With the BCS now defunct and a new 4-team playoff system in place, many were eagerly anticipating the start of another college football season last week. For most, it didn’t disappoint.
Texas A&M replaced star quarterback Johnny Manziel and two other first-round offensive draft picks by trotting out a redshirt freshman at QB and watching him throw for 511 yards, as the double-digit underdog Aggies went into South Carolina and handed the Gamecocks a 52-28 thrashing. Kenny Hill, son of a former Major League Baseball pitcher, was probably the out-of-nowhere standout of the weekend, but plenty of other teams and individuals had their own kinds of fun, as well. See this LINK for more thoughts on last week’s action.
Even a 55-7 game can have its own sort of fascination. When Carl Pellini was named head coach at Florida Atlantic after the Dec. 2011 season, he arranged for his Boca Raton-based Owls to take a trip to Nebraska to face his brother Bo Pelini’s Cornhuskers. But with the Owls laboring at 2-6 last fall, Carl Pelini resigned after the FAU athletic director confronted him with reports of illegal drug use. The Owls would win their last four games with an interim coach. Still, Bo Pelini showed no mercy toward the institution that forced his brother’s resignation, racking up nearly 800 yards in the aforementioned 55-7 thrashing.
Favorites had things their way late in the weekend, with all 3 of the Sunday and Monday night home favorites getting the money. With Notre Dame getting the cash in the big NBC Saturday afternoon game, USC covering in the stand-alone FOX early evening game and LSU landing on 4 (many places closed 3.5) in its ESPN game vs. Wisconsin, there were a lot of glum sportsbook operators in Vegas and offshore.
Florida State’s non-covering effort against Oklahoma State and Alabama’s likewise lackluster win-but-no-cover against West Virginia (each game was at a neutral site) were the only things keeping the favorite players from a monster weekend. And now, with Week 2 looming, it’s time to fire it back up again.
For more recaps of week 1 play, click on this LINK.
