should be given to the guy that was the best from game one, and stayed consistently the best until game 12 or 13.

And that concerns me a little bit. Especially since McCoy, Tebow, Mark Ingram and C.J. Spiller all get another showcase this weekend in a conference championship game, while Stanford’s Toby Gerhart sits at home as a spectator.

Now I’m not saying that Gerhart should win it, but what I am saying is, if you saw Gerhart’s performance against Notre Dame Saturday—and realized he’s been doing that all year—you’d know that he made a pretty strong case for himself. That’s all.)

10. Speaking of Gerhart: Big shout out to his father, who had the unintentionally funny quote of the weekend, when he discussed what it was like to raise triplet girls with ABC’s Lisa Salters. Papa Gerhart’s quote? (And note, there’s no way I can do it justice here): “That, that is really tough… To have four women in the house.”

Umm, yeh, we all knew that Mr. G., but thanks for being politically correct. Maybe though, you could give some of us future fathers a little bit of real advice about how things are really going to be. Maybe something like:

“It’s tough, really tough. I had a full head of hair when those girls were born, now look at me! I’ve got the same haircut as Dr. Phil! I used to be good looking! What the hell happened to me?”

Or, “That is tough. As a matter of fact, its real tough. Lisa, it’s killing me. I swear, if I get woken up one more time by a blow dryer, I swear to God I’m going to strangle someone.”

11. The Award for the second unintentionally funny quote of the week goes to: Verne Lundquist, when he said on Saturday’s Florida State-Florida broadcast:

“I look forward to this promo, once every year… It’s the Victoria’s Secret fashion show on CBS.” Now there’s a man who’s telling the truth!

Then, what made that quote 20 times better was when it quickly led to a 90 second pop culture conversation between Lundquist and his partner Gary Danielson, in which Danielson actually asked the question, “Is there just one Black Eyed Peas group or more? Because I swear, those guys are everywhere.”

Yes that conversation really happened. And yes, I’m also pretty sure that some producer at CBS lost his job because of it.

(This is just a part of Aaron's 20 Thoughts From a College Football Saturday. To read all of his work, including this article in its entirety, please click here , or visit him at www.aarontorres-sports.com )