College Football Week 1 – What just happened?

First, let’s celebrate the return of college football this past weekend.  Welcome back! Even as 100 degree days continue here in my neck of the woods, September is finally here.  That means the start of the college football season and the HOPE of cooler weather soon! Yes, the vast majority of the top rated teams started their 2023 season with a tune-up game against lesser competition.  In a race for pinball game supremacy, the Oregon Ducks put up 81 points on Saturday. Coming in a second place tie were the Oklahoma Sooners (a team which has a history of running up the score) and Ole Miss Rebels.  Each tallied 73 points apiece in their Week 1 outings. The only people impressed by those numbers (as usual) are the East Coast pollsters.  The Ducks, Sooners, and Rebels have all moved up two spots in the latest AP “Don’t buy it” early season rankings. I salute a few of the major college football teams for playing in a competitive Week 1 match-up. This is why it is nearly impossible to gauge the strength of college football teams until they have played at least four games.  My annual SwampSwamiSports.com College Football Top 25 rankings will not be published until the first few days of October. There are some clear trends emerging in college football already.  With some teams making greater use of the NCAA’s transfer portal and cash payments via the now-legal (but shady) Name-Image-Likeness (NIL) rules for college athletes, the landscape is quickly changing.  The traditional powers of college football over the last few decades will have a harder time staying at the top this season and in the years to come. Look no further than Colorado, Texas State, and Duke to see how it is being done. The Colorado Buffaloes were 20-point underdogs on Saturday as they traveled to #17 TCU for their first game of the year.  The Buffs were 1-11 last year, while TCU was the runner-up in the national championship game (losing to Georgia).   Though TCU lost a few key starters, the Horned Frogs were at home in Fort Worth for their opening game against the Buffs. After Colorado hired former NFL star Deion Sanders in the offseason, the new head football coach effectively told most of last year’s football team that they just weren’t good enough to play for him.  Many voluntarily left the team, while the new coach didn’t renew scholarships for many players. By the way, the NCAA allows 85 scholarship players for each upper division (BCS) university. In the first game