Saturdays during college football season tend to be wild and unpredictable, and Week 1 didn’t disappoint to kick off the 2019 season.
Week 1 has been a wonderful, five-day celebration to begin the college football season. We’ve seen the successful debuts of new head coaches (like Ryan Day defeating Florida Atlantic in his first game as Ohio State’s boss) and the return of a longtime coach (Mack Brown tearing up on camera after UNC defeated South Carolina).
Week 1 also treated us to a number of prolific starts by transfer quarterbacks in new locations, such as Brandon Wimbush at UCF, Justin Fields at Ohio State, and Jacob Fields at Washington. We saw late-night heroics by freshman stars, most notably Auburn’s Bo Nix leading the No. 16-ranked Tigers to a victory against Oregon Saturday night.
And, of course, Week 1 gave us some exciting upsets. This past weekend’s upsets serve as important reminder for college football fans: preseason rankings, honors and watch lists fly out the door when the teams actually hit the gridiron.
While there were several notable near-misses by Davids against their respective Goliaths, like Iowa State needing three overtimes to beat FCS opponent Northern Iowa and Army needing a late stop to get past Rice, and there were still plenty of significant upsets in Week 1.