Alabama Football: What we learned from Week Zero of CFB

Elite programs, like Alabama Football, were idle in CFB’s Week Zero. There were five FBS games and the outcomes in two of them were noteworthy. Among the three not garnering as much attention, two had expected, one-sided results and another featured a future Alabama Football opponent.

That Tide opponent was the New Mexico State Aggies. We previewed their game against UTEP a week ago.

"UTEP was 3-5 in their abbreviated 2020 season. The Miners won a total of two games in 22, 2018 and 2019 contests.New Mexico State was 1-1 in 2020 and won a total of five games in 2018 and 2019. The Aggies have had one winning season in the last ten years."

Saturday’s outcome was a 30-3 UTEP win.

In other inconsequential games on Saturday, Fresno State thrashed Connecticut, 45-0, another of many examples the Huskies should not be an FBS program. After choosing to not play games in 2020, UConn should have considered doing the same in 2021.

San Jose State cruised to an easy 45-14 win over FCS foe, Southern Utah. The Thunderbirds are now 1-6 for 2021. As an FCS team, they played football last spring with a 1-5 record. Any advantage Southern Utah gained by the spring season was not evident against the Spartans.

The other two games proved three things that many of us already knew. Hawaii coach, Todd Graham went into his second Rainbow Warriors’ season voicing optimism.  The game was not close. After going up 31-3 in the first half the Bruins coasted the rest of the way. It is hard to predict how much better UCLA is and how they will fare against LSU. What can be said and all but Hawaii already knew is Todd Graham is a mediocre coach. Five of his 14 head coaching seasons, he fielded good teams, but none of his previous four programs could sustain success. His best run was in four Tulsa seasons. All the other programs won less than 60 percent of their games.

Maybe the beach was calling in Southern California, but the crowd was sparse in the Rose Bowl for the UCLA 44-10 victory. It will be interesting how much the turnout changes for the Bengal Tigers on Saturday.

The headline-making game Saturday confirmed two more givens. Nebraska lost to last season’s 2-6 Illinois Fighting Illini. Outside of Lincoln, it had been clear Scott Frost was no Cornhuskers’ savior.  In now 33 Nebraska games, Frost has led the Cornhuskers to just 12 victories. Based on game one of 2021, he might not last the season.

In fairness, many people were sold on Frost. One of them was, the often wrong, but never in doubt pundit in the tweet below.

The 30-22 Illinois victory was a strong return to the Big Ten for new Illini Head Coach, Bret Bielema.

Another thing most of us already knew, is not only is Scott Frost not a special coach, but the guy who hired him at UCF, is not a college football wizard either. The cred new Tennessee Vols AD, Danny White received for hiring Frost was an exaggeration.

Note: Team and game stats in this post are from sports-reference.com

Some Alabama Football fans are predicting the next college football stop for Scott Frost is a Crimson Tide analyst position. Nick Saban might be able to teach him how to be a good position coach.