Oregon and Notre Dame entered the season favored to go to BCS bowls, but after disastrous losses their chances are diminished. Both teams owe their losses in large part to fumbles that cost them any chance to win.
Because the losses are early in the year, both teams can recover. But Notre Dame is in more trouble than Oregon, who can still win the Pac-12 to gain an automatic berth to the Rose Bowl. Also, the Ducks lost to LSU, a far less humbling loss than Notre Dame falling to unranked USF. Oregon did do almost irreparable harm to its national title hopes, however.
#12 LSU 40, #1 Oregon 27
As expected, much of this game played out like a repeat of last year's national championship game, with LSU's size helping them control the line of scrimmage and Oregon having to use all its tricks to compensate. The main difference was at quarterback: instead of Cam Newton, LSU has Jordan Jefferson, and on Saturday they didn't even have him. This should have allowed Oregon's defense to hold the Tigers in check just enough to win.
But Oregon had a suspended player of its own: Cliff Harris, who starts in the secondary as well as being the Ducks' feared return man, and his absence proved crucial. Twice, his replacements fumbled kick returns deep in Oregon's own territory, leading directly to 13 points for the Tigers.
Oregon also had another critical fumble that led to an LSU touchdown. That's 20 points given up on mistakes. Without those mistakes, Oregon is competitive in the game and probably wins it, though it still would have been close. Mistakes like that are momentum killers, and committing them definitely turned the tide to LSU.
South Florida 23, #13 Notre Dame 20
Notre Dame was expected to be quite good this year, though not national-title caliber, and a couple of games on their schedule prevented people from saying they had a shot at that. This game was not one of them.
Even after the win, South Florida looks good but not great, and the Irish should not have lost to them. And they wouldn't have, if not for a spectacular set of mistakes.
The biggest was the goal-line fumble that USF returned for a touchdown, a 14-point swing that alone would reverse the game's outcome.
The Irish had two more turnovers inside the 10-yard-line, and five in all. The game was delayed for hours at two separate points, and Notre Dame switched quarterbacks from Dayne Crist to Tommy Rees, who was better but had 2 interceptions of his own.
In the end this looked like the perfect storm for both Oregon and Notre Dame. The Ducks won't be facing teams as physical as LSU in the Pac-12 and they won't fumble two kick returns again this year. The Irish won't have a game like this the rest of the decade, most likely.
But while both teams should recover from their first-weekend problems, the damage is done. Oregon can still go to the Rose Bowl but a national title is a longshot; they can only hope that Stanford goes undefeated before they meet, giving the Ducks a boost if they can win that, and that a viable opponent from the Pac-12 South emerges. Only then will Oregon be back in the talk for a national title. They have to hope LSU loses (probably twice) and that the alternatives around the country fall by the wayside as well.
Notre Dame also plays Stanford, so in theory they have as much of a national title shot as the Ducks, if the Cardinal win the Oregon-Stanford showdown. But the Irish don't look like they have a team that can run the table against their schedule. And assuming they lose to Stanford, they'd probably have to beat every other team to make a BCS bowl at 10-2, and go at least 9-3 to even have a chance. Taking a loss in the first game diminishes those odds greatly, even if they do—somehow—turn out to be as good as advertised.
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