They call it Week Zero.
After watching Saturday’s college football games, I finally understand why.
That’s exactly how many significant things happened — zero.
Don’t get me wrong. I was happy as hell to have college football back. After spending an entire offseason talking about recruiting, the transfer portal, quarterback battles, preseason rankings and which teams might make a run at the playoff, I was ready to watch somebody actually line up and hit somebody.
But Week Zero is basically college football handing you an appetizer and telling you dinner will be out shortly.
Nothing I saw Saturday changed my national championship pick. Nothing changed my playoff picture. And nothing made me completely rethink how I view the major contenders heading into the season.
But I will say there were two things that caught my attention.
The first was Virginia.
Virginia looked very good. Not just good for Week Zero, either. They looked physical, prepared and confident. Beating NC State 34–8 is the kind of performance that makes me put a little star beside your name and say, OK, I need to watch these guys again.
I’m not ready to make Virginia an ACC contender after one football game, but they definitely increased their stock with me Saturday.
The other interesting result was North Carolina beating TCU.
I’m just not sure yet what it means.
There are two possibilities.
Either North Carolina is going to be significantly improved this season, or TCU has significantly dropped.
Right now, I don’t know which one it is.
That’s one of the problems with evaluating Week Zero — or even Week One. We don’t have a baseline yet. Beating a team we think is good looks impressive until three weeks later when we discover that team isn’t very good at all.
But North Carolina deserves credit. They went to Dublin, played a tough, ugly football game and found a way to win. That’s something to build on.
USC handled San Jose State, which is exactly what USC should have done. There were a few other games scattered around the country, but nothing that made me sit up in my chair and start rewriting my preseason predictions.
And maybe that’s exactly what Week Zero is supposed to be.
It’s the trailer before the movie.
A little taste of college football before somebody finally opens the gates and lets everybody onto the field.
So after months of waiting, studying rosters, arguing about rankings and predicting what is going to happen this season, what did we learn from the first Saturday of college football?
Virginia might be pretty damn good.
North Carolina might be improved.
TCU might have some problems.
And everything else?
Zero.
Appropriately enough.
