Editor’s note: Follow all the action from Week 2 in college football with USA TODAY Sports’ live coverage.
Disappointments and better-than-expected performances are anticipated each weekend in the wild world of college football. It's especially true early in the season as teams haven't gotten into the swing of the schedules and are more prone to mistakes.
There is the potential for surprises Saturday with a slate of games that could produce unlikely results that we've come to look forward to each weekend.
The USA TODAY Sports college football staff – Scooby Axson, Jace Evans, Paul Myerberg, Erick Smith and Eddie Timanus – weigh in with some bold predictions for Week 2 of the college football season:
Good fortune continues for the conference this week, currently constituted as the Pac-2, but for the next 10 months known as the Pacific-12. The league's six ranked teams (Utah, Southern California, Colorado, Oregon State, Oregon, and Washington) should all win their games Saturday, while five others have at least a fighting chance with some intriguing non-conference matchups. Stanford is playing USC and is a four-touchdown underdog, so they are exempt from the previous sentence. With the number of outstanding quarterbacks in the conference, the Pac-12 can at least keep afloat in the national title picture, well into October.
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"Do you believe now?" Deion Sanders asked after his Colorado team upset TCU in its season opener. My answer: Not quite yet! The now-ranked Buffaloes’ win over the Horned Frogs was impressive to be sure, but now comes the hard part – doing it again. Colorado has heightened expectations and the added pressure of a number next to its name and, perhaps most importantly, other teams actually have film of what this all looks like. Nebraska finds a way to pull off the upset this weekend to get first-year coach Matt Rhule a signature win of his own.
Texas beats Alabama by a single point and says to the world: We’re back! (For now, basically; we can revisit after Texas plays Oklahoma.) Beating the Tide will take an almost perfect effort, mainly from third-year quarterback Quinn Ewers. In last year’s 20-19 loss, Ewers threw for more than 130 yards in the first quarter before leaving the game with a shoulder injury. The Longhorns can have success in the passing game and take advantage of a mistake or two from the Tide’s Jalen Milroe-led offense and pull off the program’s biggest win in well over a decade.
Notre Dame has looked almost flawless in two victories to open the season. However, the opposition at best could be described as underwhelming. The Irish will get a more difficult test this weekend when they roll into Raleigh to face North Carolina State. The Wolfpack have the defense to slow down the Sam Hartman-led offense that has looked so good this early. Brennan Armstrong had some growing pains in the opener against Connecticut, but the N.C. State quarterback should play better on home ground and lead his team to an unlikely upset.
In case this little nugget slipped under your radar, the Football Championship Subdivision went 0-42 against its big brothers from the Bowl Subdivision in Week 1. That may not seem all that surprising on its face – FCS wins in such matchups are invariably considered upsets, after all – but there’s usually at least one that manages to pull it off.
The guess here is that it will happen in Week 2, as several FCS playoff contenders have what appear to be winnable visits to FBS sites. New Hampshire gets a crack at Central Michigan, a 4-8 team a year ago, and Holy Cross makes a short trip to take on a Boston College squad that might still be feeling down in the dumps after dropping its opener to Northern Illinois in overtime. But the best bet might be Idaho, which heads down to Reno to take on Nevada. The Wolf Pack’s current 11-game losing streak began last season with a loss to another FCS member, Incarnate Word.
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