Hey look, another elite weekend of college football. It\u2019s not quite Week 1, but Week 4 gives us something we haven\u2019t had yet: three conference games pitting ranked teams against each other.<\/p>\n
That makes it the strongest collection of headliners since the Texas-Ohio State\/LSU-Clemson\/Notre Dame-Miami smorgasbord of Labor Day weekend, washed down by Florida State\u2019s trouncing of Alabama and capped off by a Bill Belichick upside-down cake. So why isn\u2019t anyone saying so?<\/p>\n
Because last week\u2019s three ranked games were heavy on name power \u2014 Notre Dame, Georgia, Miami, Tennessee and Texas A&M \u2014 with interloper South Florida. This week, we\u2019re looking at Illinois-Indiana. Texas Tech-Utah. And even in the brand-friendly game, Auburn at Oklahoma, the visitor is traveling from a state in which it is perennially No. 2.<\/p>\n
That should not fool anyone into dismissing the quality of the teams at hand. Illinois and Indiana may have a collective football history that comes up short of what the University of Chicago did in the 1900s, but they\u2019re legitimately good<\/a>. Texas Tech and Utah will match quarterbacks Behren Morton and Devon Dampier. College football fans should, and soon will, know both well.<\/p>\n You know what this could do? It could get us using the \u201cP\u201d word, a word that has never really applied to college football. And I\u2019m not talking periwinkle, pinot noir or prudence. I\u2019m talking parity. Actually, colleague David Ubben did use it this week in discussing the wildly unpredictable<\/a> start to the season, but I\u2019m still a bit hesitant to go all the way there.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s because that word defines the American professional sports league that enjoys its own free minor league development system each week on campuses from Athens to Eugene. It\u2019s almost impossible to stay bad for long in the NFL, it\u2019s hard to sustain a true dynasty and the whole thing is built for everyone to still be in the playoff hunt on Dec. 1 and for most to hover around 8-9\/9-8.<\/p>\n College football will never be that. Not until the official debut of the 20-team NFL Campus North, anyway. Which will, of course, face the winner of the 20-team NFL Campus South in the Student-Athlete Bowl each February in Athens \u2014 Greece, not Georgia \u2014 starting in 2050.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s live in the moment and acknowledge that there can be different degrees of parity. Ohio State did just beat Notre Dame for the national title, and we are still looking at many of the same programs at the top of the sport. Consistent high school recruiting success still correlates with on-field success.<\/p>\n We also have Indiana going for a second straight College Football Playoff bid. We have Illinois joining the pursuit and providing an Illini-Hoosiers matchup with excitement not seen since Deon Thomas and Alan Henderson were battling in the post. Vanderbilt is unbeaten, ranked No. 20 and yet to be humbled for preseason \u201cnational title\u201d mentions.<\/p>\n