The Cinderella Story Is Over

It was 35-0 at halftime.  The University of Colorado hadn’t done anything in the first half against the University of Oregon.  Barring some kind of major comeback, Colorado was going to suffer their first loss, not only of this 2023 College Football season, but of the Deion Sanders era at the school.  When it was all said and done, Oregon dropped Colorado by a final score of 42-6.  Colorado might have scored, but the game wasn’t as close as the final score would suggest.

I’ve never been a huge Deion Sanders fan during his time as a football player, nor during his time as a baseball player, though he happened to play for the Cincinnati Reds briefly.  I know that he was a great football player and a mediocre baseball player but in general, I was never really a huge fan.  I know that he came to the University of Colorado with a lot of fanfare and sure, he managed to win his first three games to start the season, but I knew that once his team faced a quality team, the reality would set in and Colorado would return to Earth.  It turns out that that Oregon is still a quality team.  As much as it pains me to say this, Oregon is still a worthy opponent for most college teams and they have fielded many a competitive team for much of the past decade.  For many of those seasons, Oregon had been a thorn in USC’s side, much like the University of Utah has proven to be of late.  The reality is that had Oregon not beaten Colorado yesterday, USC would have beaten them first next week.  I want to thank Oregon either way, for humbling Colorado and for reminding them of who they really are.

For statistical purposes, I present you with the following.  After yesterday’s thorough ass-whooping, Oregon improves to 16-9 all-time against Colorado.  Going into USC’s game against Colorado next weekend, USC maintains a perfect record against them, sitting at 14-0.  There is no reason to think that Colorado drops USC all-time against them to 14-1.

And yes, USC handled business last night against the Arizona State Sun Devils, to the tune of 42-28.  I guess having beaten the Sun Devils by only 14 points might seem like a letdown, but a win is a win regardless of by how much you win.  I wasn’t too worried about Arizona State and I imagine that few teams in the Pac-12 Conference would be.  You know you’re in bad shape when you’re readily relying on your running back to throw passes.

But in the end, we’ll put the Sun Devils in the rear view.  Our sights are now set on Colorado and Deion Sanders.  We saw what Oregon did to them.  Next week, we’ll see what USC can do.