Is Upset Fever in The Air: Six Upsets That Are Bound To Come True

Last year the University of South Florida got the season rolling with not one but two big upsets and this year the Beavers have fittingly popped the proverbial ... cork off the upset champagne.

Last night's upset by the Beavers got me thinking that the stars may be aligned for another ULTIMATE UPSET EXTRAVAGANZA or whatever ESPN's committee in charge of naming things ends up calling it.  

First, the Nation's top teams are psyched that USC lost.  They know this opens the door for either a Big 12 or SEC champion and they are so excited they want to check Orbitz for good prices on airplane tickets and hotels.   Focus sing on Sister Mary's college for the blind will be a little harder with images of crystal footballs dancing in their eyes.

Secondly, this weekend is being described as a one game weekend. Alabama v. UGA.  All the other games aren't "compelling" enough for sophisticated NFL fans or over-weight radio personalities.  The last time I recall a weekend full of dull uninteresting automatic wins was week 5 of last season and that ended up including three major upsets to Florida #3, Oklahoma #4, and West Virginia #5. Again the first week of Autumn brings us a seemingly benign weekend of less than compelling matchups that may just fly under a better teams radar.

And thanks to the brilliant 40 second play clock idea, the games have about two-thirds as many plays as they did last season so upsets are a lot more likely. Does Oregon State hold on under last year's rules? It's hard to say but Pete Carrol sure would like his chances if his offense had 15 more plays.

Wisconsin is favored against Michigan at the Big House but the Badgers better watch out if they think they can walk into Ann Arbor and dominate the Wolverines.  Badgers are no match for a Wolverine in the wild and things like this can't be overlooked.  The Badgers haven't won in the big house since 1994.  Its not that easy for a program to overcome that kind of domination. ie Florida needed the Wyatt Sexton miracle to win in Tallahassee.  Michigan meanwhile has won 22 straight Big Ten home openers.  (do they start off with Northwestern every year?)  I predict the Rodriguez spread will look a little more in sync than it did against Utah and Notre Dame and the Wolverines will give their unemployed fan base something to cheer about - or is that Michigan State? I can never remember who Flint residents root for.

Next on upset alert is the mighty Univeristy of Florida.  Gator fans know that Ole Miss owns them in a weird kind of perpetual upset - Britain owning Germany - sort of way. Though Florida won last year, the rebels destroyed the Gators secondary and forced Florida to run Tebow on 70% of their plays. Tebow threw on the other 9 plays. not actually true. Add to that fact Florida's freshmen class was born the same year Ole Miss rocked the pre-swamp astro-turf laden stadium's jean-short wearin', mustache growin' crowd to its knees ushering in the "Bench Kyle Morris" era, soon to be followed by the "lets go deep era."  The fact that no one at Florida remotely remembers this game tells me that the old adage about ignoring history and repeating it may come true for the Gators.

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