Brian’s College Football Top 5: Week 1

Photo by LM Otero from the Associated Press

We are BACK baby!

Week one of my favorite sport is officially in the books after last night’s Labor Day game, and it’s time to go into the top 5.

Just a reminder if this is your first time reading these, this is not a top 5 AP poll or coaches poll or anything like that.

This is strictly the 5 teams that impressed me the most, whether it be through a fantastic performance or a big upset.

So with that said, let’s get into week 1!

Honorable Mention: Florida State Seminoles

I thought there were five more teams worthy of the list this week, but I couldn’t go without acknowledging the performance Florida State put in over LSU on Sunday night.

That was a statement game from the Noles against a consensus playoff contender, and any other week it would’ve been enough to make the list.

5. Wyoming Cowboys

Wyoming invited Texas Tech to Laramie and swiftly got off to a horrible start, falling down 17-0.

But hey, no big deal. Texas Tech is a good team.

Except Wyoming decided they weren’t in the mood to roll over on Saturday night, fighting back and getting a double overtime upset win over the Red Raiders.

The good news for Texas Tech is that this isn’t the loss in Texas people will talk about.

But more on that later.

4. North Carolina Tar Heels

We already knew that Drake Maye is a fantastic college quarterback, which is why everyone expected UNC to put up a bunch of points this year.

We also expected their defense to be absolutely horrific and give up a ton of points.

But that’s not what we got.

Instead, we had a front 7 performance from UNC that held South Carolina to negative rushing yards and sacked Spencer Rattler 8 times.

It’s a performance that stops you in your tracks and makes you think that maybe we drastically underestimated UNC’s defense this year.

3. Duke Blue Devils

The national narrative around Duke’s upset over Clemson is going to be how many times Clemson made errors that ruined this game for them, and that’s not entirely wrong. But it’s also not giving Duke their fair shake.

The Blue Devils played excellent defensively, and even made their own unforced errors, such as a muffed punt leading to Clemson’s only touchdown and a fumble near the red zone that took away points before halftime.

Duke was the better team last night.

Flat out, full stop.

2. Colorado Buffaloes

Oh yeah. Deion somehow wasn’t number 1 this week.

But that should not take away what an amazing job the Buffs did against TCU on Saturday.

I thought the Buffs line would get pushed around this year. They did not.

I knew that Colorado had excellent skill position players, but I did not expect that level of performance from Travis Hunter.

Most importantly, they were extremely well coached with a strong game plan and very few pre snap penalties.

For a brand new staff with loads of new transfers and no pre-season, that is beyond impressive.

Maybe they should be number 1 this week.

1. Texas State Bobcats

But instead, I’ll give it to the team that I continuously forget exists in FBS.

The Texas State job was a job that I felt was going to take a verrrrry long time to get right, even if I did like new coach GJ Kinne and the awesome offense he ran at Incarnate Ward.

This is Texas State. Recruits aren’t great. The competition is harder. It was going to take some time.

It doesn’t help that they had to go to Baylor week 1 and face a rough and tough Dave Aranda defense.

But what do any of us know that Kinne doesn’t?

That Texas State offense was absolutely unstoppable, putting up 42 points and upsetting Baylor on the road.

It wasn’t even a case of Baylor beating themselves either, as the two turnovers Baylor had were late in the 4th quarter while they were already down 42-31.

The Bobcats went straight into Waco and hit ‘em where it hurts.

If Texas State is going to be like that all year, the Sun Belt is going to be even more fun…