My friend Lanier had what was probably the quote of the day regarding the opening weekend of NCAA gridiron:

“It’s nice to see that college football has a pre-season”.

Well, was it that bad, really? I mean, football is back, which is always cause for celebration. And we had games between ranked teams. And…um…games between unranked teams.

Truth be told, the first week of college football pretty much always sucks. Today wasn’t really an exception, unless you happen to live in Greenville or Tuscaloosa. I would’ve also said “Bowling Green”, but we all know that nobody really lives there.

Anyway, let’s get to the winners and losers of Week One, after the jump.

Best Performance by a Favored Team: While there were several brutal beatdowns performed by favored teams today (i.e., Florida vs Hawaii, Penn State vs someone weak), I think this award has to go to the USC Trojans. Prior to the game, the talking heads were predicting a slow start by the USC offense. Yeah, that didn’t happen. USC blew the doors off this game early, and never looked back. They even had the audacity to go to the air in the third quarter. All of this took place on the road, three time zones away from home, against a BCS conference opponent who isn’t nearly as awful as the 52-7 final might indicate. Honorable mention goes to Missouri, although they really need to do something about that defense.

Worst Performance by a Favored Team: The easy money here is on Clemson, and I’ve never been one to argue against easy money. The Tigers ABSOLUTELY SUCKED in this contest. During a three-hour beatdown at the hands of the Saban Empire, the only glimmer of hope that Clemson experienced happened when they returned the opening kickoff of the second half for a touchdown. The pundits immediately took the opportunity to mercilessly bash the ACC, and I can’t say I blame them. If Clemson, who came in ranked 9th in the nation, is so bad as to get obliterated by the 4th-best team in the SEC on a neutral field, one can only guess how the rest of the conference will fare.

Best Coaching Debut: I’m gonna give this one to Bo Pellini, simply because of the eggshell-fragile collective psyche of Nebraska fans these days. They needed to see a definitive statement out of this team, especially since they’re probably a couple of years away from competing for the Big 12 title. While blowing out a decidedly poor MAC team at home isn’t exactly noteworthy in the grand scheme of things for a program of Nebraska’s stature, it does represent a short step on the path to healing. Or something. What?

Worst Coaching Debut: Mike Sherman. Hands down. How on earth does Texas A&M ever lose to Arkansas State…at home, no less? Whose idea was this hire, again? Yeah, RichRod didn’t get off to a great start with the Wolverines, but most people figured Michigan might struggle at the start of this season…and UM did at least come back and make it close at the end against Utah.

Cancel The Season: Not yet. No one gets the much-coveted Cancel The Season award this week, although there were definitely teams putting in some strong bids. Texas A&M was saved from this category only because their embarrassing loss was to an FBS team. Syracuse gave us a sneak preview of how terrible they’ll be with that blowout loss at Northwestern. And both Washington schools looked completely and utterly impotent in blowout losses to Oregon (UW) and Oklahoma State (Wazzu). Each of these teams can still salvage something, but they need to get their crap together.

Week 2 Preview: Based on the results from today, there are a couple of games next week that may be more interesting than we first anticipated. Such as…

- West Virginia at East Carolina: The Pirates pulled off a nice upset of Virginia Tech at home this week, while West Virginia started off the Stewart era with a right good whacking of Howie Long’s alma mater. If ECU wins this game, it could get very interesting in terms of the polls. The Pirates have two winnable road games against ACC foes (NC State, Virginia), a road game against Tulane, and a bunch of garbage C-USA teams remaining on the schedule. Could this be the year that a C-USA team contends for a BCS at-large? Okay, probably not. Still, this should be a good contest.

- Miami at Florida: Can we really read anything into either of these teams’ opening-week performances? Hawaii was outclassed, outgunned, and was breaking in a new coach, so UF’s domination wasn’t really unexpected. Miami looked pretty fluid in their opener on Thursday…but it was against Charleston Southern, so it doesn’t really count. Still, the Hurricanes’ defense appears pretty psyched for this season, and their offense is already about twice as good as last year’s comedy of errors. I don’t see Miami winning this game, but they *might* be able to keep it within a couple of scores if they play smart.