NCAABy Kevin McGuire on

College football served up an entertaining start to the season with an extended Week 1 that did not disappoint from Thursday to Monday night. Here are some passing thoughts as we prepare to turn the page from Week 1 to Week 2. Was it the greatest opening week that had been hyped for over a year? If not, it felt pretty darn close.

Only fools bet against Alabama. I was a fool.

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Alabama doesn’t rebuild. They reload.

No matter how many players Alabama loses (like Jonathan Allen, for example), the Crimson Tide are a factory of defensive superstars. Florida State was the highest-ranked opponent Alabama has faced in the season opener, yet the Tide remained a firm seven-point favorite over the Noles all week long. I thought that was silly. I actually picked Florida State to pull the upset.

Man, oh man, was I wrong. So silly of me to second-guess Alabama, right?

I choose to believe it was my faith in Florida State to win a tight one, but I should have known better. Alabama’s defense took care of Florida State like it was nothing. I may not know what we should expect from Florida State the rest of the season without Deondre Francois, but I know for darn sure I’m not going to be picking against Alabama at all any more this season (and for the record, that was the case even before the season started, as my game-by-game predictions with Athlon Sports will confirm).

So, uh, good luck, Fresno State.

Pulling off an upset is hard

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Ohio State opened the year on the road at Indiana and looked bewildered by the Hoosiers in the first half, only to blow the doors open in the second half for a decisive victory. The next night, Washington was in New Jersey struggled through most of the first half before getting to halftime with a 10-7 lead. Despite not scoring its first offensive touchdown until around the nine-minute mark of the third quarter (against Rutgers!), Washington prevailed by 17 points on the road.

At the same time that game was going on, Wisconsin had clawed its way out of a 10-0 deficit at home against Utah State and was on its way to a hard-fought win.

Indiana, Utah State, and Rutgers all learned a valuable lesson and played out a story that has been written time and time again in this sport. All three managed to take their favored opponents by surprise early on, but none had what it took to keep a foot on their opponent to keep them down. Talent eventually prevailed.

But at least Rutgers fans could watch their team from a hot tub.

Which Texas team had it worst in Week 1?

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Was it the Texas Longhorns getting ambushed at home by Maryland to spoil the coaching debut of Tom Herman in Austin? Or Baylor getting topped at home by Liberty, the school that hired Baylor’s former AD amid controversy, thus spoiling Matt Rhule’s coaching debut in Waco? Or maybe you think blowing a 34-point second-half lead is pretty bad. Texas A&M did that at UCLA.

Take your pick, because they each stunk like a skunk.

I should mention it wasn’t all bad for college football fans in the state of Texas. Texas Tech had no problem with Eastern Washington and raised money for Hurricane Harvey relief with donations for each touchdown scored. TCU blasted their FCS foe, Jackson State. Houston and UTSA postponed their game due to the storm in Houston, but SMU had a fun opening week as well.

Group of Five Ranking

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Which team is on track to grab the automatic seat at the New Year’s Six table this season? Here’s how I rank the top five Group of Five contenders at this point.

As a reminder, only conference champions are eligible for the New Year’s Six automatic spot. This will come into play later in the year once the conference championship picture comes into view, but for now it’s anybody’s game. Except for UNLV. Also, remember that BYU, Army, and UMass are not eligible for consideration as they are not conference members.

  1. USF
  2. Navy
  3. Air Force
  4. Memphis
  5. Boise State

So much for the resurgence of the Mountain West Conference.

Just the stats

Army opened its season with a 63-7 blowout of Fordham. All of a sudden, Army is used to scoring that many points in a game. It’s been a while since that was the case.

It was a rough week for the ACC, with a 0-3 mark against the SEC. Two teams in those games — NC State and Georgia Tech — joined some rare company in their losing efforts.

Box Score of the Week

Slackers couldn’t even reach the 100-point mark.

You are absolutely reading that score correctly. Division 3 powerhouse Saint John’s University never let off the gas pedal in a 98-0 rout of St. Scholastica, a private college in Duluth, Minnesota. You won’t find anything about this game on the St. Scholastica website (trust me, I looked), and that is understandable.

Saint John’s rushed for 337 yards and accumulated just 560 yards in the game, going a clean 9-for-9 on red zone trips. They also only held the football for 28:44. The defense scored on a 37-yard interception and a 73-yard fumble and three different quarterbacks threw at least one touchdown.

Everyone’s got a gimmick these days

If you watched college football this weekend, then you probably saw the newest growing trend around the sport with a sideline trophy routine celebrating turnovers created by the defense. Those who tuned in to the Tennessee-Georgia Tech game saw the latest gimmick cooked up by Butch Jones, as if branding each season’s team wasn’t enough, with the trash can. The Vols will bring their recovered ball to the sideline and dunk it in the trash can. OK, weird. Whatever gets you going.

Miami players now have a giant gold chain. Texas A&M players have a pimp stick. If we’re going to go all on on new traditions, give me Iowa’s latest tradition.

My Top 4

Every week I will give you two separate playoff picks. The first will be how I would seed the top four teams given everything we have seen on the field up to that point in the season. That means taking into account only your on-field performance, who you defeated (or lost to), how strong I feel your strength of schedule is with regard to the difficulty of the games played at the time they were played (some teams get banged up along the way and are a mere shell of what they were a month ago), and so on.

The second set of playoff picks will be how I forecast the season playing out the rest of the way, which means the picks could change given the results witnessed along the way.

In the first few weeks, I do not anticipate my playoff forecast will change much, but some teams are going to lose or win games I was not counting on in my preseason predictions, so I will have to adjust along the way at some point (unless I’m spot on with my predictions, in which case I hope nothing ever changes in the second set of picks).

If the College Football Playoff started today…

  1. Alabama
  2. Michigan
  3. Clemson
  4. Penn State

How do I see the playoff playing out from this point on? For now, I’m standing by my preseason prediction for the moment, but I am nervous about Florida State until I see what happens with them in the next couple of weeks.

  1. Alabama
  2. Ohio State
  3. Florida State
  4. Penn State

Here is how I voted in this week’s Super 16 poll from the FWAA and National Football Foundation.

What’s On Tap?

The Big Ten had a fine and dandy Week 1, but buckle up for Week 2. Ohio State hosts Oklahoma in the game of the week, and Nebraska flies to Oregon, Iowa plays Iowa State, Northwestern visits Duke, and Penn State plays Pittsburgh. That is a lot of games against power conferences to deal with. The SEC is taking the week off for the most part, but Clemson taking on Auburn should be entertaining.

Check back next week for another edition of McGuire’s Musings. The column will add more as more games are played. You can also submit your questions on Twitter or in the comment section below to be featured in next week’s column.

About Kevin McGuire

Contributor to Athlon Sports and The Comeback. Previously contributed to NBCSports.com. Host of the Locked On Nittany Lions Podcast. FWAA member and Philadelphia-area resident.

View all posts by Kevin McGuire

1 thought on “McGuire’s Musings: Only fools doubt Alabama, pulling upsets is hard, and everyone has a gimmick”

  1. Army scored 60 against Fordham (Patriot League), Lafayette (Patriot League), Morgan State (MEAC), and UTEP (hey a FBS school!!!)

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