What we learned: Week 1

1: Washington might actually be a pretty decent football team. They lost at home in the season-opener. But this Washington team is a far cry from the one that finished last season. They were flying all over the place, laying SEC-style licks on defense. The offense had some mojo, moving the ball fairly well through the air and on the ground, getting the ball to some quick players in space. Now I'm not saying they are going to upset USC next weekend (the 19th), but USC will be coming off a hard-fought battle in the Shoe, while Washington will be recovering from their first win in nearly two years after the beatdown they will lay on Idaho this Saturday. Just saying.

2: The Big Ten is still the Big Ten. While Illinois was the only one that lost, and that was a thorough beatdown, there were a lot of near-misses. Minnesota needing overtime to put the Cuse away. Ohio State having to intercept a two-point conversion to seal a win over Navy. Purdue giving up 31 points to MAC "powerhouse" Toledo. Indiana beating I-AA Eastern Kentucky by only 6 points. Wisconsin taking on another MAC team, Northern Illinois, and only escaping by 8 in Camp Randall Stadium. And, of course, Iowa needing to block TWO field goals against I-AA Northern Iowa to narrowly escape.

3: The ACC is fighting with the Big East for the worst BCS conference label. If you follow college football at all, you know how embarrassing their first week was: only ONE win against I-A teams and that was Clemson taking on a middle of the road SUN BELT team. A lot of people saw the Miami-FSU game as the saving grace of the weekend for them: I saw a lot of BAD defense and a dropped game-winning TD on the last play of the game after some of the worst clock management and personnel decisions I've seen in college football. And this was Bobby Bowden!

4: The Big East isn't as balanced as people think. The Cincinnati-Rutgers blowout does not show balance, it pleads mediocrity. The so-called frontrunner of the conference got lambasted on national TV, in a home opener on Labor Day. If a rebuilding CINCINNATI team wins by 32 on the road against a Big East Championship contender, the conference is weak: I don't care what kind of strides Cincinnati has made. They got beatdown by Va Tech last year in their BCS game, and they aren't as good this year: Pitt needs to rise to the occasion and save this conference with an 11-1 run this year!

5: As usual, we won't learn much about the SEC until bowl season. They played two ranked teams outside of conference and went 1-1. They only have one more ranked team on the rest of the non-conference schedule: Georgia Tech THREE times (and if they win all 3 games, Georgia Tech won't be ranked for long!). The fact is: if the Fighting Bumblebees have a bad year, the SEC will play one of the, if not the absolute, weakest non-conference slates in the country. So, which one is it: bad offense or good defense? If Georgia-OK State is any indication: it's a little bit of both. Georgia held a high-flying OK State team to only 24 points, instead of the 38 they will probably average on the year. However, they only scored 10 points on a team that will probably give up 24 points a game for the season.

6: The gap between the top 5 and the rest of the top 25 is one solid hit to the QB.