Top 10 Surprises of 2007

Top 10 Surprises of 2007

While there’s no real way to know how Feldman passed over these two items – 1) fact that coaches still sign long-term extension mostly to lie to prospective athletes and parents and 2) the West Virginia-Rich Rodriguez situation, which has turned utterly gruesome.

Anyway, in the spirit of things, here are the 10 best surprises of an unpredictable 2007 season.

10. Dennis Dixon – This wasn’t supposed to be Dennis Dixon’s year on the football field.

After all, he had Brady Leaf ready to replace him as Oregon’s starting quarterback since Leaf took over as starting quarterback during the Ducks’ five-game losing streak in 2006. His commitment to the program had also been outright doubted after he spent the summer playing in the Atlanta Braves minor league system.

Dixon didn’t especially shine in baseball, either. He batted just .176 in the Rookie League.

When he arrived back on campus, however, nothing seemed to phase Dixon.

He put himself on the national stage when he engineered a 39-7 road win over Michigan during which he threw for 292 yards, ran for 76 more and accounted for four touchdowns.

Dixon also helped the Ducks to wins over USC and then-no. 4 Arizona State.

Before a knee injury suffered during the Arizona game ended his season, Dixon lifted Oregon to a no. 2 ranking in the polls and had himself as a Heisman Trophy frontrunner.

9. Indiana reaching a bowl game – This wasn’t really a huge surprise, though Indiana hadn’t qualified for a bowl in 14 years.

It was more of a feel-good story – the Hoosiers making good on the promise made by late coach Terry Hoeppner, who died from a brain tumor after resigning from his head coaching position.

When Hoeppner was hired in 2004, he promised to lead the Hoosiers to the bowl season. Hoeppner’s players did the rest.

It took an Austin Starr field goal that barely cleared the crossbar, but Indiana knocked off in-state rival Purdue and made it into a bowl game, fulfilling Hoeppner’s promise.

8. Navy finally beating Notre Dame – What do Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada and Roger Staubach have in common?

They’re the last two Navy quarterbacks to defeat Notre Dame. That’s right, it took 44 years, three overtimes and one of the worst Notre Dame teams in program history, but the Naval Academy finally got the best of the Golden Domers.

The Midshipmen pulled off the feat just one week after they lost at home to Division I-AA Delaware.

7. Howard Schnellenbger’s second project – Florida Atlantic might not be on the national radar, but head coach Howard Schnellenberger certainly took the Owls a step in the right direction this year.

Schnellenger, famous for turning Miami into a national powerhouse, earned three landmark wins this season: a win over Minnesota, which was terrible in the Big Ten this year; a win at Troy and a dominant New Orleans Bowl win over Memphis.

The most impressive win of that group was the win over Troy – the defending Sun Belt Conference champ. This was the same Troy team that, a few weeks earlier, gave Georgia fits.

That was also the game that enabled FAU to become bowl eligible.

The Owls might not be on the college football landscape yet, but they’re also not a team heavyweights should be too eager to schedule next year either.

Texas and Michigan State would be wise to recognize that quickly.

6. Lloyd Carr resurrecting his final season – It would have been easy for Lloyd Carr to quit.

He knew this would likely be his final season and his team, expected by many to contend for a national title, was embarrassed in its first two games (also see: No. 1 on this list).

Yet Carr, who was left for dead on Michigan fan Web sites, found a way to rally his team around a freshman quarterback, Ryan Mallett, and reserve running backs since Mike Hart was able to play just part of the season.

While Carr couldn’t take down Ohio State, he did beat defending national champion Florida in his final game.

5. Kentucky and Mississippi State – At the beginning of the season, these two teams would have more likely been linked together as programs looking for new head coaches.

Both Sylvester Croom and Rich Brooks appeared to be on their way to the unemployment line when the season began. Instead, the two engineered tremendous seasons for their respective teams.

For Kentucky, that meant Andre Woodson leading the Wildcats to a top-10 ranking for the first time in several decades with an upset over eventual national champion LSU.

For Mississippi State it meant earning hard-fought victories over Auburn, Alabama and Kentucky with a grind-it-out, hard-nosed brand of football of which Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler would have been proud. 

What made Mississippi State’s turnaround all the more remarkable was the fact that the Bulldogs did it after losing the starting quarterback during their third game of the season and losing their home-opener 46-0 to LSU.

Both teams capped their seasons with bowl victories.

