Upsets claim Oklahoma, defending champ LSU
The Pirate plundered the defending national champions. Oklahoma got its annual faceplant as a big favorite out of the way early. Texas made a crazy comeback to keep the Big 12 from going up in flames.
College football was batty on Saturday, which for the first time in a season that was never a certainty made things feel normal.
The Southeastern Conference finally kicked off with a stunner. No. 6 LSU got Air Raided by Mississippi State 44-34 in the debut of Bulldogs coach Mike Leach, who has put together a Hall of Fame resume turning outpost programs into consistent winners with recordsetting offenses. First it was Texas Tech. Then it was Washington State. So far, so good at Mississippi State.
The pandemic cost the pirate-loving, oddball coach a normal offseason to implement his Air Raid offense. Quarterback K.J. Costello, a transfer from Stanford, didn't arrive in Starkville until the summer.
Surely, there would be some glitches early for the Bulldogs. Especially in the vaunted SEC.
Hardly.
"It's better than average," Leach said of his return to the nation's toughest conference.
Costello passed for 623 yards, breaking a 27-year-old conference record held by Georgia's Eric Zeier by 79 yards.
The defending national champions were only the second-highest ranked team to lose Saturday.
No. 3 Oklahoma jumped out to a 35-14 lead on Kansas State late in the third quarter behind quarterback Spencer Rattler. Then it all fell apart as the Wildcats, playing without several key defensive players because of COVID-19, beat the Sooners 38-35 for the second straight season.
According to ESPN, this was Oklahoma's sixth loss as a 20-point favorite since the start of the 2009 season. No other team has more than three of those losses.
Texas was down 15 late in the fourth quarter at Texas Tech. Two touchdowns sandwiched around an onside kick, plus a tying two-point conversion by the Longhorns sent it to overtime. Texas Tech completed the meltdown from there and Texas escaped 63-56.
"As we were walking off, (safety) Caden Sterns said that if 2020 was a football game, that was it," Texas coach Tom Herman told reporters.
No. 14 Cincinnati's 24-10 win over No. 22 Army was no surprise. Desmond Ridder passed for 258 yards and two touchdowns and Cincinnati (2-0) won the first matchup of ranked teams at Nippert Stadium since 2008.
Army's vaunted triple-option offense came in averaging 389.5 rushing yards, but the Bearcats held the Black Knights (2-1) to 182, including 81 by junior quarterback Christian Anderson.
OSU back in the AP poll
No. 6 Ohio State, No. 10 Penn State and No. 14 Oregon returned to the Associated Press college football poll on Sunday, weeks before they start playing, creating a Top 25 as unusual as this season.
At the top of the rankings this week, Clemson remained No. 1 with 55 firstplace votes, followed by Alabama at No. 2 with three first-place votes.
The rest of the rankings was rattled by the Big Ten, Pac-12, Mountain West and Mid-american conferences reversing course and deciding to play fall football after initially postponing because of COVID-19 concerns.
Florida moved up two spots to No. 3, Georgia held on at No. 4 and Notre Dame benefitted from the upsets by moving up to No. 5 without playing.