College football has given the sports world yet another upset in the race to the playoff. Spoiler Alert ahead; Number four ranked Baylor loses in week eight of college football to unranked West Virginia with a score of 41-27. What makes this even more exciting is what has been happening in previous weeks of football. With all of the shake-up of teams switching conferences and this being the first year of a four-team playoff, this year has entailed upset after upset and confusion all around as to who will be making it to the playoff.
There are still many weeks left until the playoffs begin. Many more conference games and ranked games to watch, there was no way of knowing how many great teams would have already added a loss to their record. Week six showed that no matter what conference- no team is safe this year. Week six may have been an upset all together and not just for a few teams. The biggest team to fall on this week being Oregon, ranked number two in the country; they lost to the University of Arizona 31-24. Two days later, number 3 Alabama loses to Ole Miss. It seemed to be a great day by all of Mississippi as Mississippi State defeats number six ranked Texas A&M 48-31.
The college football upsets were only just beginning. Number four overall Oklahoma got upset by losing against TCU. Notre Dame, who has not been in the National Playoff mix in years, brought their name back by beating number 14 Stanford. Number 15 LSU lost to number five Auburn which could have set up a number one and two with Florida State, if that was the case it would have been a repeat of last year’s National Championship game. Number eight UCLA lost to the University of Utah as well as Number 17 Wisconsin losing to Northwestern University. If fans love excitement, then they were definitely not “upset” with October 11th.
All in week six, the number two, three, four, six, eight, fourteen, fifteen and seventeen all lost their spots. Weeks like week six happen very often in college sports. Week six will always be brought up in college football upset talks from now til the end of time. The year of the first playoff is a historical week of excitement and unpredictability. Power conferences like the Pac-12 and SEC took a hit to their prestigious names of being the toughest conferences in college football.
As the season rolls on, upsets will occur in college football; it is predictable that unpredictability will happen over the course of the season, but it is rare to see so many top five and high ranking teams to lose at this frequency. With the number four team losing again, there is no denying that no team is safe and anything thought to be pre-determined- is not. There is much excitement left this year in college football as the playoff nears; which gives the top four teams a chance at winning the National Championship. What comes next is up each and every player, because any team has a chance at winning it all this year.
By Evan Linneman
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Photo By Billy Metcalf Photography- Flickr License
