College Football 2026

Having lost most interest in this nonsense with all the shuffling of teams around, I almost missed the first game of the season! I thought it started next week.

Anyway, watched USC play San Jose. Not a bad game. Lots of True Freshmen on the field for 'SC. San Jose played tough, never quit despite being in a hole pretty early.

Only game I watched. But looks like my weekends are shot for the short term… I always get sucked in. Thursday night games, the odd Friday one (SC plays next Friday!) then the morning till night Saturday Couch Potato sessions watching teams I know nothing about.

Oh well.

One of the big stories of the opening of the college football season was a historic upset, though not as big a one as a major outlet proclaimed.

Northwestern State University was defeated by Louisiana Christian, fhe first time an NAIA school beat a Division I team. The Yahoo! headline trumpeted that a Big Ten school had been upset, confusing Northwestern State with Northwestern. Relying on AI might have been Yahoo!'s downfall.

In other news: Valparaiso’s football team has a redshirt freshman defensive back named Kaiser WIlhelm.

His listed hobbies include his faith in Jesus and pickleball.

On a somber note:

If my googling is correct, this is the first time Bill Belichick has had a winning record since December of 2022.

The Colorado/Georgia Tech game, though low-scoring, was fun to watch, especially at the end.

Georgia Tech got a field goal to take a six-point lead late. Colorado ran their two-minute drill to go up by 1. Alberto Mendoza of GT connected on a long pass to put the Yellow Jackets within field goal range, but their field goal was blocked.

Expect controversy about his preference for having a spike on top of his helmet. And when he has a good game, the headlines the next day will read “Kaiser Rolls!”

Well that celebration was short lived:

The only thing missing in that story is Rock n’ Roll!

The Western Michigan Broncos, from the Mid-American Conference, came within a hair’s-breadth of beating the Michigan Wolverines in Ann Arbor.

The Wolverines got a Hail Mary pass to win by one at the buzzer.

That was crazy!! What an ending! Whew still can’t believe it. I totally thought it was over.

A touchdown with literally one second left on the clock.

I’d like to know the rule- when does the clock stop- when the ball leaves the field of play or when it touches the ground? I thought for sure the clock had run out.

It’s when it touches the ground, or a player standing out of bounds.

The NBC “booth” ref said it was 0 by the time it touched a player out of bounds.

If the ball is not held by any player, it is not out of bounds until it hits something including an out of bounds player. On passes players can jump from inbounds and bat the ball back to another player. I assume the same is true on kicks. You do see players jump from the field of play to bat punts out of the endzone back into the field of play and that isn’t a touchback.

In that case I think WMU should appeal to the NCAA. They got screwed royally.

I was at the Michigan game. We got our asses handed to us for the entire game except for the opening drive and the questionable final play.

We started walking out as soon as Underwood threw the first hail Mary over the end zone, but noticed people standing around a TV screen as we walked past the concessions. I thought maybe the refs were checking to see if there was a defensive penalty, but then they put a second back on the clock. I couldn’t figure out why, but we went back to our seats to watch the final play.

Boise State (always a Scrappy Club) made #2 Oregon really work for it. A really entertaining game!

The Western Michigan - Michigan ending looks even worse the morning after. The Big Ten issued a statement claiming the defensive player for WMU touched the ball with one second left when he plainly didn’t. It was indisputable; Stevie Wonder could have made the call correctly!

I don’t have a particular rooting interest in either team but I’m kind of hoping OU destroys Michigan by three or four scores next week.

Big 10 Video from Statement

That’s from the Big 10. They claim it shows 1 second on the clock. They also claim the NBC clock was synchronized. Not sure what to make of those contradictory findings.

In the video angle view they use above, you don’t ever see the player touch the ball. There’s just a ref that says “now”. I wonder if they make the same call if the teams were reversed.

College football is definitely back!

The statement from the MAC says the video confirms the decision to add a second.