Winners and Losers From College Football Week 1
Winners
Jalen Hurts
I am all in on Jalen Hurts coming in third for Heisman, he looked awesome on Sunday. We’re talking 508 yards of total offense and six touchdowns. I understand he was playing against Houston, but setting a record for total offense at OKLAHOMA is pretty impressive. This offense has had two consecutive Heisman winning quarterbacks in a Big 12 that is notorious for not playing defense. Jalen Hurts put the country on notice and if Oklahoma’s defense is half as good as it looked on Sunday, these guys could have the best chance to knock Alabama and Clemson off their thrones.
Bo Nix
Looking past the fact that Cam Newton is not in this picture, this is still an incredible moment for Bo. A true freshman making his first start, at his dream school and he puts up 21 unanswered to take the first lead of his career with 9 seconds left. The only reason I didn’t put this as number one is that he didn’t play that well the first 40 minutes of the game, but when he turned it on he was electric.
All that being said, I’m not sure he’s “save Gus Malzahn’s career” good. But that’s a topic for a different blog (after auburn loses their first game of the year).
Elizabeth Scott
I know what you’re thinking and I’m absolutely not going to make the Marcia Brady reference every one on twitter already made.
This is tough to put her as a winner, BUT
She got in on the joke immediately and picked up 7,000 twitter followers and 6 thousand Instagram followers. That’s not too bad of a day, influencers can make a lot of money. She also has been to all Louisville basketball and football games for the last couple years, so chances are she knows a good amount about sports. Growing up to be the next Erin Andrews or Laura Rutledge is a pretty sweet deal, Even if she gets nothing out of this besides a broken nose, her last Instagram post before the accident got 500 likes, the first one after the accident got 2,000 and her twitter jumped from 31 to 23.9K likes. Ever heard of “do it for the gram”? I’ll take a broken nose for that many likes thank you very much.
Losers
Ian Book
This is the guy that hit Elizabeth Scott in the face with that football. This is BRUTAL, no one wants to be the guy that breaks the cheerleader's nose. For the rest of the season, he will have linebackers shouting: “Elizabeth Scott!”, or “cheerleaders open! watch the sideline!”. Just a bad situation all around.
In fairness, he is still the starting quarterback at Notre Dame and they won by 18, so his life isn’t THAT bad. But still, that’s not going to stop the internet from roasting him.
Tennessee
Tennessee paid Georgia State $950,000 to come out to Knoxville for a quick tune-up game before the start of, what Tennessee fans expected, a historical season. Then they went on to lose 38–30. It’s so preposterous I keep checking the score to make sure it won’t change. This stuff happens from time to time like Appalachian State over Michigan in 2007, but in 2006 App State went 14–1, by comparison, Georgia State went 2–10 last year.
Tennessee fans walked around this offseason saying “Feelin’ like ‘98” and know, less than 24 hours into their football season and it’s already over. Forget their misguided National Championship dreams or even a shot to make the top 10, Tennessee football is dead, and only Arch Manning can save them.
Or Greg Schiano, but they blew that opportunity two years ago.
PAC-12
It is no secret that college football fans have no respect for the PAC-12 as a legitimate Power 5 conference. It seems like everyone wants to argue between the top-heavy SEC and the top to bottom strong Big 10 as the kings, followed by the ACC and Big 12 in that order. Yet we all agree far and away the PAC-12 is a joke and doesn’t deserve a spot in a 4 team playoff. This year wasn’t necessarily different, but if they want to change that narrative, Oregan has to beat Auburn. Preseason number 11 in the nation, the highest-ranked team in the PAC-12; Verse maybe the fourth-best team in the SEC? Right? Alabama, Georgia, LSU maybe even Texas A&M if Kellen Mond continues to produce like he did last season. There is no excuse, sure the rest of the conference did their job, (beside UCLA) but if your top dog can’t put away Auburn with a 21–6 lead in the 3rd quarter, your conference is dead.
