The current rankings of college football are up and there are some moderate surprises. For example, last week, Mississippi was at about #4, but after their loss to South Carolina, they are down below #20. That’s a rough week. As you might expect, Florida is at the top of both AP and USA Today. Texas, Alabama and LSU follow to round out the top four. It’s been one of the strangest starts to a college season in a long time. We have teams that were expected to be dominant that are stuck in neutral. Other teams are making big surprise wins. We’re hoping that there will be some more excitement as time goes forwards. We really enjoy seeing exciting games. It’s a little too bad for fans of some of the powerhouse schools though.

One of the Big Ten games of this week is Penn State against Iowa and it’s going to be a doozy. Penn State has a pretty light out-of-conference schedule this year, with teams like Eastern Illinois in an odd position. But with a tough Big Ten rival coming into this college town, it’s going to be a big struggle. Penn State has been successful over the last few weeks. Their quarterback is doing a great job, making some good pushes during the other few games. But the Iowa secondary has been able to challenge all their opponents in a serious way, so QB Daryll Clark will have to be creative about getting the ball downfield. This might be the banner game of the weekend, because we’ll be seeing which of these teams can really bring it this year.

USC had a bad weekend this time around. They were beaten by the Washington Huskies, who are hardly even on the radar screen. They lost by an impressive amount too. After the weekend, the team’s ranking really suffered due to this loss, as they fell from #3 to #12. That’s a precipitous drop for this team. But let’s keep in mind that the team isn’t as bad as that ranking might indicate. Remember, the rankings are more a reflection of what a bunch of people think this team will do and what they’ve already done. They had a bad weekend and the shock of that made them drop off that way. But it’s certainly feasible that they will win big next weekend and start to pull themselves back up into the top rankings again.

This weekend, we will see a big rivalry game take place. The Florida Gators will be playing against the Tennessee Volunteers. These teams aren’t usually big rivals, but Tennessee was clearly angling to become annoyances to Florida over the offseason, with the coach talking trash in press conferences. This is one of the upstart young teams trying to frighten a big team that has won several national championships over the last few years. We will have to see what Tennessee is going to do in the game coming up. Not to worry! It’s going to be an exciting game and the drama is huge! The commentators will be talking about it as though it’s the biggest game of the year. It’s mostly just important because of the trash talk and the summer whisperings. Enjoy the game!

The Big 10 had a tough weekend, with a lot of upsets happened to them at the hands of smaller, less established schools. Ohio State lost to USC, for one, by a bad amount. It was a rough day for them. Similarly for Wisconsin, they ended up losing to Fresno State by a big margin. Michigan got a win over Notre Dame, perhaps one of the more unexpected wins of the weekend, considering how much struggle Michigan had last year trying to get touchdowns and all that. There were a couple of smaller wins by Northwestern, Indiana and Minnesota, but it was a tough struggle for them as well, even though they were playing against teams like Eastern Michigan and Air Force. This might suggest another long season in the Big Ten, but it’s also the first weekend of the season, so let’s not be too hasty.

When there is a tie at the end of regulation time, there are always people who enjoy the NCAA’s system for overtime better than those in the professional league, for example. When overtime begins in the NCAA, one team gets the ball and has to try to make an endzone drive. Then, no matter what happens, the other team has to match or break it. This keeps going until one team doesn’t match what the previous had done. In the NFL, however, they go until the first team gets a point. Doesn’t matter how or anything. And the losing team might not even get a shot at playing in that overtime session. As a result, there are many people who want to make the NFL more like the NCAA rules, so that the games aren’t defined by a single coin toss in the game.

This week we got our first view of some college football rankings. Both AP and USA Today seem to have pretty much the same idea on their rankings at the moment. Florida, Texas and Oklahoma are the top three in both of them. USC, Alabama and Ohio State round out the top 6. This isn’t too unexpected, because this reflects much of what we saw last year, with only a few teams that lost a lot of players in the off season. Florida has won several championships over the last few years. Texas came awfully close last year to getting the big one, and the Longhorns are widely expected to either be there or come close next year too. Oklahoma, as I mentioned last time, might be in big trouble, but the poll was before that injury to Bradford happened. Get ready, because the fun and craziness of the season is about to begin!

The Oklahoma Sooners are now in big trouble. Bradford went down in the first half of their game against BYU. This left a big hole in their offensive system and hit showed big time. He is the center of their work and was expected to be a possible Heisman winnner this year and then he’ll end up possibly in a national title game. instead, he’s down for the count. He might make it back for part of the season after his hard hit in the 2nd quarter, but it’s not certain. What is certain is that the team might be in real trouble without him. No matter if you love this team or not, you will have to hope that this guy gets better. But the championship seems to be gone now.