New territory for college football
— -- It is the second week in October, the traditional time for Texas and Oklahoma to play, and no one is paying attention. LSU is going to the Swamp and no one knows. Penn State plays at Michigan and no one cares.
Two days have passed since College Football Nation came to the realization the most important games this week are being played in Starkville, Mississippi, and Waco, Texas. No. 2 Auburn plays at No. 3 Mississippi State, and No. 9 TCU plays at No. 5 Baylor.
In a sport that derives so much of its passion from history and tradition, this is new territory. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger predicted as much the first week of the season.
"The concept of order that has underpinned the modern era is in crisis," Dr. Kissinger wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
Oh, wait, wrong former Secretary of State. Kissinger was discussing the world outside of Saturday's America. Condoleezza Rice, like the rest of the selection committee after last weekend, is curled in the fetal position.
In the era of the College Football Playoff, when the conferences with money constructed a playoff that is open pretty much to teams from the conferences with money, it seemed as if the traditional powers would assert themselves.
But six weeks into the season, the best teams have clustered together like teen girls at a One Direction concert. It might hearten Dr. Kissinger and Dr. Rice to see that democracy has sprouted roots in the FBS. But it's confusing for anyone interested in separating contenders from pretenders.
The traditional powers haven't gone away. The top 10 includes Notre Dame and Alabama . They're behind Ole Miss and Mississippi State, who are tied at No. 3, which has both sides of the Egg Bowl demanding a recount. No. 11 Oklahoma is peering through the window at the top 10 and seeing TCU and Arizona on the inside.
If four teams in the top six lose, that might be more of a reflection on the quality of the rankings than the quality of the teams. But there's another way to look at it: One loss ain't what it used to be. The combination of the 12-game regular-season schedule and the BCS postseason format no longer meant that one loss could be a mortal blow (among the biggest conferences, of course; the Group of 5 conference teams are granted no such cushion).
Now that the postseason has expanded from two teams to four, a single loss becomes even less life-threatening to a program's championship hopes. There is an assumption in the previous sentence that the TCUs and the Mississippi States will revert to their traditional form. Or it might be that with only nine unbeaten teams remaining in the AP Top 25, it is an assumption that this will be one of those seasons in which no team is immune to the challenges that remain.
Nine unbeaten ranked teams as we approach the midway point is not unusual. It has happened three times in the previous 10 seasons. But it also doesn't mean much -- in each of those three seasons (2005, 2006, 2009), the two teams who played in the BCS championship game didn't lose a game in the first six weeks. Five of the six teams didn't lose a game in the regular season.
But enough history. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that democracy "shuts the past [and] opens the future." The future, in the shape of TCU and Baylor playing a top-10 showdown, has arrived. Let us shut the past, in which TCU and Baylor have played each other 109 times and never both been in the AP rankings at kickoff.
Let's relish that Auburn, which has won 10 consecutive Southeastern Conference games, will play Mississippi State, a team whose only flaw thus far is its inexperience at being on the right end of garbage time. The Bulldogs gave up 19 points to LSU in the last four minutes of a 34-29 win and 14 points to Texas A&M in the last 2½ minutes of a 48-31 rout.
If that's too much democracy for you, if you need a port in these stormy waters, Texas and Oklahoma will kick off Saturday morning at the State Fair of Texas, just as they have for 85 years. Oklahoma is coming off a loss, and Texas arrives at the Cotton Bowl with a losing record for the first time since 1993. Before the season, you could have convinced me you could deep-fry sweet tea before you convinced me of that.
Oh, wait. This explains it. According to BigTex.com, the website of the State Fair of Texas, this year one of the new foods being served outside the Cotton Bowl is deep-fried sweet tea.