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  David Hale, ESPN Staff WriterSep 7, 2024, 11:17 PM ET

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  • College football reporter.
  • Joined ESPN in 2012.
  • Graduate of the University of Delaware.

The best upsets are the ones no one sees coming.

Northern Illinois‘ stunning defeat of Notre Dame certainly fits the bill. Just a week ago, the Irish looked like a surefire playoff team after upending Texas A&M on the road.

The best upsets aren’t about luck.

There was nothing unconventional in NIU’s game plan. The Huskies were the more physical, more fundamentally sound, more deserving team Saturday.

The best upsets cast our collective consciousness backward, toward the other moments when the seemingly impossible suddenly became real.

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In this case, NIU didn’t have to work too hard. Notre Dame is good for one of these every few years.

OK, so maybe Saturday’s stunner didn’t check every box — much of the game felt like watching two aging walruses attempt to nudge each other off a rock — but after a Week 1 that was mostly chalk, it served as the first serious twist in the story of the 2024 season.

(Technically Florida State‘s Week 0 defeat was the first big upset, but the Noles’ lawyers have filed a motion to quash any mentions of the 2024 season.)

It was a fitting release for a nation primed for chaos after Saturday’s early slate teased so many near misses.

In New Orleans, Tulane had No. 17 Kansas State on the ropes well into the second half, and only a controversial penalty kept the Green Wave from tying the game in the final moment.

Just watching that OPI call against Tulane that may have cost them the game and I can’t imagine anyone in Louisiana has been so angry about a football game since… oh, not that long ago actually. pic.twitter.com/cPelsC822r

— 🅰️️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) September 7, 2024

In Happy Valley, James Franklin tried to put to rest the narrative that he beats all the pushovers but can’t win the big one by, instead, losing to one of those pushovers. Bowling Green took a 24-20 lead well into the third quarter before No. 8 Penn State finally found its footing.

In Stillwater, Oklahoma, Bobby Petrino’s subtle attempt to orchestrate his own Macbeth-like takeover at Arkansas took some wild turns, as the Razorbacks looked poised to actually win on the road against No. 16 Oklahoma State. But the Cowboys reeled off 21 straight points to open the second half and finished off the come-from-behind win with an Ollie Gordon II touchdown in overtime.

Shortly after kickoff in South Bend, Indiana, order had been restored elsewhere, leaving the Irish center stage, just in time for the nation to watch them run headlong into a brick wall.

It was beautiful.

Not because people were eager to laugh at Notre Dame’s misfortune. That’s just a pleasant byproduct. But because, for all the excitement of the sport’s return in Week 1, the real race to the playoff doesn’t begin until we get a massive dose of the unexpected, a twist so unlikely it forces us to reconsider everything we’d held as inherently true, a moment when we all sit back and think, “Jesus, take the wheel.”

Or, maybe that only happens after watching Payton Thorne throw another interception.

pic.twitter.com/0KWZIgmJPo

— no context college football (@nocontextcfb) September 7, 2024

The offseason, after all, is an endless parade of assurances that this ridiculous sport is still girded by some measure of logic, but deep down, we know better. Every year, some poor team wanders onto a field some September Saturday assuming the day will unfold like every Saturday before, and then some upstart from the MAC drops a piano on its head.

On this Saturday, that piano was destined to find Notre Dame.

Riley Leonard, a hero just seven days ago, threw costly interceptions.

The Notre Dame defense, which had utterly bludgeoned Texas A&M a week ago, couldn’t get off the field as Northern Illinois marched 31 yards on 11 plays, chewing up clock before ultimately booting a short field goal to take the lead with 31 seconds to play.

On a field where some of the most legendary players in the sport’s history have suited up, it was NIU’s Antario Brown who stole the spotlight with 225 total yards and a touchdown.

It would’ve been enough to shock the fans at Notre Dame Stadium to their core, if many of them hadn’t also been on hand for the Marshall or Stanford games in 2022.

But the good news for Notre Dame is, while it was the first to suffer the cruelty of college football’s fickle nature, it will not be the last.

It might be Alabama The Tide flirted with disaster against South Florida, as Alabama put on a near shot-for-shot remake of last year’s quagmire as a gift to Nick Saban, who had the field at Bryant Denny named after him Saturday. Instead, Alabama scored 28 in the fourth quarter and won 42-16.

It might be Oklahoma. The Sooners couldn’t muster a lick of offense against lowly Houston, but survived after forcing a safety on the Cougars’ last-gasp drive.

It could be Georgia or Ohio State or Ole Miss. They all won handily against overmatched opposition in Week 2, but the odds will shift again in the future, and eventually, we’ll be blindsided again by a score we never could’ve imagined.

That’s the other great thing about a truly stunning upset. In illuminating how wrong our assumptions were, it also serves to remind us that we’ll be wrong again.

