Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I love when everyone rallies around seeing Dabo Swinney fail.
In today’s SI:AM:
🦬 Colorado’s equally significant statement
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Stunner in Durham
Duke put a bow on the first full weekend of the college football season by accomplishing something it hadn’t done in more than 30 years.
The Blue Devils’ convincing 28–7 win over Clemson was the school’s first victory over a team ranked in the top 10 of the AP poll since 1989.
The Tigers have ruled the ACC for the better part of a decade, winning seven of the last eight conference championships. Duke, meanwhile, has historically been one of the conference’s most irrelevant programs, with only one top-25 finish since 1960.
But the tables were turned last night in Durham. Duke entered the game as a 13-point home underdog but took advantage of numerous Clemson miscues for its biggest win in decades. According to OptaSTATS, the Blue Devils are the first unranked team in 40 years to open the season with a 20-point win over a team ranked in the top 10.
Clemson’s lone touchdown came after Duke muffed a punt early in the second quarter, setting up the Tigers in the red zone. Other than that, Clemson failed to capitalize on its offensive opportunities. It had two field goal attempts blocked (both by Duke redshirt freshman Wesley Williams) and turned the ball over three times. The Tigers’ six second-half possessions ended like this: blocked field goal, fumble, fumble, turnover on downs, interception and turnover on downs.
If there’s a silver lining for Clemson it’s that it wasn’t the only team to suffer a surprising loss this weekend. The biggest shocker was Colorado’s shootout victory over No. 17 TCU in Fort Worth. Well, at least it was a shocker to everyone not named Deion Sanders. The first-year Buffaloes coach spent the entire offseason talking a big game and backed up that talk against last year’s championship runner-up.
Quarterback Shedeur Sanders, the coach’s son, threw for a school record 510 yards and four touchdowns. Travis Hunter caught 11 passes for 119 yards and also recorded an interception playing as a defensive back. Hunter played a whopping 129 snaps in the game, something no other major college football player has done in at least 35 years, Pat Forde writes.
The Buffs’ big win means all eyes will be on Boulder next weekend as Colorado faces Nebraska. The Huskers are a rebuilding program and just lost a 13–10 slog to Minnesota, but Colorado’s combination of star power and confidence will make every game appointment viewing, especially ahead of a difficult stretch in Weeks 4 and 5 against Oregon and USC.
Other notable results from Week 1 included Houston’s hard-fought 17–14 win over UTSA, Wyoming’s double-overtime victory at home against Texas Tech and Florida State’s convincing win over LSU on a neutral field. It was a reminder that you can never predict with certainty what will happen this season.
The best of Sports Illustrated
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- Matt Verderame looks at 10 NFL rookies everyone will be paying attention to in the first week of the season.
- Jennifer Piacenti has a list of fantasy football waiver-wire candidates to pick up before Week 1.
- Stephanie Apstein spoke with several Nationals players about why the team’s rebuild is going faster than expected.
- Oleksandr Usyk is the name to watch in Chris Mannix’s new pound-for-pound boxing rankings.
- Dodgers pitcher Julio Urías was arrested on felony domestic violence charges.
- Shohei Ohtani will likely need surgery on his injured elbow but plans to DH next season while he recovers, his agent said.
- Lucas Giolito made some unfortunate history in his first start for the Guardians.
- Georgia football staffer Jarvis Jones was arrested on reckless driving charges. Since offensive lineman Devin Willock and recruiting analyst Chandler LeCroy were killed in a car crash in January, there have been 14 arrests/citations for speeding and/or reckless driving involving members of the Bulldogs program.
The top five...
… things I saw yesterday:
5. This point in Daniil Medvedev’s win over Alex de Minaur.
4. This freak play involving an umpire that cost the Padres a run.
3. Elly De La Cruz’s quick thinking to save a Reds error.
2. Twins star Royce Lewis’s third grand slam in a span of eight days.
1. Duke quarterback Riley Leonard’s using his postgame interview to ask his professor for an extension on an assignment.
SIQ
On this day in 1906, Bradbury Robinson threw the first legal forward pass in American football history while playing for which school?
- Michigan
- Saint Louis
- Harvard
- Sewanee
Friday’s SIQ: On Sept. 1, 1998, en route to breaking Roger Maris’s single-season MLB home run record, Mark McGwire hit his 56th and 57th home runs of the season, breaking the decades-old National League record held by which player?
- Ralph Kiner
- Willie Mays
- Johnny Mize
- Hack Wilson
Though McGwire broke Wilson’s record, Wilson set another record in 1930 that will surely never be broken, collecting a whopping 191 RBIs. Only nine times in the expansion era (since ’61) has a player had even 150 RBIs in a season, most recently Alex Rodriguez with 156 in 2007.
