COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEK ONE RECAP

It's difficult to make too many assumptions about an entire college football season based on the first weekend's results, but I think there are a few things that were apparent after the scores of the contests were etched in the record book:

• Alabama didn't seem to miss a beat from last season's team that made it to the College Football Playoffs. Despite bringing back only two starters on offense, they put up 35 in a dominant performance against Wisconsin on a neutral field. Of course, this is the same Wisconsin that got rolled 59 - 0 by eventual national champion Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game. So is Wisconsin slipping a notch or has the Tide successfully retooled? Still hard to say.

• The SEC West, with wins over Arizona State, the aforementioned Wisconsin and Louisville, all on supposedly neutral fields, appears to be ready to once again lay claim to the toughest division in college football. Texas A&M looked particularly strong, effectively bottling up ASU's normally high powered offense. Auburn, while not dominant, still notched a quality win that might come in handy by the time the dust settles in December.

• Either Texas' second year head coach Charlie Strong is in big trouble, or the rest of the teams on Notre Dame's schedule are. In a 38 - 3 pounding of the Longhorns, the Irish dominated in almost every way imaginable. Matched with its season-ending 31 - 7 loss to Arkansas in the Texas Bowl, Texas has been outscored 69 - 10 in its last two games, not exactly the direction the program was hoping to move.

•  Maybe the Pac-12 isn't quite as deep as we thought. Stanford stunk it up and probably lost any chance of promoting QB Kevin Hogan for the Heisman with a 16 - 6 loss at Northwestern. Arizona State was manhandled, especially by Texas A&M's front seven on defense.

• It's time to stop these farces that some big time programs try to sell as football games. I know there are a handful of big upsets every few years, but Georgia Tech's 69 - 6 win against Alcorn State, Clemson's 49 - 10 mercy killing of Wofford, Ole Miss' putting up 76 points on Tennessee-Martin are all examples of FBS schools whacking FCS teams around for the sake of an easy win. There was a time when some of these games were required just to fill out a schedule, but there are now 128 FBS schools, and plenty of those are available to take $500,000 or so to get pushed around by a Big Five conference school. I also believe that every Big Five conference schools should be required to schedule at least one non-conference game against another Big Five team, in addition to stop scheduling games against FCS opponents.

Don't forget to check out my new book, "Roughing the Passer - A PK Frazier Novel" and my first, "Illegal Procedure - A PK Frazier Novel", available in print and e-formats at Amazon.com, iBooks and Smashwords. The third installment, "Offsetting Penalties" is due out in the fall.