Looking back at the chaos of the 2007 college football season
By Zach Bigalke
Week 6: October 2-6, 2007
After the unranked upsets of Week 5 reconfigured the college football rankings, it made for a full slate of showcase games in Week 6. Seven different contests featured a pair of Top 25 teams against one another. It seemed as though the contenders might finally separate themselves from the pretenders. With only one of the lower-ranked teams winning in the contests, chalk held largely to form.
No. 11 South Carolina was the one lower-ranked team to pull off a victory, as they dealt No. 8 Kentucky its first loss of the season. On the road in Columbia, the Wildcats committed five turnovers to end their perfect campaign. Chris Smelley led the upset for the Gamecocks, completing 17-of-30 attempts for 256 yards and two scores. South Carolina climbed up to No. 7 in the polls, while Kentucky dropped nine spots to No. 17.
Otherwise, every higher-ranked team won. Top-ranked LSU took down No. 9 Florida in their annual SEC rivalry game. In Big Ten play, No. 23 Purdue fell to No. 4 Ohio State in West Lafayette. At the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, No. 10 Oklahoma held on to win the Red River Shootout over No. 19 Texas. Another Big 12 matchup between ranked teams saw No. 17 Missouri knock No. 25 Nebraska out of the polls after a 41-6 Tigers rout.
Over in the ACC, No. 22 Clemson lost for a second straight week as No. 15 Virginia Tech scored passing, rushing, interception return, and punt return touchdowns in a 41-23 win on the road. And No. 20 Cincinnati picked off Mike Teel three times to knock off No. 21 Rutgers on the road. The Bearcats improved to 6-0 and climbed five spots up the polls after the 28-23 victory.
There were other big upsets that crept up on everyone. On the road in Champaign, No. 5 Wisconsin fell to Illinois as Rashard Mendenhall rushed for 160 yards and two touchdowns. It was the first loss of the season for the Badgers, which fell 10 spots in the Coaches poll and 14 places in the AP rankings.
Then there was the story of Kansas. Mark Mangino’s team took down No. 24 Kansas State in Manhattan, knocking their state rivals out of the polls and climbing into the Top 25 for the first time since 1996. The Jayhawks moved to 5-0 for the first time in a dozen years, forcing three Josh Freeman interceptions and holding the Wildcats to 53 rushing yards.
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The Big Upset of the Week
All of this was crazy enough. But it was on the first weekend of October that the first No. 2 team fell in a year that would come to be defined by the phenomenon. It also gave us the first chapter of the rivalry between coaches Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh. Harbaugh had just taken over the Stanford job in 2007, and entering the game against No. 2 USC there was little reason to think the Cardinal could win.
Stanford was 1-3 entering the contest and winless in Pac-10 play in Harbaugh’s first month on the job. The trip to Los Angeles marked the first road game of the season for the Cardinal. Tavita Pritchard earned his first start at quarterback in relief of the injured T.C. Ostrander, and the results were predictable. Pritchard completed just 11 of his 30 attempts for 149 yards, with one touchdown and one interception. He gained 27 yards on 14 rushes.
Two years removed from their narrow loss to Texas in the BCS championship at the Rose Bowl, the Trojans were on track for another title game appearance. Stanford seemed like a blip on the schedule, as USC had won five straight over their northern private-school rival. But the Cardinal defense kept the team in the contest against one of the top teams in the nation, intercepting John David Booty four times and forcing a fumble. They came up with a critical goal-line stand that left USC without a touchdown at the end of the first half.
Even then, USC was still up 16-7 at the start of the fourth quarter. The Cardinal offense chipped away at the lead until a Derek Belch field goal pulled Stanford within 23-17. That set the stage for Pritchard to come through in the clutch. Hitting Mark Bradford for a 10-yard touchdown in the final minute, the defense also nabbed its last two interceptions on either side of the score to preserve a 24-23 upset.
The Cardinal went on to win four of the next five meetings between the two schools. But in 2007, the USC upset would prove the high point in a 4-8 season. Knocking off the Trojans presaged future successes for Harbaugh’s Stanford squads.