Barring a surprise ruling from the B1G officials, Week 1 of the college football season is in the books.
SEC teams finished Week 1 16-0 for the first time ever, and went undefeated as a conference for the first time since 1997, a heck of an accomplishment after courtroom drama nearly derailed the fun of the league’s opening weekend.
That little slice of successful history pales in comparison to what happened in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where for the first time in college football history a team that won the game in regulation lost the game in regulation.
Honestly, if you don’t ache in your belly for Western Michigan a bit after that thievery, you’re either a Michigan fan or a soulless agent of chaos.
Back down south, vibes are immaculate.
The off-field shenanigans mattered not on the SEC’s first Saturday Down South.
New coaches shined. Old stars delivered. “Callin’ Baton Rouge” and “I Won’t Back Down” were belted. Alabama ran the football. Kirby Smart’s death star won by 1,000.
SEC football is back, thank the good Lord in heaven, and there’s plenty to overreact to on this fine post-Labor Day Tuesday.
Here’s a touchdown and extra point’s worth of things I’m absolutely overreacting to after Week 1 in the SEC (and beyond).
Lane Kiffin 1, Haters 0
“I was gambling in Havana, I took a little risk
Send lawyers, guns, and money
They’ll get me out of this- yeah!”
– Warren Zevon
Lane Kiffin’s LSU debut was a masterclass.
LSU looked like a national championship contender in a 51-10 bloodletting of Clemson.
Thirteen million a year, coming out guns blazing about Ole Miss and chasing hotties in a Vanity Fair article, scorched earth litigation over transfer portal additions and whether Class of 2022 players who signed with NFL teams as undrafted free agents should be able to return to college football, being sued by the SEC, thousands upon thousands of dollars in legal fees… it all feels worth it when you win by 40-plus points in a packed Tiger Stadium that’s roaring like an aircraft carrier on a sultry September night.
“Imagine if we had pro players,” Kiffin zinged in his halftime interview with ESPN, not missing his chance to spike the football on all the haters with LSU leading Clemson 31-3.
Kiffin’s embraced the role of heel since his Tennessee days, when he happily ran his mouth about Florida head coach Urban Meyer and was forced to apologize by the SEC.
That was almost 20 years ago. Florida clobbered Kiffin’s Vols in the Swamp that autumn, punctuating the difference between Kiffin the young punk and Kiffin at the height of his powers on Saturday night.
Back then, Kiffin didn’t have the football team to fight back.
Now?
LSU led 44-3 before Kiffin called off the dogs, and with a defense bursting at the seams with difference makers and a talented quarterback Sam Leavitt still learning Kiffin’s offense, it feels like the Tigers may just be scratching the surface of what this team can be.
I’d probably rank LSU No. 1 but for one thing…
Clemson is terrible and Dabo’s done
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
— George W. Bush
I picked Clemson to play for the national championship on this fine website a season ago. Clemson’s preseason top 5 ranking in 2025 suggests I wasn’t alone, but as the Tigers limped to a 7-6 record with a roster chock full of NFL talent, I remembered the wise words of our 43rd President and vowed to never believe in Dabo again.
This Clemson team is atrocious, so far from being even average that it’s hard to believe this program stood toe-to-toe with Alabama as kings of the sport for the better part of a decade.
Swinney is a tiger who can’t and won’t change his stripes.
He’s never adjusted to the transfer portal era and now he’s at a program with a smaller donor base and fewer resources than the NIL rich institutions he needs to compete against for the best high school talent.
The question for Clemson athletic director Graham Neff and new Clemson president Benjamin C. Ayers is what they can do about Dabo.
“It’s absolutely a Bobby Bowden scenario,” one high profile Clemson donor told SDS on Sunday. “The guy will get a statue near Howard’s Rock. How do you fire him? It’s up to the new president to bail Graham Neff out of the predicament.”
I think that’s right, and the best solution will be some type of emeritus position that satiates the need to honor Swinney’s service while recognizing that the Tigers simply must move in a different direction.
