What Happened to College Football?

I think most of us can agree, this year in college football has been anything but ordinary. I mean really now, we all knew Notre Dame wasn't going to go undefeated, but only one win so far? Wow, didn't see that one coming. What about USC losing to Stanford? Southern Cal has by no means proved that they are invincible. And have we all suddenly forgotten that Appalachian St. beat Michigan? We can never let them forget that. Every chance we get, we have to rub in the faces of the Michigan fans that they lost to a I-AA school, we can't just give them a free pass for the rest of the season. And can anyone say Nebraska? Now there's a mess.

But even more surprising than all these top teams falling has been all the unknown teams having such great success. Who would've predicted that Kentucky would knock off the top team in the country? Kentucky is supposed to be nothing more than a basketball school, they are supposed to be like Duke and suck at football. But in this completely upside down year, even they have managed to be good. Along the same lines, there is Boston College. I remember a time when they, too, were good at basketball. But they are dominant every single year in hockey, which is the same principle of having success in one sport and sucking at the others. Now even BC is getting in on the wacky football year now holding the no. 2 national ranking and have who some would say is the leader for the Heisman trophy. How unfair.

Then there's South Florida. I vaguely remember hearing about this school sometime, but I would have never ever in my lifetime told you that they would ever reach the no. 2 national ranking. Sure, they lost to Rutgers last week and they suffered another loss this week, but just the fact that they were able to get to the point they did is amazing.

Oh yeah, by the way, there's this team in Illinois named the Fighting Illini. In case you didn't know, they do play football there. U of I is quite possibly in my book, one of the most underrated and under publicized teams in America. I mean, talk about a team who used to suck at football, they were the one team in the Big 10 that if you were in the Big 10 you wanted them on your schedule because they were the only guranteed victory in the conference. Now look at them. Today they became bowl eligible for the first time since Methuselah was born. Now that's an accomplishment.

But for those of us who had a team that usually does well in football, but has lost due to the upside down year (like me and Notre Dame), or has a favorite team that sucks at football and is good at another sport (like me and Indiana University) all we can do is wait for basketball season.

And we pray that it isn't messed up this year too.