By now most college football fans are familiar with Baylor’s embarrassing nonconference schedule. This year the chest-thumping Bears get the season started with SMU, Lamar and Rice.

The plan of course is to run up some impressive (though meaningless) stats playing defenses that resemble an intramural touch football game, and naturally Baylor chalked up over 50 points against defensive backs who couldn’t tackle members of the Baylor chess club.

But with minutes left in the first half, Baylor was only up 28-21 as SMU managed to come up with zero points after having first and goal inside the five due to amateurish coaching mistakes.

Now, it’s the first game of the season, and it’s easy to sit back and rip apart teams who don’t pay flawless football in their opener.

But with Baylor we saw a pretty lame defense giving up big chunks of yardage to SMU, and you have to ask yourself how this team could possible stop real Power 5 running games from the likes of Alabama, Auburn and Ohio State.

The fact that Baylor has excelled in the Big 12 is more of an indictment of what Bob Stoops has been doing in Oklahoma and the mess in Texas that Charlie Strong is trying to clean up. If those programs wake up, Baylor’s time in the sun will end soon unless Art Briles learns how to put a real defense on the field.

After another wild day of college football, here are some observations:

– Barring a slew of wild upsets that let a 2-loss team into the mix, the real contenders for the final four spots is now down to nine teams – Mississippi State and Alabama from the SEC, Florida State from the ACC, Oregon and Arizona State from the Pac 12, TCU and Baylor from the Big 12 and Ohio State and Nebraska from the Big Ten.

– Ohio State made a huge statement with its road demolition of Michigan State as they posted 49 points on Sparty’s vaunted defense. Suddenly the Buckeyes are in the mix though they probably need some help.

– I don’t have much sympathy for Auburn despite their two late fumbles (other than feeling bad for the individual players who messed up). Auburn rode good fortune to get to the BCS championship game last year, so they really can’t gripe about some bad luck this year. Also, their defense blows.

– Alabama pulled out a huge win against LSU, but they’re getting a ton of love based on reputation. This isn’t the same dominating Alabama team.

– The TCU/Baylor debate will become heated as it’s hard to figure out who should be ranked higher. Also, with Ohio State playing at Minnesota this week, the Buckeyes and TCU will have a common opponent for sake of comparison. TCU beat the Gophers at home 30-7, so Ohio State needs to beat Minnesota handily, and they can also help themselves if they thump Minnesota on the road.

– Arizona State got a huge win against Notre Dame, though they benefited from a slew of turnovers. The Ohio State win over Michigan State was probably more impressive as it was on the road and they overcame two of their own turnovers and got none from Sparty. If you take into account the eye test, you’ll see the Buckeyes are as talented as any other team. They’re just young and you’ll need to overlook a bad, early-season loss against Virginia tech after they lost Braxton Miller and had inexperienced freshman TJ Barrett starting in his place. Now we see just how good Barrett can be.

That said, it looks like the SEC, ACC and Pac 12 teams control their own fate. How it plays out for the others is anyone’s guess.

This should not have been a shock. Baylor has had an incredible season, but the hype surrounding this team’s offense and Art Briles has become ridiculous. There were even people suggesting Briles should be considered as an NFL coach, which is just absurd. Presumably even Texas is taking a hard look, which is more appropriate, but Texas doesn’t need a gimmick offense to be a power. I susect they’re much better off with a different coach.

Plenty of people watched the game last night more interested in watching UFC’s Blake Bortles as an NFL quarterback prospect for the NFL draft. His performance was up and down, but he seems to have all the tools that will make NFL scouts drool.

But back to the game, Baylor certainly had its moments on offense as they have very dynamic players, but good defense can really disrupt this offense, whcih makes all of their gaudy stats meaningless. I would have loved to see Baylor play a team like Michigan State as I think they would be overpowered based on this performance.

UFC was a huge underdog but they outplayed Baylor for most of the evening. It was a fun game if you don’t care about defense. Both teams have no idea how to tackle, particulary in the secondary. But at least UCF managed a pass rush, and that really affected Baylor.

In the end, both programs are on the rise, so we’ll be seeing plenty more of them in the years to come.

Where are all of the so-called “experts” who said Baylor would “crush” teams like Ohio State? We’ve seen this before with Oregon. Running up the score against weak competition just because you run a no-huddle offense through the whole game means nothing when you’re facing better teams. It’s particularly true when you face more physical defenses.

Baylor was embarrassed last night by Oklahoma State. After this game they shouldn’t even be in the top ten, let alone in the discussion for the BCS.

Meanwhile, the arrogant Oregon Ducks got embarrassed as well by RichRod’s Arizona team after several Oregon players said that the Rose Bowl was beneath them. Where will they go now? The Tangerine Bowl?

Finally, the once-mighty Florida Gators managed to lose at home to an FCS team in Georgia Southern.

Which team should be most embarrassed today?

We’re finally getting some upsets to shake up college football. #5 Stanford traveled to Utah and was stunned by the Utes who made an impressive goal line stand at the end of the game for a final score of 27-21. Check out the parody video above that makes fun of Stanford fans.

#25 Missouri improved to 6-0 with an upset of #7 Georgia on the road. Georgia had a ton of injuries but losses like this have been all too common for the Bulldogs in recent years.

In another huge shocker, much-maligned Texas took care of #12 Oklahoma 36-20 in this classic rivalry game. With the win Mack Brown can breath a little easier, while Bob Stoops is yet another year removed from that last National Championship that happened oh so long ago.

Meanwhile, #18 Michigan managed to lose to Penn State in an overtime thriller, though this one is hardly a surprise. The undefeated Wolverines have been barely escaping with wins against mediocre teams all season. It finally caught up to them.

For a while it looked like Boston College might upset #3 Clemson, but everything fell apart for them in the fourth quarter.

The top 25 will change quite a bit tomorrow, and we’re looking at a potential battle between 4 sets of teams to play in the National Championship game: Alabama (or possibly a one-loss SEC winner other than Alabama), Oregon (or maybe UCLA if they win out), the ACC winner (Clemson, Florida State or Miami) and Ohio State (no other Big Ten team has a chance).

Of course, if everyone starts losing, even teams like an undefeated Louisville or Baylor could have a shot, but chances are the game will be played between two of the teams mentioned above.