Early impressions of the college football season

The first full weekend of college football is now behind us. What did we learn?

Actually, not as much as most fanatics believe.

Here is what we did and did not learn these first nine days of college football:

Duke is not as bad as we thought. No, not a mistype. After months of talk about Duke only having a chance of beating Navy, Duke came out and won a very tough game against East Carolina. I'm not one to easily complain about other talking heads, but some more research may have given more respect to this Duke team. By the way, I didn't think they would win this game either.

Navy's not too shabby either. They won by 31 over SMU in a game that SMU was favored by 10. I'm just taking a guess, but I think Paul Johnson was a GREAT hire for the Midshipmen.

Florida A&M's Uniforms are horrible. Orange helmets and green pants. Who designed these? It was either Clive Barker from the horror movies or the same person who designed San Diego State's uniforms. Either way, they are just U-G-L-Y.

Nebraska has a lot of issues to still work out on offense. I don't want to specify a single player, but the quarterback position at Nebraska has to get better. If Nebraska does not improve, they will have a long road in the Big 12. Additionally, Frank Solich will not be on the hot seat, he will be squarely in the fire.

Oklahoma's coaches make very good adjustments at halftime. Granted, the game was against Tulsa, but Oklahoma did not look good in the first half. The second half, they came out with a fire that we haven't seen in a while. Unfortunately, a one half performance in the Big 12 will earn your team a .500 record.

Michigan's kicking game stinks. Yes, I know they hit the game winner, but they still need serious help in this area. Don't even get me started on Washington's punting game.

The MAC owns the ACC. After this weekend, who doesn't want to see Marshall play FSU. FSU was very impressive in a win over an obviously below average UVA team, but Marshall was impressive over I-AA powerhouse (i.e. better than 40 I-A teams). After NIU's win over Wake Forest and Miami (Ohio) over UNC, why not see the best in both league's play? Oh yeah, I still remember Florida drilling Marshall last year.

Fresno State is going to be inconsistent. After beating Wisconsin in every way but the scoreboard, they struggled against a San Diego State team that has a new coach, system (which was kept under wraps for the first half), and a new QB. Unless SDSU has significantly improved their team in seven months, Pat Hill should have jumped at any job he could get last winter.

Mark Richt is a good guy. He has to be a good guy because he still hasn't coached decently in a game since he was at Florida State. After the hype that has surrounded Georgia this preseason, they should have won more convincingly against Clemson. In fact, they were lucky to come away with the win at all.

Penn State is over-ranked. How can the No. 23 team in the country struggle mightily against a new MAC team? Penn State fans should be very wary of their teams chances this year, especially considering their schedule. PSU may be significantly below average this year for the third year in a row.

Colorado is not the same team as last year. Colorado State came in and simply dominated the game. Granted, the improvement on teams is most evident between game 1 and game 2, but CSU was obviously the better team and deserved to win the game.

Maryland. Thanks for playing last year. See you in another 20 years.