Sometimes it hurts to be good.
That’s the lesson a slew of top-tier college football teams learned the hard way in one of the most upset-laden weekends in recent memory.
From the Pacific to the Swampland, up the coast to Jersey and all the way across to the Great Lakes, everybody knows somebody who has been affected by The Mother of all Saturdays.
When the smoke cleared on the night of Sept. 29, the AP poll was left shaken, battered and beaten. All in all, nine top-25 teams had lost, including five previously in the top 10.
Some teams lost in the waning seconds, some lost because they couldn’t kick field goals and other teams simply rolled over like a well-trained dog. Any way you look at it, this past weekend changed the face of this college football season like that John Travolta-Nicolas Cage movie.
Starting at the top, there were several big name schools that were expected to compete for a national title. That is, until Saturday.
There was No. 3 Oklahoma (now No. 10), blowing a 24-7 second-half lead to an unranked Colorado team. Their hyped up offense struggled against the Buffs’ defense, converting one third-down in nine opportunities and putting up only 230 yards of total offense.
The Sooners’ ball control offense only had possession for about one-third of the game. That’s like an hour-long Showtime Rotisserie (“Just set it and forget it!”) infomercial that only lasts 20 minutes.
It just ain’t right.
Then there was No. 5 West Virginia (now No. 13) on Friday night, making the South Florida Bulls look like the Indianapolis Colts. Considering the Bulls have only been a Division I-A program since 2001 and the Mountaineers’ offense is harder to stop than a chubby kid at a twinkie convention, there was no reason to expect this one to be close.
But without star quarterback Pat White, who left the game with an injury, the Mountaineers were only a shadow of their former selves, collapsing down the stretch and giving the Bulls’ program its biggest win ever.
But the ‘Neers weren’t the only championship contenders who may have been knocked out in one fell swoop.
The Florida Gators, who snuck into last year’s championship game because UCLA cleared them a spot by beating USC, got dropped at home by an unranked Auburn team.
Their 18-game winning streak at home? Snapped.
Avenging their only loss last season? Not this time.
Another chance at a second straight title? About as overly optimistic as Michael Vick learning something from the “Developing Empathy for Animals” PETA seminar he took last month.
Along with the Sooners, Mountaineers and Gators, Texas and Rutgers rounded out the losing half of the former top-ten, losing to two unranked teams (Kansas St. and Maryland, respectively) by a combined 30 points.
Now, instead of the top-10 looking like a laundry list of historic football schools, it resembles Castor Troy after the transplant ““ it looks similar but something is just off.
Those somethings are USF, Boston College and Kentucky sitting pretty at rankings 6, 7 and 8.
Where did these schools come from? BC hasn’t been good since the Doug Flutie era 60 years ago, the Bulls’ program is just over a decade old, and since when did Kentucky even have a football team?
These are all questions that will be answered in the coming weeks but until then, brace yourself ““ South Florida is only 60 to 1 on winning the national title.
E-mail Feder at jfeder@media.ucla.edu if you like the TCU Horned Frogs at 1000 to 1.