The Insanity of College Football

Every Saturday, the college football landscape changes dramatically and, at times, unexpectedly. This past Saturday - the first one of the season - saw National Championship contender Oklahoma essentially end its season before it even got off the ground.

The severity of Sam Bradford's shoulder injury will likely decide whether OU will be able to rebound and contend for a Big-12 championship or have to pack it in and look toward 2010. They now have one loss, and with the way the season has started, that may be all it takes for a team like OU to be knocked out of the National Championship picture.

Boise State beat 16th-ranked Oregon Thursday night, which paves the way for the Broncos to potentially go undefeated and demand a chance at being the best team in the country. They went into the weekend ranked 14th, and now may be in the top 10. If they go undefeated, OU will have to a tough time claiming they deserve to be in the final game - if they can even stay a one-loss team (and that will not be easy, even with Bradford).

Next, 20th ranked BYU just beat Oklahoma, which would likely give them the edge in any scenario where it would be down to those two teams. BYU's schedule is much more difficult that Boise State's (they play Florida State, TCU, and Utah), but if BYU were to go undefeated, they would be ahead of Oklahoma.

Then you look at the rest of the top teams - Alabama, Florida, Texas, Ohio State, USC, etc - and it's possible that all of those teams finish with no more than one loss. In fact, I think Florida will go undefeated and one of USC, Ohio State, or Texas will join them. I haven't even added in potential sleeper teams like Ole Miss, O.K. State, Penn State, LSU, or Cal. A one-loss OU team will have a tough time sticking around the top 5.

Again, this assumes OU can even stay in the picture and remain at just one loss.

And I'm going to take them out of the picture. They're now a one-loss team and I have a hard time believing that they will have a shot at the title, for the reasons stated above. There are too many good teams who will be at either one-loss or undefeated for OU to leapfrog them, especially if Bradford misses significant time, which I think he will.

But you know what the best part about all this is? I have absolutely no idea what will happen. This weekend proved what a crazy sport college football is. We had Navy being 2 yards away from overtime against Ohio State (in Columbus!). Northern Iowa, an FCS team, had two chances to kick a game-winning field goal vs. Iowa, but Iowa blocked the kick - TWICE! Matt Barkley looked impressive as USC's starter (even though it was against San Jose St.) and he may prove to be the best USC QB in a long time (yes, better than Palmer, Leinart, Sanchez, etc). College football is so unpredictable and each week produces a huge shift in the top of the polls.

I'm excited to see what will happen next and I'm excited to see what changes next weekend will bring. For all I know, Tim Tebow could tear an ACL or Matt Barkley could lead the Trojans into Columbus and tear up Ohio State. Any predictions people make about the season can go out the window in seconds. One of the two teams in most expert's National Championship game already has one loss and may have lost their quarterback for the season. What else can happen? I don't know, you don't know, no one knows. And I wouldn't want to have it any other way.

(Photo: TSN.ca/Getty images)