LSU deserves to be No. 1 after beating Oregon on Saturday. The LSU football team was one of the few that actually tried to play a competitive opponent in Week 1 of the college football season. In a battle between the No. 3 and No. 4 teams in, a result was yielded that should bring a ton of respect to the winner. Other highly ranked teams like Oklahoma and Alabama scheduled cream-puff opponents to open the season, and should be summarily punished by the voters for doing it.
The game between the Ducks and the Tigers was the most anticipated game from Week 1, and there wasn’t a college football expert in the land that thought another game lined up better. LSU took care of business, beating the Ducks 40-27 in what turned out to be a very one-sided second half. LSU has the most valuable win of the season so far, and should be rewarded in both the AP and the coaches polls. Anything other than a No. 1 ranking would be the voters embarrassing themselves.
Does Oklahoma deserve real credit for beating Tulsa? Does Alabama get accolades for beating up on Kent University? Or were these games, where the home team had to pay the opponent to come get beat up, games that should actually hurt top ranked teams. Was anyone but the home crowds of those two schools at all interested in the outcomes on Saturday? The answer is a resounding “no” and the voters should treat it exactly like that.
Devouring what the college football scores have provided in Week 1, it is clear that most ranked teams were playing opponents that weren’t up to the task. Maybe it’s time to send a message that nonconference games against opponents that have no chance at a real bowl game will be unacceptable if a school wants to make it into the BCS picture.
Besides the Boise State-Georgia game that was also played on Saturday, it’s hard to find any game where the outcome couldn’t have been predicted ahead of time. Sept. 3 certainly won’t become known as “upset Saturday” this year, mostly because big schools were afraid to do what LSU and Oregon did.
Oregon is probably destined for the Pac-12 championship game. The only real challenge on the schedule for the Ducks will be Stanford and Andrew Luck, and that will only add to the value of this win for LSU down the stretch. Nobody will be talking about the Oklahoma or Alabama games in November, but the LSU-Oregon game will be mentioned for the rest of the year.