What is the appeal of college football outside of campus-indoctrinated school spirit? Is it enough that it's football and it exists? If that were the case, we'd all have watched the XFL more. The unique attraction of the college game is how it offers a level of chaos and magic at any given moment that makes suffering through maddening incompetence worth it. Anything really can happen. Case in point: One of the worst teams in the sport, a winless UCLA team that fired its coach and a couple coordinators just two weeks ago, just this weekend took out seventh-ranked Penn State, 42-37.
A bunch of people, starting with Penn State coach James Franklin, will give you all kinds of reasons for this result: the travel, the emotionally taxing loss to Oregon the week before, the injuries, did we mention the travel, California is very far and the body clock has to adjust. None of that is wrong. Also, none of it matters.
Only the result matters, and the result was that Nico Iamaleava and interim coach Tim Skipper gutted out a huge upset, driven on pure adrenaline and a whole lot of things going their way. But just like a hot hand in a Vegas casino, you start to generate your own luck when you're feeling and doing good. The Bruins completely knocked Penn State on its back in the first half, and the Nittany Lions had to try to dig themselves out of the hole for the rest of the game.
Iamaleava threw for 166 yards and two touchdowns and ran for another 128 and three more TDs. Say what you want about the kid and his dad, but Tennessee doesn't have a win this good yet. UCLA accounted for 446 yards and no turnovers on what used to be considered one of the better defenses in the Big Ten. This was the Bruins' first win against a top-10 team in 16 tries, and now all of a sudden (despite their records) UCLA is 1-1 in Big Ten play and Penn State is winless. But I think Jerry Neuheisel, the interim offensive coordinator and a Bruins lifer who looks 19 and speaks like he's 49, put it most succinctly.
