Lang’s World: Three Things We Learned This Week

1. I’ll be completely honest, I fell asleep before the end of the Colorado/Colorado State game. I’m still not totally sure when the game actually ended – I’d had a long day, playing 18 holes of golf in the morning and then driving to Oxford for Ole Miss/Georgia Tech, and then driving back to Memphis after the game, and then all of a sudden it was 2:30 a.m. and I was slumped over on the couch and SportsCenter was on my TV. A quick scroll of Xwitter allowed me to catch up with the relevant highlights and see all the various celebrities and musicians and influencers who are now apparently Colorado Buffaloes fans celebrating the win.

What Deion has done in Boulder is essentially an HGTV show – he arrived, saw a broken-down house, ran a quick demolition process and rebuilt it with everything trendy, from shiplap to barn doors to laminate flooring, and now it’s all spiffy and Instagram-ready. But is it built to last? Is it built for sustainable success? 

It feels like that’s the only question left for Coach Prime to answer. I get that last year’s Colorado team was awful, and he’s clearly quickly raised the general level of talent and exposure and everything else. Forget about the opposition, because a 3-0 start is a 3-0 start. If Colorado can somehow manage a win in their next two games, against Oregon and USC, get ready for an entirely new level of talk. Which will be well-deserved.

2. With Colorado getting all this attention in college football, it made me think about which other teams deserve some shine. Which teams are good but overlooked? Here’s three other teams to keep an eye on: 

Washington – Washington has the bad fortune of playing in the shadow of the West Coast’s biggest teams and playing games later than most, not to mention having games on the Pac 12 Network, whether or not that actually exists. But man they are playing awesome football this season, starting 3-0 with three blowout wins, and QB Michael Penix is my Heisman frontrunner at the moment. 

Kansas – Just a year or so ago, the Jayhawks and coach Lance Leipold were the toast of college football, finally injecting life into a program that had struggled for years while QB Jalon Daniels was getting Heisman talk. Daniels eventually got hurt and the Jayhawks crashed back to earth. Well, don’t look now, but Daniels is back and starting to round into form, and right now Kansas is 3-0 with a home game against BYU (who beat Arkansas!) on the schedule this weekend. 

Fresno State – The Bulldogs are 3-0 and have wins against Purdue and Arizona State. Remember former Cal coach Jeff Tedford? Now he’s in Fresno, and they’re scoring points with ease thus far.

3. You have to feel bad for Jets fans. Like everyone else, I watched Hard Knocks and came away convinced that this was going to be a special season, that the Jets were going to have to soar high above the clouds to keep their haters quiet, like Coach Saleh told the team. Then Aaron Rogers got hurt before even throwing a pass, and the team said they were handing things over to Zach Wilson. And I know they played the Cowboys last night, who have a ferocious defense, but man did Wilson look awful, completing just 12 of 27 attempts with 3 interceptions. Aaron Rogers said he was hoping to come back and play in the playoffs. I guess he’ll be asking for a trade, then, because this Jets team with Wilson at the helm ain’t going nowhere.