My suggestion? A professorship where Swinney teaches a course on what he knows: “Championship College Athletics in the pre-NIL Era.”
Trinidad Chambliss solidifies Heisman favorite status
We can worry about the Ole Miss defense in a week, when it’s time to start talking about LSU’s visit to Oxford.
For now, let’s focus on Trinidad Chambliss, who willed the Ole Miss Rebels past Louisville 41-38 on Sunday night with 396 total yards and 4 touchdowns, making throws like this one to answer every Louisville haymaker.
I don’t think there’s a college quarterback who makes the types of anticipation throws and sees the field better than Chambliss. He’ll need a healthy Kewan Lacy and improved push from the run game as the season progresses, but as long as 6 in blue is on the field, Ole Miss will have a chance to win the game.
Does Ryan Coleman-Williams still have the yips?
It’s no secret that drops were an issue for Alabama wide receiver Ryan Coleman-Williams in 2025.
Plagued by a case of stone hands, Coleman-Williams failed to build on a Freshman All-American campaign, watching his productivity fall across the board (yards per catch, targets, touchdowns all reduced).
That made Coleman-Williams’s junior year debut on Saturday a bit of a mixed bag.
Yes, the junior made big time plays on offense and special teams, posting a team-high 5 catches and 130 total yards in Alabama’s 48-10 win over East Carolina.
But he also dropped a sure touchdown from Keelon Russell that deflected into the hands of an East Carolina defender for an interception (negated by an offsides penalty) and dropped another likely touchdown while quarantined inside the Pirates’ 20-yard line.
With Alabama’s run game still very much a work in progress (sorry, but 4.5 yards per carry against a Group of 5 opponent proves nothing), the Crimson Tide need Coleman-Williams to be the electrifying scheme-changing receiver his talent and freshman season suggest he can be.
It’s hard to be that if you drop the football.
Georgia is Tight End U
Georgia’s excellence under Kirby Smart has replaced Alabama’s joyless murderball as the thing most likely taken for granted in college football.
Another thing we take for granted? Georgia having a tight end that’s a problem.
Jaden Reddell drew Gronk comparisons from the announcing crew in Georgia’s 63-3 romp of Tennessee State on Saturday, a comparison that felt weird given he was galloping through and over the defense on the same field Brock Bowers won back-to-back Mackey Awards on earlier this decade.
Where does Kirby Smart keep finding these guys?
Russell had 67 yards on 3 touches (another long play was negated by a penalty), but he was hardly the only Georgia tight end to show up and show out on Saturday.
Together, they combined for 6 receptions for 100 yards, scoring 3 of Georgia’s 9 touchdowns on the afternoon.
“I don’t know how many catches they had, what they did. I mean, I thought we could have got Lawson [Luckie] more involved,” Smart said of the position group after the win.
“But I mean, some of that tight end room is just, they have to learn to share. And they have so much respect for each other. They’re such good weapons that it can’t be about individuals in that room. It has to be about the production of a unit, and a unit can grow that.”
Another year.
Another dominant Georgia tight end room.
College football is ever-changing, but some things remain the same.
Texas has an embarrassment of perimeter riches
One game and the opponent was terrible, but Arch Manning, Cam Coleman, and Ryan Wingo’s connection has to be encouraging for Texas.
I’m not sure if Coleman takes pressure off Wingo or Wingo takes pressure off Coleman, but the chemistry between Manning and the 2 star receivers is undeniable and having both makes Texas extremely hard to defend boundary-to-boundary.
Oklahoma’s front 7 may eat Michigan for lunch and dinner
Bryce Underwood may improve. There’s no shortage of talent in Underwood’s 6-foot-4 frame.
That said, if Michigan thought it was tough to move the football against Western Michigan, Saturday’s game against Oklahoma may get uncomfortable.
The Sooners front dominated UTEP, as expected, with David Stone and company producing 10 tackles for loss and 4 sacks in the 51-0 OU win. If Western Michigan can hammer Michigan up front, well, you get the idea.
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Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
