College football Week 1 roundup with the 5 things that matter, winners and losers, overrated and underrated parts of the weekend, and what it all means.
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College Football Week 1 Roundup
CFN 1-76 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Ranking Projections AP | Coaches
Recaps, Ranking All Week 1 Games
Week 2 Schedule
5. Winners & Losers From Week 1
– The One Really Big Thing
– Most Overrated Thing
– Most Underrated Thing
– What It All Means, Week 1
Winner: BYU
And now the Cougars are in the spotlight. With a 55-3 win over Navy, the program gets to become a major national talking point with at Army, Troy, UTSA, at Houston, Texas State, WKU and North Alabama left on the slate. The program might still try to find games to play, but who wants to deal with it after this whacking?
Loser: Navy lines
The lines were overmatched and overwhelmed all game long. BYU ran for 301 yards with big gash after big gash, and the Cougar defensive front destroyed everything Navy wanted to do with its option attack.
Winner: Kalani Sitake
On a bit of a hot seat coming into the season after a 7-6 campaign finished up with two straight losses, his BYU team came out roaring against Navy. In a battle of coaches from Hawaii, Navy’s Ken Niumatalolo was the veteran star, but it was Sitake’s team that showed up ready to ball out.
Loser: Jay Hopson
The former Southern Miss head coach had four winning seasons out of four and went to three bowl games, winning one. One ugly home loss to South Alabama later, and he resigned as the head man.
Winner: Sun Belt
Yeah, the conference went 1-2, but South Alabama went from being the projected doormat of the league this season to a possible threat after looking great in the upset win over Southern Miss.
Arkansas State fought the good fight against a Memphis team loaded with enough talent to push for a New Year’s Six game in a 37-24 loss, and Texas State gave SMU all it could handle in a 31-24 fight.
Loser: Conference USA
The Southern Miss 32-21 loss to South Alabama was a kick in the teeth, but the Middle Tennessee 42-0 blasting to Army was every bit as brutal. Yeah, Marshall was flawless in a blowout win over Eastern Kentucky, and North Texas hung up 57 on Houston Baptist, but those were wins over FCS teams. UAB was hardly sharp against Central Arkansas, and UTEP needed a late score to finally put away Stephen F. Austin.
Winner: Underclassmen Running Backs
At the immediate moment, the nation’s leading rusher is BYU sophomore Tyler Allgeier after his 132-yard day against Navy. In all, ten running backs ran for 90 yards or more, and UAB’s Spencer Brown was the only upperclassman.
Loser: Middle Tennessee and Southern Miss Running Games
To pile on to the misery the two Conference USA programs had, neither one managed to get to 100 rushing yards. Southern Miss at least bombed away to try staying alive against South Alabama. Middle Tennessee never had the ball and came up with 184 total yards against Army.
– The One Really Big Thing
– Most Overrated Thing
– Most Underrated Thing
– What It All Means, Week 1
NEXT: The really big thing was …
4. The Really Big Thing Was …
They played college football, and the season is off and running.
It wasn’t anything like the Week 1 we were supposed to have.
We were supposed to get Purdue at Nebraska and Indiana at Wisconsin in the Big Ten.
Georgia was supposed to play Virginia, Alabama was supposed to deal with USC, Florida State was going to play West Virginia, and Baylor was supposed to play Ole Miss, and there were a whole lot of paycheck/cupcake games on the slate, too.
No, Week 1 didn’t exactly capture the imagination of the college football world, and BYU putting away Navy after the first drive on Monday night didn’t help, but after a brutal six months of speculation, fear, and controversy, college football was played.
CFN 1-76 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Ranking Projections AP | Coaches
Recaps, Ranking All Week 1 Games
That doesn’t mean that everything is fine now. Games are still being moved around, practices are being postponed, and the real world issues aren’t going away just because it sort of looked like there was college football again.
The social justice movement was an important part of the weekend on the field, in the TV studios, and on social media, and the constant reminders that we’re all still trying to live through a vicious global pandemic never allowed there be a true escape back into normalcy.
However, considering that just a few weeks ago it seemed like everything was going to be shut down, and there’s still the possibility that it might, we got to enjoy college football on Labor Day Weekend.
It’s a start.
NEXT: The most overrated thing was …
3. The Most Overrated Thing Was …
By the very nature of being rated, the most overrated thing this weekend turned out to be the … over.
That, and the favorites, who were overrated by the oddsmakers and the general public.
There were four games this weekend that had point totals posted by the major books. Out of those seven, the under came in in four of them, and three went over with UAB (45-35 over UCA with a 48 point total), BYU (55-3 over Navy on a 49.5 total) and North Texas 57-31 over Houston Baptist with a 68 total) taking care of business.
The shootout between SMU and Texas State – total at 70.5 came in at just 55 – never materialized, and Memphis-Arkansas State – combined 61 points with a 74 point total – wasn’t the expected firefight.
There was plenty of offense, but with Navy scoring just three points against BYU and Middle Tennessee getting shut out by Army, some of these became big duds.
In all, out of the seven games with lines, the favorite came through in just two of them – BYU -1.5 over Navy, and Army -3 over Middle Tennessee.
NEXT: The most underrated thing was …
2. The Most Underrated Thing Was …
The importance of warm-up games still matters.
Oh sure, the conference game action this year will be fantastic without all the fluffy light scrimmages, but there was a whole lot of ragged football being played.
That’s why you schedule a Houston Baptist and a Central Arkansas.
Last year after week one, UCA’s 23-20 win over WKU was the only FCS victory over an FBS team. In all, the FCS went 1-39 in the paycheck games.
UCA got a win in the opening weekend over Austin Peay, but it lost 45-35 to UAB as one of four FBS vs. FCS matchups.
Marshall whacked Eastern Kentucky 59-0, North Texas beat Houston Baptist 57-31, and UTEP beat Stephen F. Austin 24-14.
UTEP might not win another game all year, and for the rest of Conference USA teams that got wins, considering the problems Southern Miss and Middle Tennessee had, getting through Week 1 with a victory of any sort was terrific.
NEXT: What It All Means: Week 1
1. What It All Means: Week 1
We got through it.
There might have been limited fans in the stands, if any at all, but the teams were still able to play despite everything standing in the way of any of this happening.
Conditioning mattered.
Despite the 32-21 win, South Alabama isn’t as talented or as deep as Southern Miss. However, the Jaguars were moving well on the defensive front, and the offense had more spring in its step throughout.
Southern Miss was sucking wind midway through the third quarter against the fresher USA squad.
Army was brilliant from the start against a Middle Tennessee team that looked two steps too slow all game long and got slugged in the mouth on a 99-yard drive that ate up over 12 minutes.
Just when it seemed like the service academies might have had something, BYU played like it was shot out of a cannon against a Navy team that was overmatched and overwhelmed from the opening snap.
Marshall freshman QB Grant Wells got to take target practice on Eastern Kentucky, SMU and Memphis got to work out their respective kinks in wins despite not having their best stuff, and most UTEP got just its third victory since 2016.
No, this wasn’t the weekend of college football that we all wanted, but the programs outside of the Power Five got the spotlight, they got in some work, and now we’re off.
It’s going to be a wild ride.
CFN 1-76 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Ranking Projections AP | Coaches
Recaps, Ranking All Week 1 Games