And it will be glorious.

Jump to:
Vibe shifts | Cy-Hawk thriller | Who wants to win?
Leaf it to the refs | Under the radar

Week 2 vibe shifts

Each week of the college football season results not only in major shake-ups to the rankings, but also subtle tweaks that might not be so obvious. That’s why we track not just wins and losses but vibes. We’re here to capture the next big trends and anticipate the next stunning collapses before they happen.

Trending up: Champagne shortages in Central New York

After Kyle McCord threw for 354 yards and four touchdowns in a Week 1 win over Ohio, Syracuse head coach Fran Brown said he planned to send a bottle of champagne to Ohio State‘s Ryan Day for allowing McCord to hit the transfer portal.

We’ll expect a full magnum of the good stuff headed to the Buckeyes’ coach after Saturday’s performance by McCord, who threw for 381 yards and four touchdowns in an upset over No. 23 Georgia Tech. McCord is the first ACC QB to throw for 350 yards and four scores in consecutive games since Kenny Pickett did it in three straight for Pitt in 2021. He ended the season as a Heisman finalist.

Reminder: A QB can’t be a real champagne player if he didn’t transfer from the Columbus region of Ohio.

McCord was widely cast as the fall guy for Ohio State’s inability to beat Michigan last season, and the Buckeyes moved on to Kansas State transfer Will Howard, which feels a lot like taking a major media company with international name recognition and rebranding as X. But who would do that?

Regardless, Brown has Syracuse riding high at 2-0, but that’s nothing new. Syracuse is now 13-2 in August and September games since 2021. The problem? The Orange are just 7-18 after that.

Trending down: Fast-food metaphors

After a Week 1 win against West Virginia, Penn State OC Andy Kotelnicki compared his offense to a Dairy Queen Blizzard — vanilla ice cream with a few of your favorite candies mixed in — but Saturday’s performance against Bowling Green often looked more like something ordered from a late-night drive-through at 2 a.m.

Drew Allar was just 13-of-20 passing with a late interception, and Penn State trailed Bowling Green well into the second half. Luckily for Penn State, Kotelnicki remembered that Nicholas Singleton is the Twix bar of offensive mix-ins, and the tailback scored twice in the final 22 minutes of the game, including a game-clinching 41-yard scamper with 4:09 to play, and the Nittany Lions survived 34-27.

Trending up: Finding a true friend in this cruel world

It’s a cliché of melodrama to have two star-crossed lovers finally find each other, running across a verdant field or a sandy beach before a long-awaited embrace.

But change the setting to a blocked field goal return and suddenly what was once a trope of cheesy TV now feels like a heartwarming moment of pure joy.

Well, not for Baylor.

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0:55

Utah blocks a Baylor FG and returns it for a TD

After Utah blocks Jack Bouwmeester’s field goal kick, Tao Johnson returns it 77-yard for a touchdown.

The 77-yard return for the score put Utah up 7-0, and the Utes went on to win 23-12. On the downside, QB Cam Rising left the game in the second quarter with a hand injury after a shove from a Baylor defender forced him to burst through a bank of watercoolers like the Kool-Aid man. So, probably shouldn’t high-five him for a while.

But for the losing Bears, maybe the real field goal was the friends we made along the way.

Trending down: Auburn boosters’ liquid assets

There is some good news for Auburn after another embarrassing home loss, this time 21-14 to Cal. Hugh Freeze was hired in the hopes the Tigers would finally have a coach who could beat Nick Saban, and as of 2024, there’s a strong chance Auburn will not lose any more games to Saban. So, mission accomplished.

On the downside, however, Auburn does seem to be losing a whole lot to everyone else.

Payton Thorne threw four interceptions in Saturday’s loss, a seemingly adamant statement that, no, the Auburn offense won’t be much better in Year 2 under Freeze. Auburn is now 24-27 over the past five seasons, and the War Eagle has been downgraded to a pigeon with a mild gluten intolerance.

But Freeze, himself, should be particularly concerned. In his past 16 games vs. FBS competition — a span dating back to his Liberty tenure — he’s just 5-11 with two home losses to New Mexico State and an offense that has averaged less than 24 points per game.

Ferentz returns, Iowa falters

Kirk Ferentz returned from a one-game suspension to much fanfare — and also 50 Cent’s “Many Men (Wish Death).” He then made it rain from the press box, which in Iowa terms translates into nine punts and less than 100 yards passing.

Didn’t have Kirk Ferentz returning from suspension to “Many Men” on my preseason bingo card. pic.twitter.com/BOdYgZobxh

— Adam Rittenberg (@ESPNRittenberg) September 7, 2024

Still, the Hawkeyes welcomed their coach back by jumping out to a 19-7 lead midway through the third quarter — a seemingly insurmountable margin given Iowa State hadn’t topped 17 in a Cy-Hawk game since 2017.

