College Football This Week: First Oregon. Who Will Fall Next

Rich Rodriguez proved he had a thing or two left to show everyone in the Pac 12 Thursday night. The Oregon Ducks wished he never opened his bag of tricks.

The 31-24 win over the Ducks not only shook up the conference a bit, but it also had an impact on the National Title playoff series and hurt Michigan State, a team that lost to Oregon earlier in the year. The loss by Marcus Mariota and the troops made the Pac 12 look at bit weaker and certainly did not do any favors for the Big Ten.

That is what makes this season of college football in particular so great. That is also one of the reasons this weekend in college football is by far the biggest and most important yet to be played.

Six games alone this weekend will have ranked opponents playing each other. The game between Tennessee and Florida is played at NOON on Saturday, which tells you how far this rivalry has fallen – but it still has major implications as Will Muschamp is still fighting for his coaching life.

And while we are all letting the SEC continue to run amuck with Alabama and Mississippi going head to head and Mississippi State and Texas A&M and LSU Auburn locking up, it surely figures to shuffle the deck at the poker table.

What this weekend also does is help FSU in its quest to reclaim a national title. The Seminoles play Wake Forest in what could be deemed a scrimmage for the Seminoles. Texas and Baylor lock up, but can Charlie Strong handle the Baylor offense? The same holds for TCU as it welcomes Oklahoma to town. There is no chance for a close game in that one.

For everyone who is worried that the new playoff system will not have a fair representation in a four-team playoff system, let me say this. If teams beat each other, as the SEC is bound to do and now it appears the Pac 12 will do as well, it opens the door for other schools to walk in like BYU or a team or two from Mississippi. Who would have thought that only one team in the state of Florida would in the top 25 and two schools from Mississippi would hover around the top 10?

Or how about this? There are three teams in the top 25 from the Lone Star State and none are from Austin?

The NCAA is getting what it wanted all along and now, since the fans have been clamoring for a playoff all this time, there is no way they can back off the bandwagon and complain. Unless you take the stand there should be eight teams in the playoff. That’s a whole other argument.