The last week of football has been crazy, and if you don’t know the 2007 season is considered the craziest season in college football, so I’ll be comparing the two seasons, and making comparisons from teams, to ranking position, and certain games.
First off we’ll start off strong by starting out with the sheer amount of ranked teams that lost, so in one week alone, four top 10 teams lost, and seven ranked teams lost in total which is insane, and in 2007 there were 62 times ranked teams lost to a lower ranked or unranked opponent, and a 29 of those were top 10 teams, which is complete insanity.
Next we have the team who had no shot whatsoever it seemed, but they still manage to hang in there, which would be Texas A&M who is currently 5-1 with their only loss being to Notre Dame who is looking pretty good, but probably their most impressive win would be over Missouri who looked really strong last year and not bad at all this year. The team I would compare Texas A&M to who, without a doubt is one of the biggest icons of 2007 would be Kansas, who is historically for being really good at basketball, but always terrible at football, and a matter of fact Kansas was one game away from getting into the championship, if they didn’t lose to Boston College, and yes, Boston College would have been in the championship also if they didn’t lose the last game of the season.
Another interesting thing about this season and 2007 is in 2007 we saw the first ever two loss national champion LSU, and with the new 12 team playoff it might be possible for there to be for the first time a three loss national champion, because Tennessee for instance already has one loss, but they are still ranked at 8 in the nation, but they also have Alabama and Georgia on their schedule so if Georgia and Alabama get to the SEC championship with both of them winning out the rest of the regular season Tennessee may be able to sneak into the playoffs, and maybe go on a crazy playoff streak, possibly giving us a three loss national champion. (Theoretically)
Then you have these crazy losses, which you could take two games from this season, which would be Northern Illinois and Notre Dame, and Alabama and Vanderbilt. First off as almost everyone would know, Alabama is a historic powerhouse who has won 6 championships since 2009, while Vanderbilt has a less than impressive record over those seasons has had five bowl appearances since 2009 and only has had two wins in those games, also they haven’t made a New Year’s Six since 1974, which for reference it was the Peach Bowl, and was the 7th annual Peach Bowl. Northern Illinois had six wins in the regular season last year in the MAC, which is very far from impressive, and in 2022 they only had 3 wins, which is absolute trash, and they’re only 3-2 this season, Notre Dame on the other hand has went 10-3 in 2023, 9-4 in 2022, and 11-2 in 2021. But there’s a reason you play the game because Notre Dame lost to Northern Illinois 16-14 in which Northern Illinois hit a winning 31 yard field goal with 31 seconds left. While Vanderbilt got to soak in the moment and go into victory formation, with the Alabama player kicking the ball out of frustration and getting an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.