In college football, respect is earned. There are only a handful of football programs who will never lose their respect like Ohio State, USC, Oklahoma and Texas.

Then there are the teams in the BCS power conferences who easily earn respect by having a winning season.

Then there are the mid-majors that will likely never earn respect just because of who they are and what they stand for.

Utah State is the latter.

The Utah State Aggies play in the Western Athletic Conference, which is known to be one of the worst FBS football conferences, right next to the Sun Belt.

They came into this season with zero respect but came out with their fair share at the end of Week 1. They were supposed to be Auburn's punching bag but nearly ruined their season. The Aggies choked but that was actually a good thing. They weren't supposed to even have the opportunity to choke against the defending national champs.

Utah State's freshman quarterback completed 23 out of 30 passes, and their running game scored most of their 38 points. They look like a team that can do a lot this season with rivals Hawaii and BYU being their toughest opponents remaining on their schedule. Chuckie Keeton might be one of those special college quarterbacks who take their team to four straight bowl games.

As for Auburn, many experts believe that the Tigers will not successfully defend their title and not even make the conference championship game.