This Is Why We Love College Football

It started when Oregon lost its second straight game to Arizona on Thursday night. It ended with a late Saturday night upset of UCLA by Utah.

Three teams from the top five were toppled. Five of the top ten fell. Eleven of the top 25 were knocked down.

From start to finish, week six of this college football season was arguably the most exciting we’ve ever seen, and it reminded us of a very important lesson.

No team is safe. Ever.

That has never been truer than in this season. Don’t sleep on any opponent; doing so could cost you.

This past weekend was filled with thrilling finishes and an onslaught of upsets, and once the dust settled, the college football landscape had shifted dramatically.

Auburn silenced the critics and made a strong move toward the forefront of the national title, while Oregon, Alabama, and Oklahoma all fell from the top five. Texas A&M and UCLA dropped from the top ten, while LSU, USC, Wisconsin, and BYU completely fell out of the rankings. Stanford and Nebraska also lost, but stayed in the top 25.

With teams in the top 25 getting hacked away with a machete, a small trail of unranked teams trickling down into the polls was inevitable.

The most notable of which was Arizona, who made an incredible rise from just outside the top 25 to number ten after their upset of second-ranked Oregon.

Arizona State, Georgia Tech, and Utah also broke the top 25 after being unranked, and the College Football Playoff picture looks dramatically different now than it did to start the season.

Mississippi State and Ole Miss are both tied for third in the nation, TCU made an astronomic jump from 25^th to ninth, and Alabama, Oklahoma, and Oregon are all on the outside of the playoff picture looking in.

And that’s the beauty of college football.

The postseason picture is an ever-changing tapestry in the hands of a splatter painter. Frankly, you just never know what it’s going to look like when it’s done.

Because the small schools continue to get better with the continuing emergence of young, innovative coaches and spread offenses, traditional powers are becoming less and less invincible.

And while upsets seem to be more common these days, there’s still a reason they’re called upsets. They’re not supposed to happen.

That’s why we love college football.

We love the suspense, comebacks, upsets, and drama that all come with college football every week. We love being surprised, and we’re drawn to anything with a shock factor.

It’s why we were glued to our TVs as Ole Miss beat Alabama for the first time in ten years, and Oklahoma fell to TCU within the hour. It’s why we were stunned by Arizona’s second straight upset over Oregon in the early hours of the morning, if you live on the East Coast.

It’s why no one could believe when Auburn trounced LSU 41-7, or when Mississippi State dominated Texas A&M 48-31 (the score is deceiving), both of whom were ranked in the top 15.

It’s why we watched and re-watched Arizona State’s thrilling Hail Mary finish over Southern Cal, and threw our hands in the air when we saw on Sunday morning that UCLA had also been toppled and that college football served us up yet another stunning finish.

We love upsets. We love comebacks. We love it when one ranked team unexpectedly demolishes another one, simply because no one saw it coming.

We love to be entertained, and there was no more entertaining weekend in sports than week six of college football.

So here’s to you, 2014. Thank you for giving us memorable games that we’ll never forget.

Oh, and thank you for only being halfway done.