10 Things That Put Your Faith Back into College Football This Week

There has rarely been a week when college football has been so down. One of its greatest legacies—due to his own fault more than anything else—is out and the game is on its knees.

But if you needed a Saturday to give you faith in the game again, then this was it.

Here are a few reasons:

1) The atmosphere at Penn State AFTER the team lost to Nebraska. You would have perhaps expected booing for a last minute failure of the offense to win. Instead, “We. Are. Penn State.” rumbled around Beaver Stadium so noisily that you would have thought the boys in the blue had won the game. The healing seems to have begun, and let’s hope it continues without getting much worse.

2) Upset Saturday (A)! No. 4 Stanford lost its first game of the season 53-30 to a very quick and frankly better Oregon side. Andrew Luck looked like a consensus No.1 draft pick at times, but the speed of the Ducks stole the show.

The atmosphere, buoyed by College Gameday’s presence, was absolutely unbelievable at Stanford—an unusual thing if you think of Cardinal fans’ knack of not actually showing up to games. Oh, and well done to the Oregon cheerleaders. Suddenly—to misquote Brent Musberger: “Ten-thousand red-blooded males suddenly signed up for the University of Oregon."

3) Upset Saturday (B) No. 6 Boise State loses—at home we might add—on a missed field goal to TCU. The two-point conversion by the Horned Frogs a minute beforehand was pretty cool, too! What a game—and sad there had to be a loser.

4) Crazy, sexy, four overtime (A): One of college football’s good guys, Bill Snyder, continued the magic with a FOUR OVERTIME titanic battle against Texas A&M. Collin Klein, his since-this-season unheard of quarterback ran in five touchdowns. The Little Apple was rocking!

5) Crazy, sexy overtimes (B): Baylor beat Kansas in overtime in a game that on paper wasn’t a classic, but became one once the Jayhawks established a double-digit lead early on. Robert Griffin, take a bow: We’re looking forward to seeing you in the NFL.

6) Crazy, sexy overtimes (C): Purdue upsets Ohio State in a stunner that no-one really saw coming—unless you’re a Buckeyes fan, who must HATE playing Ohio State right now.

7) Pac-12 South Craziness: With UCLA getting dusted by Utah, you would have thought Arizona State would take care of Washington State, and once against take control of the Pac-12 South? Well, they lost by 10 to the suddenly-improved Cougars, who made another set of Cougars walk home unhappy.

8) Old School Battle (A): Georgia hammers Auburn in one of college football’s longest rivalries. It wasn’t even close. This Georgia team looks gooooood, folks—and especially the defense, who strangled Michael Dyer. Could this team upset LSU? Could it?

9) Old-school battle (B): Miami vs. Florida State went from blow-out to 23-19 close-call in favour of the Seminoles in another classic atmosphere in Tuscaloosa.

10) Clemson clinches! We haven’t said this in a while, but Clemson beat Wake Forest in dramatic fashion (not unusual in the "other" Death Valley) on a last second field goal. The joy of the kicker made us realise why we love college football so much.  It’s not always about the quarterbacks, is it?