Weekend Wesults fur ze furst veek oon September, ya!

Hey, what an exciting weekend (so far)! What looked like a boring week in Australia ended up with a handful of routs and a handful of upsets - and telling them apart in advance was impossible! Sure, Hawthorn, Sydney, West Coast and Richmond followed the script and routed their opponents by a combined 230 points...but Port Adelaide ended up playing the Peel Thunder feeder team, rather than the parent club Fremantle, and won by well over ten goals; Brisbane and Essendon surprised and pulled off narrow upsets in close games; GWS apparently took the last week off once they were out of the playoff race and Melbourne walked all over them; and most dramatically, Geelong found their championship pride to end the run of nine straight years in the finals and three titles, sending three of their retirees off with pride in a fourth quarter rout of finals-bound Adelaide.

In the CFL, BC upset Montreal 25-20 Friday; the other games are still coming up here on Labor Day weekend. 

Now, here's the opening weekend of Division I college football! In descending order of interest...
*BYU won at Nebraska (in front of a full house, as with every Nebraska game since 1962!) on a Hail Mary from a backup QB on the last play!
*Alabama looked dominant again, discovering Jake Coker as QB and whomping Wisconsin, 35-17.
*Northwestern shut down ranked Stanford 16-6, much to everybody's surprise. 
*Texas A&M looked remarkable in defeating ranked Arizona State 38-17. (Our pastor's happy!)
*Notre Dame looks even better, annihilating Texas 38-3 (it wasn't that close).
*Utah did what they were supposed to, defeating Michigan in Harbaugh's debut, and giving the Pac-12 a good win.
*But elsewhere in the state, Utah State looked terrible against FCS Southern Utah, winning 12-9, but only when Andrew Rodriguez bailed them out on punt number 25 for the day by running it back 88 yards after a day of no offense and five points. (Wyoming, Army, Washington St, Kansas, and Vanderbilt weren't so lucky, losing to FCS opponents in their openers - admittedly, the last two were 'supposed' to lose. Wyoming's loss, to middling FCS North Dakota 24-13, was the worst of the lot)
*Two match-ups of bottom feeders had interesting results: First-timers Kennesaw St started their existence as a football school with a 56-16 defeat of fellow novices East Tennessee St. But the devastating loss was by Georgia State, #128 out of 128 on the FOLLOWING FOOTBALL rankings in 2014, who thought they had easy pickings against FBS novice Charlotte... who were 23-20 victors in the Georgia Dome. Panthers fans were absolutely besides themselves on social media, excoriating their football team's lack of improvement over their four years in FBS.

Other scores of interest in the FF universe: 
Auburn over Louisville, 31-24...South beat North, 17-13, in the battle of the Carolinas...Indiana held off Southern Illinois 48-47: lower Big Ten versus upper Missouri Valley? That score's about right...TCU edged Minnesota 23-17 (we had the Gophers winning, but they came close)... Oklahoma struggled but won over Central Michigan, 24-13...Boise St scored 16 in the first half, Washington scored 13 in the second half and missed a last minute FG to lose by three...Temple "upset" Penn St (we bet Temple on our sheet!) 27-10...Arizona struggled with UTSA, just like last year, but won 42-32...Hawai'i over Colorado 28-20...Arkansas St and Georgia Southern both laid eggs against Power Five opponents, while Appalachian St won 49-0 against FCS Howard...After their big win against NDSU on national TV last week, Montana gave up a last second FG of their own last night to Cal Poly SLO, losing 20-19...Toledo/Stony Brook and LSU/McNeese St were both stormed out; Georgia cut its victory over UL-Monroe short because of the weather...Mostly disappointing day for the Colonial AA, going 2-9 for the weekend. William&Mary and James Madison deserved to celebrate their victories, and Towson can cheer a "good loss" to powerful East Carolina by just eight...Coastal Carolina, who announced they'll be moving to FBS next year in the Sun Belt, didn't show much muscle in beating Furman 38-35 (they were favored by 23 in Sagarin). But the Sun Belt doesn't require much muscle, either...Jacksonville State may be the class of the Ohio Valley, defeating highly-regarded Chattanooga 23-20...Not a lot to cheer about in the HBC ranks, though, with results like Grambling State's 73-14 loss at Cal-Berkeley on the board. Even our favorite team, Savannah State, failed to make headlines despite their near-complete incompetence in losing to Colorado State 65-13; Davidson managed to "downstage" them with a zero-to-69 drubbing from fellow FCS Citadel.

NEW TIERS POSTED TOMORROW in what is our regular Monday ratings feature. See you then!