College Football Week 1 Awards 2013 September 4, 2013

That special time of year has come yet again, when college football teams all throughout the land knock heads to see who is the best.  Moreover, now that the first week of college football has past, it is now time to give out the first weekly awards for the year!

(NOTE:  all rankings are Week 1 AP up to “Next Week”, in which case they are for Week 2)

COACHES
Wish I were him: Dabo Swinney, Clemson 

Glad I’m not him: Mark Richt, Georgia
Lucky guy: Hugh Freeze, Ole Miss
Poor guy: James Franklin, Vanderbilt
Desperately seeking a wake-up call: Bill Snyder, Kansas State
Desperately seeking a P.R. man: Kevin Wilson, Indiana

Desperately seeking sunglasses and a fake beard: Mike Riley, Oregon State
Desperately seeking … anything:  Rocky Long, San Diego State

TEAMS
Thought you’d kick butt, you did: No. 3 Oregon (beat Nicholls State 66-3)
Thought you’d kick butt, you didn’t: No. 18 Nebraska (beat Wyoming 37-34)
Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you did:  Purdue (lost to Cincinnati 42-7)

Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you didn’t:  North Carolina (lost to South Carolina 27-10)
Thought you wouldn’t kick butt, you did:  Indiana 73, Indiana State 35

Dang, they’re good: Alabama
Sir Charles says “They’re Turrable”:  San Diego State
Can’t Stand Prosperity:  Georgia

Did the season start?  BYU
Can the season end?  Iowa State
Can the season never end?  Clemson

GAMES
Play this again:  No. 8 Clemson 38, No. 5 Georgia 35

Play this again, too:  Ole Miss 39, Vanderbilt 35
Never play this again: Indiana 73, Indiana State 35
What? McNeese State 53, South Florida 21
Huh?  Eastern Illinois 49, San Diego State 17
Are you kidding me? North Dakota State 24, Kansas State 21
Oh – my – God:  Eastern Washington 49, No. 25 Oregon State 46
Told you so:  Western Kentucky 35, Kentucky 26

NEXT WEEK
Ticket to die for:  No. 6 South Carolina @ No. 11 Georgia
Best non-Big Six vs. Big Six matchup: Toledo @ Missouri
Best non-Big Six matchup: Idaho @ Wyoming, or Utah State @ Air Force

Upset alert: No. 14 Notre Dame @ No. 17 Michigan

Must win: Miami (OH) @ Kentucky
Offensive explosion: West Virginia @ No. 16 Oklahoma
Defensive struggle: No. 14 Notre Dame @ No. 17 Michigan
Great game no one is talking about: Syracuse @ No. 22 Northwestern

Intriguing coaching matchup:  Bobby Petrino of Western Kentucky vs. Butch Jones of Tennessee

Who’s bringing the body bags? San Diego State @ No. 2 Ohio State

Why are they playing?  Tennessee-Martin @ Boise State

Plenty of good seats remaining: South Alabama @ Tulane

They shoot horses, don’t they?  Buffalo @ Baylor

The First Week in Review:

The previous week’s “Ticket to Die For” was obviously the Georgia-Clemson game, and it lived up to its billing, remaining close and hard-fought for all four quarters.  Georgia fans do themselves and their team a disservice, however, by lamenting that their season is now in the tank and that it is time to jettison head coach Mark Richt.  Let us keep in mind that Clemson right now is on fire, and has their best offense in roughly 30 years if not the whole history of the school.  The Bulldogs losing to such a team at that moment is no disgrace.

That said, there’s no rest for the wicked regarding Georgia, for now their hated cross-border rival South Carolina comes to Sanford Stadium this next weekend.  The Bulldogs might be in danger of starting the season 0-2, which which really send the UGA faithful into a panic.

Meanwhile, Alabama is such a good team, that even with several offensive miscues throughout the game, they still handily defeated a respectable Virginia Tech squad 35-10.  Still, it was a rough week for the SEC.  As somewhat prognosticated, Washington State did give Auburn plenty to deal with in their rather narrow loss at Jordan-Hare Stadium.  Georgia’s rather heartbreaking loss in Clemson was already noted.  Kentucky lost much worse than what the score (35-26) to Western Kentucky in Nashville, Tenn.  Yes, I know that the last game mentioned is an outlier in that A, this is Kentucky we’re talking about here, not, say, LSU, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, or even Auburn or Arkansas.  On the other side of the coin, Western Kentucky is no ordinary Sunbelt Conference team, either, as they are coached by Bobby Petrino, likely giving the Hilltoppers a decisive edge over the rest of their conference competition, or even chronic SEC cellar-dwellers for that matter.

One thing that particularly sticks out about the past week, though, was the resounding success that FCS teams had over FBS teams.  Time was — very recently — that when D-1A (pardon me, FBS) teams scheduled D-1AA (pardon me, FCS) teams for a game, it was an easy win for the former, and the latter got a relatively hefty paycheck (by their standards) to take a drubbing.  Not anymore.  Southern Utah beat South Alabama 22-21; Towson defeated UConn 33-18; North Dakota State upset Kansas State 24-21; Eastern Washington also upset Oregon State, 49-46; McNeese State thrashed South Florida, 53-21; Eastern Illinois did the drubbing on San Diego State, 40-19; if that’s not enough, Northern Iowa also beat Iowa State, 28-20.  To be sure, most of the aforementioned FCS teams (Towson, E. Washington, E. Illinois, and N. Iowa) are ranked, whereas most of their defeated FBS counterparts are, well, sucking (yet it still does not account for K-State’s or Oregon State ignominious losses).  Still, this is a powerful wake-up call that FBS vs. FCS are no longer gimme-games for the former.  We’ve been warned.