The Morning After the Morning After - Week 1

It's tough to take much away from week one wins against your traditional menu of cupcakes. Every impressive performance is tempered by "but they played _______". Still, overvaluing a good day against a bad team is better than trying to assess what happened in Ann Arbor. That might take months. Today, we'll just start with the weekend that was...

The block heard 'round the world. How much more is there to say about Appalachian State? The most amazing thing to immediately come out of their win was this little tidbit from Yahoo! Sports: 0 people playing in all of Yahoo's college pick'em games picked the Mountaineers. Zero. There wasn't one ASU alum who wanted to goad a Wolverine in his group? Not a single unabashed homer?

That's how illogical a victory for Appy State seemed coming in but that's not why I'm comfortable calling it the greatest college football upset ever. I'm confident doing that because when everyone in the country started asking the question Saturday afternoon there wasn't one readily available game to refute the claim. Dan Borst listed the top 10 upsets for FOXSports.com, ranking ASU-UM #3 but, without looking, which two games beat it out? Pete Fiutak claimed that Temple's 1998 win over Virginia Tech was bigger, but how many people remembered that immediately after the sky fell at the Big House?

Quite simply, college football didn't have that one David v. Goliath game that everyone could recall. Now they do.

Formerly easier to say. From a national perspective the biggest issue to come to light in the Appy State aftermath was not scheduling or Lloyd Carr's future or poll position but rather how ridiculous the whole 1-AA/Football Championship Series naming swap truly is. Every single story on Saturday had to use the phrase "formerly 1-AA" to describe the enormity of the upset because the FCS/FBS distinction wasn't ever an issue prior to this. But now that we all have had the opportunity to read and work with it, we can officially toss the "formerly 1-AA" tag, ignore the unwieldy Subdivision and just go with the abbreviations.

Thank you Appalachian State for ending our long national nightmare.

Simple. Effective. I don't know why I was watching Idaho-USC late Saturday night given the sure blowout that awaited, but I'm glad I was because I was able to see one of the best tributes to a teammate in recent memory. After scoring their first touchdown of the season the Trojans lined up for the extra point without their kicker in tribute to Mario Danelo. They took the delay of game and displayed as much class in 25-seconds as you're likely to see all season.

The Red River Rivals. The Big 12's two heavyweights opened in the opposite fashion of what I would've predicted on Saturday night. Texas, who returns nearly all of their major offensive talent from last year, put up a head scratcher beating Arkansas State 21-13. Meanwhile Oklahoma, who simply had to start a new QB and replace Adrian Peterson, dropped 79 on North Texas.

SEC v. Big 12 a judges decision. Georgia looked impressive in shutting down a speedy Oklahoma State squad, limiting the Cowboys to 266 total yards, but Auburn was outplayed for most of four quarters against Kansas State. I felt coming in that both Georgia and Auburn were overvalued a bit but now I only feel that way about one team. Additionally, Ron Prince will get Kansas State turned around. Considering their tumultuous fall camp, having a realistic chance to win at Auburn in the final two minutes was nothing short of masterful.

Still no 'D' in Mizzou. Yes, Missouri put up 429 yards of total offense but they had to after allowing 435 to Illinois who was running with their back-up quarterback. If not for five Illini turnovers Missouri loses this Arch Rivalry game and Gary Pinkel is already hearing the boos.

The Trajan font shan't be topped. Kansas is going to be a factor in the Big 12 race, believe it. I saw a number of people picking the Jayhawks to lose to Central Michigan and their 14 returning starters. Final score? 52-7 KU. Consider yourself warned.

Glory Days. After one game Hawaii is leading the nation in passing yards. No surprise there, but the number one rushing team in the country is...Nebraska? Is this 1995 again? I was so amused by this that I nabbed the screen shot to your right just to remember what it felt like.

We didn't get to see the mythic right arm of Sam Keller, but getting 233 yards on the ground out of the Marlon Lucky (the nation's leading rusher!) and another 70 or so from true freshman Quentin Castille probably answered the more pressing question for Nebraska--can they run the football? The answer is yes...against Nevada.