With the completion of week one, college football is officially back. It did not disappoint. The first story of Saturday was Deion’s new Colorado team traveling into Fort Worth to take on the runner-ups of last year’s college football season, the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs, as over 20-point underdogs. Their statement-style win sent social media into a frenzy after many people had little optimism for Coach Primes’ first season with the desolate program. The Buffalos were not the only team with a huge week one upset. Fresno State took down Purdue in Lafayette, Northern Illinois won at Boston College, and Texas State beat Baylor on the road while also being over a 20-point underdog. All while the losing teams paid the smaller schools over $2 million for them to come to play them.
The early Saturday slate also involved three top-four teams in the country, Georgia, Alabama, and Ohio State, all starting new quarterbacks. Jalon Milroe of Alabama had a stud of a start. Carson Beck of Georgia took care of business. Ohio State dealt with a game of quarterback carousel struggling to put a far lesser opponent away early, which could be a problem as the season progresses. Another big team, the Clemson Tigers, has been feeling the media’s wrath after losing to Duke on Labor Day. They had put much of the blame for the team’s failure to compete for a National Championship last year on their former quarterback, DJ Uiagalelei, who had a near-perfect start to his 2023 season this year playing for Oregon State. The Tiger’s new quarterback Cade Klubnik showed little promise in the opener, pushing many people’s eyes to blame the head coach Dabo Swinney. Since the beginning of the new transfer portal and NIL rules, Swinney has been reluctant to adjust to these league changes. He is now being offered an ‘adapt or die’ ultimatum as programs that have utilized these new rules are surging in success early on.
The most anticipated game this week without a doubt was Louisiana State University(LSU) playing Florida State University(FSU) on a neutral site in Orlando. This was a top-ten matchup with both teams having darkhorse national title ambitions. LSU led by 3 after both sides had a rather sloppy first half by their standards, but in the second half FSU came out and played a near-perfect last 30 minutes on offense leading to a convincing 45-24 win. This highly changed the trajectory for both teams as many are confident of FSU’s ability to compete for it all this year while starting to question LSU’s true identity as they played in a way many were not used to.
Next week College GameDay heads to Tuscaloosa Alabama for the blockbuster game when Texas comes to town to play the Crimson Tide. Other valuable matchups include Nebraska @ Colorado, Ole Miss @ Tulane, A&M @ Miami, Appalachian State University @ University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Auburn @ University of California, Burkley.