Points After Week 7: Colorado at the Center of the College Football Universe
Twenty-five years marked the final season of the Western Athletic Conference before the programs that shaped its unofficial Golden Age left to form the Mountain West.
The last WAC game before this pivotal split featured two of the programs and coaches most responsible for the conference’s remarkable ‘80s and ‘90s: BYU with LaVell Edwards and Air Force with Fisher DeBerry.
DeBerry’s Falcons won, 20-13, en route to an Oahu Bowl defeat of Washington that landed Air Force at No. 13 in the final AP Top 25. The end-of-season ranking was, and still today is, tied for third-best in program history: Only a No. 8 final polling in 1985, a year after WAC counterpart BYU won the national championship, and No. 6 ranking in 1958 were better.
The 12th win the ‘98 Falcons reached with the Oahu Bowl capped the best overall final record in Air Force history.
The Falcons have returned to the polls since Troy Calhoun succeeded his mentor DeBerry as head coach in 2007: briefly in 2010, and at No. 22 in the final rankings of 2019.
When the next AP Top 25 is released on Oct. 15, Air Force should enter in the third different season of the Calhoun era and sixth time since the Mountain West split, coming off a 31-24 win over a Wyoming team that was knocking on the door of the Top 25 in its own right.
Air Force is now midway through its 2023 slate and undefeated at 6-0. The Press Break is perhaps inviting a jinx of the Falcons to even bring this up, but it’s not exactly unfathomable that this Air Force team could accomplish something none of the Hall of Famer DeBerry’s squads reached: an unbeaten campaign.
The aforementioned 1958 Falcons went undefeated, but after playing No. 8 Iowa to a 13-13 tie in Week, concluded the season with a scoreless stalemate in the Cotton Bowl against TCU.
I shiver imagining how utterly insufferable some modern-day football writers would behave were the above box score recreated today. But back to the topic at hand.
Should Air Force complete its first undefeated regular season since going 9-0-1 in 1958, the 2023 Falcons could end up back in the Cotton Bowl as the automatic qualifier from the Group of Five conferences.
There’s a lot of football left, starting with Air Force going on the road for back-to-back road games against rivals. The Academy goes to the East Coast next week for the first leg in the Commander in Chief’s Trophy series at Navy, then visits in-state counterpart Colorado State the following week.
The Rams will welcome Air Force to Fort Collins and the scene of one of the best finishes of the 2023 season. Here was the conclusion of Colorado State’s Week 7 win over Boise State:
In both games at Navy and CSU, however — and perhaps for each of its six remaining contests — the Falcons are likely to be Las Vegas favorites.
Now, that means absolutely nothing once the ball’s kicked — and, coincidentally, Vegas may be the best bet to upend Air Force’s pursuit of the New Year’s Six. In what has quietly been arguably the best Year 1 coaching job in all of college football, Barry Odom has UNLV at 5-1 after a 45-27 thumping of rival Nevada.
The Rebels haven’t just won games, either, but gone on a tear of three straight decided by an average margin of 19.7 points. Their sole loss was on the road at Michigan, and they beat Vanderbilt at home.
UNLV visits Air Force in the penultimate weekend of the regular season for what could very well be one of the most historically consequential matchups this year.
Imagine…the state of Colorado at the center of the college football universe, and it not being the Buffs.
Buffs Going Bust
Colorado’s blowout loss at Oregon in Week 4 took plenty of air out of the balloon, and USC playing a confoundingly bad second half wasn’t enough to mask CU looking completely outclassed for most of that game.
The last two weeks in games decided on the final play, however, arguably did more to wear the luster off of Colorado’s initial shine. Struggling to beat an Arizona State team yet to win against Football Bowl Subdivision opponent — and that came just a field goal away from losing to a Southern Utah bunch currently sitting at 2-4 — was hardly impressive.
But hey, a win’s a win; and a road win in conference play, regardless the opponent’s resume, is never something to be dismissed. It’s also possible, if not likely, the 27-24 defeat of Arizona State is the last win Colorado picks up this season after its meltdown on Friday night.
Coughing up a 29-0 halftime lead against Stanford — a team that did lose its FCS matchup — has the markings of a season-defining loss. How the Buffs respond in the coming weeks, when their schedule gets dramatically more difficult than it was over the first seven, will confirm plenty of priors about Deion Sanders whether positive or negative.
But the most interesting football story in Colorado through Week 7 isn’t the Buffs and their midseason backslide. It isn’t even undefeated and soon-to-be-ranked Air Force; not yet, at least.
No, the most interesting story on the Centennial State gridirons is Colorado School of Mines.
Dig This
The Orediggers blasted South Dakota Mines, 45-22, to move to 7-0. Colorado School of Mines has scored at least 45 in four of its last five after opening the season dropping 31 on each of then-No. 3 Grand Valley State and No. 4 Angelo State.
Quarterback John Matocha passed for five touchdowns on Saturday, giving him 21 now for the season and continuing his pace for a second consecutive Harlon Hill Trophy. Repeating as winner of the Div. II equivalent to the Heisman Trophy is a remarkable and a difficult feat — as we saw from the reigning Heisman winner Caleb Williams with his rough performance Saturday at Notre Dame.
But between now and the end of the season, when the Harlon Hill Trophy is awarded, anything can happen. One thing that will happen for sure is that Matocha and the Orediggers will be ranked No. 1 in the Div. II polls come Monday.
Mines’ win on Saturday coincided with top-ranked and two-time defending national champion Ferris State losing in its rivalry game at Grand Valley State.
The Anchor Bone Classic dates back to 1971, and if you’re unfamiliar, I dug into its history at FloFootball this week in anticipation of this year’s installment.
This year’s installment doesn’t look like one of the more memorable installments based solely on the score, a 49-28 GVSU win. However, Ferris State battling back from an initial, 35-0 deficit only for the Lakers to rally and pull away late made for one of Saturday’s most fascinating games.
What’s more, the two-time reigning national champion Bulldogs losing in resounding fashion underscores how difficult three-peating is in college football.
Div. II football hasn’t had a three-time national champion since North Alabama in the mid-1990s; the FBS hasn’t since Minnesota during the Great Depression. That makes what North Dakota State accomplished with five straight FCS national championships from 2011 through 2015, another three in a row from 2017 through 2019, and a ninth Div. I crown in 2021 all the more astounding.
All dynasties end at some point, however. Maybe North Dakota State’s isn’t done yet, but the Bison’s second loss of 2023 felt like a seminal moment.
End of an Era?
North Dakota State lost game before Saturday’s 49-24 rout at North Dakota. Never before, however, had the Bison ever looked so thoroughly overmatched.
What’s more, the air of invincibility NDSU exuded for more than a decade prior just isn’t there now, evidence in UND absolutely stunting on the Bison. And it started from the opening kickoff when Luke Skokna ran it back 100 yards for a touchdown.
North Dakota State will almost assuredly be out of the top 10 for the first time since opening week of the 2011 season — the campaign in which the Bison dynasty began.
In an interesting bit of symbolism, the Bison will be the fourth-highest ranked team in the FCS poll with Dakota in its name behind defending national champion and No. 1 South Dakota State; South Dakota; and now, North Dakota.
All three have beaten North Dakota State in their respective most recent meetings with the Bison.