College football Saturday, Week 1: The greatest day in the history of the world

[Hey, we wrote this post in 2014. But due to recent developments, we decided to re-run it after North Dakota State beat Iowa. Apparently, FBS teams still need to be warned about not playing North Dakota State. The original post -- with some additions -- is below.]

Dear FBS college football teams,

There are college football awards for everything.

There are awards for the best player at each position. There are four for best quarterback. There are awards for things that aren’t really positions, like the Paul Hornung Award for the most versatile player or the Lombardi Trophy, which is for “a down lineman on either offense or defense or a linebacker who lines up no farther than five yards deep from the ball.”

Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema was briefly misunderstood following the Razorbacks’ 45-21 loss to Auburn in Week 1. Through the clipped delivery of Twitter, the coach seemed to imply the Tigers had an unfair on-field advantage against the Hogs.

Was Bielema backtracking? No. Is that because Auburn didn’t steal Arkansas’ plays, signals or formations during the game or even ahead of time? We don’t know. Did the Tigers try?

Tuesday is Sunday, as far as the first weekend of college football goes. While new rankings and polls usually go up on the day after Saturday, Week 1 lasted until Monday night, meaning we get a scant two days to argue about the Top 25 before Week 2 begins. That’s Week 1 for you.

There will be no official College Football Playoff selection committee ranking this week. That doesn’t begin until October 28.

If you came here looking for Brian Cook, Schadenfreude Grandmaster, I have some bad news:

I know, I know. This is a tragedy, and I will be much worse than Brian at presenting our sport’s most batshit Internet users. You should write a letter to your congressperson today. After all, you pay their salary, and if Congress is just going to sit idly by while This Week In Schadenfreude falls to shit, then maybe General Cornwallis was the real winner in the end.

I was quite a bit higher than most on Oklahoma State heading into the 2014 season. I was adamant in putting the Cowboys in the Big 12’s top tier alongside Oklahoma, Baylor, and Kansas State. In the Cowboys’ 2014 preview, I said things like, “Past success predicts future success,” and this:

This isn’t an “I saw Saturday coming” boast, by the way. I still thought OSU would lose by three touchdowns to Florida State.

Dear poll voters:

You’re doing it wrong.

When nothing else works, this album makes me want to live, even if it is a colossal monument to brave, loud stupidity. It’s dumb, huge, and perfect, and -- yes, we’re talking about college football here, and this’ll do as a soundtrack. It’s reprehensibly stupid at times, totally irresponsible at others, uneven, loud, and please turn it up. We are asking you very nicely to turn it up so the nice man can yell about shooting to thrill and how Satan is calling for you and how we’ve learned nothing after the death of our lead singer whatsoever.

Learning nothing whatsoever. Repeating the same mistakes over and over again. That’s the idea here, especially in the first week of a very young college football season.

We’ve seen one week of college football. We knew little coming in, and anything we think we’ve learned so far is tainted with some combination of overreaction and confirmation bias, chances are. But glimpses are glimpses, and we can assemble the pieces we have.

For comparison, the preseason picks.

Whichever way you chose to pass the time, I’m glad you made it.

As is typical, we saw some exciting, high-quality football in Week 1, and we saw a whole lot of mediocre or worse football as well.

And here’s what we came up with, based pretty much entirely on Week 1. Check back next week, when we have a whole lot more evidence to work with.

Florida’s game against Idaho on Saturday was cancelled after just one play due to inclement weather. Florida also had three players suspended for the Idaho game.

Would a one-play game count for a one-game suspension? Apparently so!

Upsets happen in March Madness all the time, but not in the NBA Playoffs. The difference is simple. College hoops mid-majors only have to beat top seeds once, while the NBA’s lesser postseason teams have to beat better teams four times. Over a longer timeline, better talent wins.

In college football, the team with better size and speed has a greater chance of winning a play than the smaller and slower team does. The underdogs will steal plenty of snaps, but more will tend to go to the big guys. So why would a power program allow for a margin of error by limiting a game’s total plays? Why not give its superior talent and depth as many chances as possible to win out?

The first week of the 2014 college football season is (almost) in the books, and with it a wacky week of games. As a group, non-power-conference teams put up some interesting performances, including a pair of downright stinkers Sunday night.

What does that mean for The Underdogs Poll? Well, pure chaos.

In Week 1 of a college football season, every game is interesting, even the bad ones, because after nine months of asking questions, we finally gets some hints at answers.

Even if your team is playing the dregs of FCS (as opposed to an FCS team that, if promotion and relegation existed in college football, might be the defending Big 12 champion), and even if you win 66-0, you still begin to figure out whether your new left tackle is going to hold up, or whether that freshman linebacker you’re counting on knows what he’s doing, or whether your new place-kicker is going to be as good as the last guy.

There’s nothing new about stadiums having motivational statements on their walls to get the home team ready for the game, but this might be the first time we’ve seen visitors warned of their impending death. Such is the case at Air Force’s Falcon Stadium, where opponents need to be well aware of hypoxia.

This is probably a government-ordered disclaimer, but let’s help with that bedside manner.

The chainsaw is an Oregon State (and state of Oregon) thing, seeing as it is the piece of equipment that best enables a human to perform the duties of a beaver, OSU’s mascot. These fans at Saturday’s Portland State game added musical elements, albeit ones differing from those offered by the school itself:

Florida analyst recaps the game:

An instantaneous survey of five teams in the best position for the College Football Playoff’s four spots at this very moment, plus the biggest threats looming for each. Be advised: these have nothing to do with the preseason Top 25 polls. If you get mad about this, you will be pointed to the previous sentence.

FSU could be the classic overextension of a franchise without the supporting cast members who made the original edition so great.

That in and of itself isn’t anything new. There are always big questions in the top 10. But now we know what they are.

Defending national champion Florida State isn’t invincible, with Jameis Winston’s myopic ball distribution and two turnovers compounding a defensive stand that saw the Seminoles give up more yardage (364) than they did in 11 of 13 games during 2013’s title run. The good news is that FSU still left Tallahassee and beat an Oklahoma State team (37-31) of proven recent pedigree, and that Winston’s final line totaled 370 yards and the best run of his career:

Hello, college football fan! We’ve started tracking every FBS final score from opening Saturday, which is happening right now. It’s the biggest and finest day of college football in an opening week that includes games on seven different days, including last Saturday. Pretty weird sport.

We’ll also add links to bigger game recaps as those roll in around our network. In the meantime, here’s today’s TV schedule, and here’s where you can join us for some chattin’.

For three quarters, Wisconsin was running LSU out of the building. The Badgers were dominating the Tigers on both lines of scrimmage and appeared to be on the verge of making themselves the clear favorite in the Big Ten West. But LSU’s defense dug deep and came up with some big second-half stops and turnovers, giving its offense just enough of a jump start to get back in the game and mount an impressive comeback from a 24-7 third quarter deficit.

Late in the game, LSU started winning the battle up front and Wisconsin seemed to completely lose its composure. Having Melvin Gordon miss large chunks of the final quarter didn’t help, but Tanner McEvoy seemed exceptionally rattled, throwing a pair of devastating interceptions just as the Tigers’ offense was getting a head of steam.

Reigning Heisman winner Jameis Winston and the defending national champion Florida State Seminoles opened their season Saturday night in Arlington against the Oklahoma State Cowboys, holding off a valiant comeback effort to secure a 37-31 victory.

Florida State looked surprisingly vulnerable, especially compared to their complete and total annihilation of their 2013 schedule. Oklahoma State was able to move the ball through the air with alarming efficiency against the Seminole secondary -- defensive lapses like this didn’t hurt the Cowboys’ efforts.