Michigan Football: Wild day could help Big Ten, Wolverines

It was a wild week of college football and a couple of upsets could wind up helping Michigan football and the Big Ten down the road.

When it comes to this college football season, it’s really hard to know what to expect. As far as what we will see from Michigan football, we won’t know for a month.

However, some other top programs hit the field for the first time Saturday as the SEC opened its season with conference play. The Big 12 also dove into conference play for the first time.

And the results were a little wacky.

The first big upset of the day came out of the morning games, as Oklahoma, the No. 3 team in the country blew a 21-point lead and lost to Kansas State.

You might be wondering how this could be connected to the Big Ten and well, it just will make it harder for the Big 12 to get a team into the playoff if Oklahoma already has a loss. The league dodged a bullet when Texas beat Texas Tech in overtime.

But now if the Sooners beat the Longhorns, they will probably be the conference’s only hope for a playoff berth and they would need to run the table. With the Pac-12 and the Big Ten back in the playoff mix, it’s hard to see any two-loss champion making the playoff.

Texas is solid and maybe they will emerge as the top team in the Big 12 with a win over the Sooners when they meet.

As long as one finishes with one loss and wins the title, they should get into a playoff, but I’m sure the conference was quite worried when it looked like its two playoff contenders may lose on the opening weekend to unranked opponents.

In the SEC, some unexpected things also happened. You always knew it was going to be interesting to see what Mike Leach would do at Mississippi State, but in his first game, the Bulldogs knocked off the defending national champions.

His quarterback also set an SEC record for passing yards. So it was about what you’d expect. Georgia won but didn’t look impressive. Florida, Alabama and Auburn also rolled.

If there is any league that will have a shot at getting two teams into the playoff, we all know it will be the SEC. However, the LSU loss Saturday won’t help the cause.

Obviously, I don’t expect Michigan to make the playoff. That will be Ohio State from the Big Ten if all goes to plan. But, whichever Big Ten champ emerges, was probably helped in the grand scheme of things with some early losses by powerhouse programs LSU and Oklahoma.