The White Out, Road Wins & Young Stars

Cuts, Arteries & College Football - a weekend to remember

At halftime Dan Lanning captured the essence of college football while talking to a sideline reporter:
“I love it man. This is a fight. This is exactly what you sign up for. We’re getting some small cuts, small cuts, eventually we’re going to hit an artery.”

That line stuck with me. Because isn’t that what college football is at its best? Small cuts. A back-and-forth. A weekend that starts with a jolt, ends with a sigh, and leaves you somewhere between exhilarated and exhausted.

Friday night gave us that jolt. Virginia and Florida State got your blood pumping and by the end of the night, your blood may have been boiling after watching Oregon State lose to Houston.

By dawn Saturday my play-by-play partner Guy Haberman had already been up for an hour, pacing with anticipation for Rutgers–Minnesota. We had a feeling it would come down to the final seconds and it delivered. That 9a PST kickoff launched into a Saturday that was full of close game, wild finishes and epic crowd shots.

Or as our we like to say within our TV crew, ‘BANGERS ONLY!’

I was on a flight toggling between Oregon v Penn State and Alabama v Georgia. Two massive road wins. Two fan bases silenced. Two fan bases waking up today as proud as they have been in 2025.

To think that Kalen DeBoer and Dan Lanning had a budding rivalry going back only a few years ago made me imagine an Alabama v Oregon CFP game. Maybe at the Rose Bowl? If only we could be so lucky.

That’s the beauty of late September. It’s not just games on a schedule. It’s players leaving everything on the grass. It’s rivalries taking root. It’s fan bases waking up Sunday with dreams either dashed, revived, or completely redefined.

So what did the weekend teach us? Here are the elements that stood out, and the questions that still linger from the sky: