Brian’s College Football Top 5: Week 2

Photo by Thomas Shea from USA Today Sports

From a schedule standpoint, this was not supposed to be a very interesting week of games.

Boy oh boy was that wrong!

This list isn’t going to involve BYU for their amazing double OT win against Baylor.

It’s not going to involve Kansas beating West Virginia by 13 in overtime which seems impossible and yet somehow happened.

It’s not even going to involve Texas for hanging in with Alabama without Quinn Ewers.

That’s how good this week of college football was.

5. Washington State Cougars

The Cougs had a very good year last year considering the turmoil surrounding their program with Nick Rolovich not getting vaccinated for Covid despite the state wide mandate for state employees and being fired for it.

Despite that, they turned to interim coach Jack Dickert and had a really good season, but people expected a step back this year.

Well apparently not! Because the Cougs went into Madison, Wisconsin and took down the #19 Wisconsin Badgers with a 17-14 win.

An awesome win for Wazzu, and somehow still only good enough for 5th.

4. Oregon State Beavers

I’ll go ahead and link the highlights here but if you can’t watch the highlight’s I’ll just explain the end of this game.

Fresno State scored a touchdown to make it 32-29 with one minute left, an extra point away from forcing the Beavers to need a touchdown to win the game.

They missed.

A lifeline for Oregon State, as all they need is a field goal to send it to overtime, and even better when they found themselves on the 3 yard line with 3 seconds left. A chip shot to send it to overtime.

Overtime? Screw that.

They’re going for it.

Direct snap to the running back into the endzone, and the Beavers get a walk off win in Fresno.

College football writer Steven Godfrey recommends that every college football fan should adopt a team to root for each season that isn’t your favorite.

The Beavers might just be that team for me. I love the guts.

3. Marshall Thundering Herd

Marshall clearly caught on quickly to the Sun Belt upset rules, as the Thundering Herd went into Notre Dame and pulled off a 26-21 upset victory.

This would be higher on the list but there were so many awesome upsets this weekend and the Notre Dame offense is just disgusting to watch.

Still an awesome upset victory for the Herd.

2. Appalachian State Mountaineers

Nice to see some Mountaineers winning this week…

Sorry. Had to vent.

Still, you may be wondering why they aren’t number 1.

After all, they went into Kyle Field and pushed around #6 Texas A&M to upset the Aggies 17-14.

Well, first of all Appalachian State is really, really good.

Second of all, it’s not A&M’s fault that a team with a question mark at quarterback and boatloads of freshman was ranked in the top 10. They didn’t ask for that ranking.

App State still pushed them around, which should never happen against A&M and that makes this win insanely impressive, but there is still a caveat.

Not only that, but there was a more impressive win to top it.

1. Georgia Southern Eagles

What?

Georgia Southern beating a bad Nebraska team is more impressive than App State beating A&M?

Are you crazy?

Yes, but that’s not important right now.

Appalachian State was expected to be a good team this year. Georgia Southern really wasn’t.

And so to go into a hostile environment like Lincoln, Nebraska (and don’t be fooled by that because Huskers fans show out for Nebraska games no matter their record) is an incredible win for the first year with Clay Helton as head coach.

But here’s the main thing.

Nebraska was likely going to fire Scott Frost regardless, but his buyout dropped in half from $15 million to $7.5 million on October 1st.

Nebraska fired Scott Frost yesterday.

Georgia Southern beating Nebraska made the Nebraska athletic department not care about paying an extra $7.5 million for Scott Frost not to coach for them.

There’s no more impressive win than that.