4. Stanford topping USC – Mark Bradford brought down the biggest catch of his life to beat the top team in the nation just days after mourning the death of his father.

The only reason the person who threw the pass to Bradford, Tavita Pritchard, was because starting quarterback T.C. Ostrander had a stroke earlier in the week.

Jim Harbaugh had been chastised as a questionable hire for Stanford because he had just one previous year of experience as a head coach.

The Cardinal entered this game as a 41-point underdog.

Put it all together and somehow the recipe yielded an underwhelming team upsetting college football’s greatest current dynasty in The Coliseum.

3. A real “Any Given Saturday” feel – After losing to Illinois, Ohio State seemingly had no chance at the title game.

All it would have taken was for No. 2 Oregon to lose to Arizona, No. 6 Arizona State losing to Southern California, No. 4 Oklahoma losing to Texas Tech, No. 2 Kansas losing to Missouri, No. 1 Missouri losing to Oklahoma, No. 1 LSU losing to Arkansas and No. 2 West Virginia losing to Pittsburgh.

Well. Check, check, check, check, check and check.

As a sport that prides itself on the excitement of the regular season, college football scored a huge victory this season. It seemed every week there were huge upsets – as indicated by the fact that 12 teams ranked either first or second lost this season.

There will always be conference doormats and teams from the Mid-Atlantic Conference, but the middle of the pack has emerged in college football and it made for a wild ride in 2007.

2. The emergence of Kansas and Missouri – And, thus, the Big XII North. It’s nearly impossible to come to terms with the fact that these two basketball schools were each one win away from a berth in the Bowl Championship Series National Championship Game.

Few programs have endured the rough history Kansas football had before this season.

Historically, the Jayhawks have avoided the cellar of the Big XII courtesy of Baylor and the cellar of the Big Eight mostly because of Kansas State. But Mark Mangino slowly turned the KU program around and had the Jayhawks playing at their best in 2007.

Sure, Kansas didn’t play an outrageously – or even remotely – challenging schedule. In the non-conference season, the Jayhawks played a rough slate of games against Central Michigan, Southeastern Louisiana, Toledo and Florida International. KU also missed out on Big XII big boys Texas and Oklahoma this year.

Still, the Jayhawks won the games on their slate – including a glorious 76-39 thumping of Nebraska during which the Kansas program finally got to play the role of the windshield instead of bug.

Kansas’ 11-1 record earned it – well, sort of – a trip to the Orange Bowl. Once there, the Jayhawks again surpassed expectations by upending Virginia Tech. Almost as surprising as Kansas’ season was the fact that the Jayhawks accomplished the feat by besting the Hokies in special teams.

Missouri is a program that, for the last several years, has been a sexy preseason selection to win the Big XII North. Yet the Tigers always seemed to miss that opportunity.

This year’s team was every bit as good as it was exciting mostly thanks to Chase Daniel and Jeremy Maclin.

After Missouri blew two chances to prove it could beat the best in the conference, Oklahoma, the Tigers were shunned from the BCS in favor of Kansas, which they had beaten the previous week.

Missouri could have been flat for the Cotton Bowl, but again surpassed expectations and demolished an overmatched and overwhelmed Arkansas team.

Ask around, the Southeastern Conference wasn’t easy to beat in bowl games, either.

1. Appalachian State over Michigan – Has this been overdone? Really, can this upset be overdone?

It doesn’t matter that App State is the three-time defending national champion in Division I-AA. It doesn’t matter that it was just one day.

For one afternoon, the Mountaineers of Appalachian State were better than Michigan – the tradition-laced Big Ten team that came in as a favorite to win a national championship. The game, by the way, was in the Big House – where Davids like App State are supposed to be the poster children for the Saturday Night Live sketch “Oops, I Crapped My Pants – adult diapers.”

Despite its embarrassing start to the season, Michigan was a decent team in 2007. That Saturday, Appalachian State was simply better.

There were few excuses for the Wolverines to lose the game. There were no injuries to speak of. It was simply a case of one team, Michigan, getting beaten by another, Appalachian State.

Everything from Julian Rauch’s 24-yard field goal to the Mountaineers allowing Michigan to get into field goal range after Chad Henne hooked up with Mario Manningham for a 46-yard pass to Corey Lynch blocking Michigan’s game-winning field goal attempt made the final minute of this game every bit as memorable as the upset itself.

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