It's safe to say there are a whole lot of top teams who will be happy to see September in the rearview mirror.

Last weekend Penn State, Ole Miss, and California joined USC, Oklahoma State, and Oklahoma as preseason top-15 teams to have suffered surprising September losses at the hands of opponents outside the top 20.

There have been so many early upsets, in fact, that outside of the top three (in order, Florida, Texas, and Alabama) it's hard to tell what teams are actually good. More and more college football is starting to resemble college basketball, where upsets are the norm and the regular season is a topsy-turvy free-for-all.

Because of that, the notion that one loss dooms your season is more outdated than Joe Pa's spectacles. The past three national champions had at least one loss on their resume, and LSU actually suffered two losses when the Tigers won it all in '07.

One-loss teams like Ohio State, Virginia Tech and USC are still in play for a national championship. In fact, by losing in September those teams might be more likely to still be in the hunt come December than the current unbeatens who have yet to suffer a loss.

Without a playoff, college football has become more about when you lose. A September loss is more forgivable than a November slip-up. Just ask Texas. The Longhorns beat Oklahoma head to head in mid-October last season but lost at Texas Tech three weeks later. Meanwhile, the Sooners steamrolled through the rest of their schedule, which included a nationally televised beatdown of the same Red Raiders squad that beat Texas. As a result, it was Oklahoma – not Texas, which beat the Sooners on a neutral field – who advanced the BCS title game. Florida also lost early enough (to Ole Miss) that the Gators' loss was a distant memory by December.

Each season has become something of a microcosm for the sport itself. In keeping with the short attention span that pervades 21^st-century America, college football has become such a "what have you done for me lately?" sport. Once-great programs like Nebraska, Florida State and Notre Dame are yesterday's news as a result of their collective struggles in recent years. Similarly, within a given season a team that seems red hot entering October (Cincinnati, Boise State, Houston, I'm talking to you!) could quickly become an afterthought with a November loss. And if Florida, Texas or Alabama are going to lose this season, they'd better do it now. Voters are quicker to forgive an October loss.

So don't abandon hope yet, Trojans fans. USC's latest hiccup against an unranked opponent could be nothing more than a bump in the road. Oklahoma's loss to BYU? Oklahoma State's no-show against Houston? Water under the bridge, if one of them runs the table.

With so many imperfect teams and talent bring more widespread than ever before, college football is inching closer to the parity it has historically lacked. And that can only be good for the game. More teams are in play for a national championship longer than they would have been 10-15 years ago. That makes for more meaningful late-season games than ever before and, consequently, increases fan interest across the country. It's this new-found unpredictability that has made college football's regular season more appetizing than ever.

Now if we could only wash it all down with a tasty eight-team playoff…