By CADE KENNEDY, Sports Editor
After another wild week of games, the college football landscape has experienced another drastic change.
Starting with the games in Oklahoma, Oklahoma State defeated Tulsa, but it was not easy for the Cowboys. Oklahoma State won 28-23 in a game that was, once again, much closer than it should have been for the Cowboys.
Tulsa had several mistakes that prevented it from winning the game, from allowing a kickoff return for a touchdown to recovering a fumble while out of bounds. If they’d prevented either one of these plays from going in Oklahoma State’s favor, Tulsa might have won this game.
Oklahoma had a dominant win against Western Carolina, with the Sooners scoring the most points on an opponent since the Sooners scored 79 points against North Texas in 2007. The Sooners did exactly what they needed to do this week, as they were able to give many of the backups playing time throughout the second half.
On the national stage, one of the biggest games of the week in college football involved an upset, as Oregon defeated Ohio State 35-28 in one of the bigger surprises of the season. Oregon looked absolutely outstanding in this game, especially when considering that Oregon was without arguably its two best defensive players.
The main problem for Ohio State is that the defense is not as good as it has been in the past few years. Oregon had several drives during the game where it felt as if they were just walking down the field with no pushback.
The other big game of the week involved Iowa beating Iowa State 27-17 behind an amazing performance by the Iowa defense. Iowa was able to force four turnovers against Iowa State and showed that they are a national title contender this year.
There were also several close calls for teams in the Top 25, as Notre Dame and Texas A&M both narrowly won over their opponents.
Notre Dame barely escaped against Toledo, as they had to come back in the final minute of the game to win what should have been an easy game.
On the other hand, Texas A&M barely defeated Colorado 10-7 because of Texas A&M losing their starting quarterback early in the game, but still looked horrible on the offensive side of the ball.
Texas looked terrible during their 40-21 loss at Arkansas. The offensive line looked bad nearly all night for Texas, as the offense could never seem to get any consistency going.
USC was also upset, as they lost to Stanford 42-28 in a game that was dominated by Stanford. Tanner McKee was named as Stanford’s starting quarterback for the game, and he did not disappoint in his debut.
USC fired Clay Helton, the head coach, only a few days after the game because of the growing pressure from the fan base to fire Helton because USC kept losing games like they did to Stanford. I personally think that they should have fired him last year if they were going to fire him, as USC is now in an awkward situation for the rest of the season as they must deal with adjusting to a new coach so early in the season.
The final upset involving ranked teams was BYU defeating Utah 26-17 in a surprisingly defensive game. BYU looked great on defense, which is odd considering that they are a team known for putting points on the board.
The greatest upset of the day occurred when Jacksonville State, an FCS team, defeated Florida State on a 59-yard touchdown pass as time expired to win 20-17. Florida State suffered their worst loss in program history, as they had never lost to an FCS team before this game.
College football was not the only sport on during the weekend, as the NFL had its’ first week.
There were three fantastic NFL games on the opening weekend, with one of the games being the first game of the year.
In that game, Tampa Bay defeated Dallas 31-29 as both Dak Prescott and Tom Brady had good performances. Tampa Bay turned the ball over four times though, showing that even the defending champions still have room for improvement.
Another great game from the first week was Kansas City rallying to defeat Cleveland 33-29 in a rematch from last year’s playoffs. Cleveland had several chances to put the game away, but a fumble by Jamie Gillan, the punter, ended up being the nail in the coffin for them. Cleveland had a chance to win the game at the end, but all momentum was with Kansas City at that point.
The final great game in week one of the NFL was Las Vegas defeating Baltimore 33-27. This was one of two games to go to overtime this week, as both teams kept trading scores in the fourth quarter, but both teams turned the ball over on their first drive of overtime. Las Vegas was able to pull off a great win.
There are several good college football games on this weekend, with Alabama at Florida and Auburn at Penn State being my personal picks for games to watch. If you want to watch a game that most people are not going to be paying attention to, then Tulane at Ole Miss is my pick for the underrated game of the week.
For the NFL, the games I am looking forward to the most this weekend are Buffalo at Miami, Kansas City at Baltimore, Las Vegas at Pittsburgh and Tennessee at Seattle.
Enjoy a great week of football.