Looking Back On The Chaos That Was The 2007 College Football Season

Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen! You've made it to the last Saturday without college football for the foreseeable future.

It's an exciting time to be a college football fan.

This season seems to be as wide open as ever, with several teams having legitimate shots at a national title.

If we are lucky, we will have a season like 2007, which, to this day, lives on as the most chaotic year of football in modern memory.

For those who don't remember or maybe weren't around for the 2007 college football season, you missed one hell of a show.

Let's look back on what made that year such a wild one in the annals of college football lore.

Upset In The Big House

In case you needed a harbinger of how wacky 2007 was going to be, look no further than literally the first week of the season, as then-FCS powerhouse Appalachian State waltzed into the Big House and broke 100,000 Michigan fans' hearts.

The craziest part of all: most of the country didn't even see it happen live, as the game aired on the brand new Big Ten Network, which, back in the late 2000's, wasn't readily available with your basic cable package.

A good portion of fans watching their noon game of choice saw in-studio updates which kept them up to speed on the shocker developing in Ann Arbor.

The Wolverines were a preseason top-five team with NFL talent littered all over their roster, but by the time the weekend was over, Michigan found itself outside the top 25.

And that was just week one.

A Bad Year To Be Number 2

This snapshot of the BCS standings in late October isn't photoshopped.

A lot of very bizarre and unconventional teams reached the penultimate spot in the polls in 2007, which might explain why the team ranked number two was seemingly cursed every week.

The second-ranked team in at least one of the big three polls lost seven times, all in the final nine weeks of the season.

In addition to mainstays like USC, LSU, and Ohio State, upstart programs like South Florida, Kansas, Boston College, and Cal all held the silver medal in the polls at some point throughout the season.

And all of them were upended, more often than not, by unranked opponents.

The top of the rankings was a bloodbath every Saturday coming down the stretch, as college football became appointment television that season.

The First Underclassman To Win The Heisman

Nowadays, a freshman or sophomore winning the Heisman Trophy isn't exactly a novel concept, but in 2007, an underclassman even receiving an invitation to New York was practically unheard of.

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow parlayed a record-breaking statistical season into a Heisman win, but it wasn't without a little outside help along the way.

Though Tebow's 55 total touchdowns were incredibly impressive, it took a freak injury to Oregon QB Dennis Dixon and a late-season fade from Boston College signal caller Matt Ryan (yes, THAT Matt Ryan), for Tebow to be in the driver's seat heading into the last few weeks of the season.

After a seven-touchdown performance against South Carolina in mid-November, Tebow took the lead in the Heisman race and never looked back, making history in the process.

Late-Season Chaos Leads To First Two-Loss Champion

Heading into championship weekend, both the eventual national champion and runner-up sat on the outside of the BCS picture looking in.

Ohio State was idle that weekend because the Big Ten didn't have a conference championship game in 2007, while the LSU Tigers, a team with two losses, were ranked seventh in the BCS and awaiting the Tennessee Volunteers in Atlanta to determine the SEC champion.

To ensure these two teams would meet, top-ranked Missouri and second-ranked West Virginia needed to lose.

Missouri had to play Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship game, while West Virginia faced a decidedly weaker opponent: 4-7 Pitt.

The Sooners did their part, dominating the Missouri Tigers, but Pitt and West Virginia were locked in an unusually tight Backyard Brawl.

Thanks to some uncharacteristically bad offense and a few missed field goals from Pat McAfee (yes, THAT Pat McAfee), Pitt was able to stave off the Mountaineers and pull off a monumental 13-9 upset.

This allowed third-ranked Ohio State to shoot all the way up to number one, while LSU defeated the Vols in the SEC Championship game and slid into the number two spot.

The Tigers would then overwhelm the Buckeyes on both lines of scrimmage, securing the first national championship won by a two-loss team in the modern era.

All-in-all, 2007 was dubbed "The Year Of The Upset," as ranked teams lost to lower-ranked or unranked teams a staggering 62 times throughout the season.

When the dust cleared and LSU was left as the last team standing, fans had no idea what they had even witnessed.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now know 2007 to be one of the most memorable seasons in college football history.

Just seven days separate us from the start of the college football season.

I doubt this year - or any year, for that matter - will live up to "The Year Of The Upset," but we can always hope.

Let's have a great college football season, everyone!