But times are changing in Iowa. Brian Ferentz is gone, which means plenty of offensive excitement like interceptions, runs up the middle for 2 yards and all the time of possession you can stand. In other words, Iowa didn’t score again.

The Cyclones, on the other hand, found some late mojo thanks to a 75-yard TD pass from Rocco Becht to Jaylin Noel, then in keeping with state law, limited the fourth quarter to just two field goals, including a 54-yard game winner with just 6 seconds to go.

After losing six straight in the series, Iowa State has now won two of the past three meetings with Iowa. But even more embarrassing for the Hawkeyes, Iowa State also finished with 21 more punt yards.

Anybody want to win?

Normally, a Pitt–Cincinnati game would simply be the easiest way to measure whether it’s better to put French fries inside a sandwich or cinnamon-flavored ground beef on top of spaghetti, but Saturday’s showdown was something so much more nauseating.

First, Cincinnati used an ugly Pitt interception and a failed fourth-down try near midfield to build a 27-6 lead with less than 5 minutes to play in the third quarter. Then its defense fell apart. Pitt engineered three straight touchdown drives but opted to go for two on each of the last two scores. It failed both times, thus leaving the Bearcats ahead 27-25.

But Cincinnati looked that gift dead in the eye and said, “No, thanks.” Then it immediately got its foot stuck in a bucket and tumbled down a flight of stairs. Worse, Pitt faced a fourth-and-3 with 1:22 left to play, but Cincinnati was flagged for disconcerting signals (which, to be fair, was about the least disconcerting thing Cincinnati had done in the fourth quarter) giving the Panthers a first down and, ultimately, setting up a go-ahead field goal.

The end result: Pitt 28, Cincinnati 27. Afterward, Pat Narduzzi and Scott Satterfield retreated to the parking lot and took turns stepping on a rake.

Leaf it to the refs

Kansas State‘s offense was far from crisp early Saturday, but linebacker Austin Romaine ensured it was still salad days in Manhattan, Kansas. Lettuce tell you how the Wildcats pulled off the comeback win.

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0:40

K-State takes 4th-quarter lead on thrilling scoop-and-score

Kansas State goes ahead in the fourth quarter thanks to a clutch forced fumble, recovery and touchdown against Tulane.

Tulane was driving deep into Wildcats territory when Romaine remained as cool as an iceberg, shredding the O-line, sacking QB Darian Mensah and forcing a fumble. He scooped the ball, and with a full head of steam, he sprinted down the field endived into the end zone for the go-ahead TD. The play was downright radicchio-lous.

But lest any fans leaf early, Tulane wasn’t ready to kale it a day. Mensah wedged a throw to Yulkeith Brown just beyond the goal line for what appeared to be a game-tying touchdown, but the refs threw a flag for offensive pass interference, reversing the play before VJ Payne collard one last heave for an INT to seal the 34-27 win.

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0:38

Tulane’s late TD catch called back for offensive pass interference

Tulane nearly ties the game against Kansas State with a last-second touchdown effort, but the score gets reversed due to a pass interference call.

There’s no dressing this up: For K-State, the victory was no little gem, even if Tulane will be green with envy for weeks to come.

Under-the-radar game of the week

It had been nearly five full years since the Division II Clarion Golden Eagles won on their home field. In the interim — a span of 1,798 days or three Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez marriages — we endured a global pandemic, the milk crate challenge and the entire Jeff Hafley era at Boston College.

But, thankfully, our long national nightmare is over. Clarion gave the home crowd (though no attendance was actually reported) something to cheer about, knocking off Lincoln (Pa.) University 20-9 on Thursday.

Clarion is actually off to a 2-0 start to the season, despite finishing with a losing record every year since 2015.

Clarion’s home-field win bodes well for other things that have been dormant since 2019, including Fyre Festival documentaries, basic cable and Clemson‘s offense.

So, pop on your favorite version of “Old Town Road” and crack open a White Claw. It’s feeling like old times.

Under-the-radar play of the week

There wasn’t a ton of speed on the field for Duke‘s double-OT win over Northwestern, but a rabbit loose in the end zone provided some needed athleticism in the second half.

Checking in on the Duke-Northwestern game… featuring a mascot chasing off an actual rabbit, followed by a fumble in the game. pic.twitter.com/XFhAC1D6es

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 7, 2024

So, to sum up: A cat mascot chasing a wild rabbit was followed immediately by a fumble that led to a game-tying field goal. After that, all that happened was a field goal with 14 seconds remaining to send the game to overtime, a 25-yard Maalik Murphy TD pass to send it to a second OT, another Murphy score and a Duke sack that sealed the game sometime around 2 a.m. Eastern, all on a field Northwestern built next to the lake using Lincoln logs and some loose wiring swiped from O’Hare Airport.