The biggest game of the week (Texas-Michigan) was a 19-point Longhorns win that didn't even feel that close. That ranked-versus-ranked matchup in Charlotte (Tennessee-NC State)? Vols won by 41. The big-name Nebraska-Colorado reunion in Lincoln? Nebraska led by 14 points 10 minutes in, and it was never closer. Most of the big games of Week 2 were done well before the fourth quarter, the top four teams won by an average of 37 points, and only one top-15 team was upset.
So it was a big dud of a Saturday, then? Good lord, no! It was a wonderful mess from start to finish. We may have thought we'd spend most of our attention on the games in Ann Arbor, Charlotte and Lincoln, but instead the remote pulled us to Eugene, Stillwater, South Bend, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Syracuse, Tempe and State College. We had two late-night classics. We had stunning last-minute plot twists at the FCS level. We had glorious field goals and gut-wrenching missed field goals at the buzzer.
College football's superpower is its long tail, its epic depth. The College Football Playoff race is fun to follow and should be even more fun in the new, expanded CFP era, but it's just one part of the story. Crowds of 20,000, and 40,000, and 60,000 and 80,000 come together throughout the country every Saturday, and many of them see absolutely ridiculous and delightful things whether they're playoff-related or not. Week 2 was proof that the weekly 14-hour or so show known as College Football is impossibly entertaining whether we see a run of huge upsets or classic top-10 matchups or not.
As proof, let's walk through the 20 best games of the weekend and what they meant. This list doesn't even include Ball State's comeback win over Missouri State (which featured a 48-point fourth quarter), Cal's cross-country upset of Auburn, Virginia's 31-30 comeback win over Wake Forest, Idaho's 17-13 non-upset upset of Wyoming or BYU's funky Friday night win over SMU. To reach this top 20, games had to be either very special or very silly (or both).
Jump to a section:
Week 2's best games
Biggest surprises
Heisman of the week
The 20 best games of Week 2
1. No. 7 Oregon 37, Boise State 34
If you told me before the season that Oregon would be in the company of teams like UTSA, Florida State, NC State and Appalachian State early in the year, I'd have thought that was a very good thing. That's a list of teams that thought they were ready to hit on high ambitions in 2024.
Instead, these teams have been just about the most disappointing in the country through two weeks. In the Ducks' first two games, they've underachieved against SP+ projections by more than 50 points.