Check off that box: (underranked) Utah beat (overranked) Pitt, in a clunky overtime romp, 27-24. Somebody around here pinned the Utes higher than the Panthers on a pre-season poll... and got a little flack for it. Shameful.
Utah's win is the first of many MWC non-conference Ws that need to pile up in order for the Mountain West to be able to make the case for its champion to play for more than the Las Vegas Bowl. Sadly, New Mexico (at Oregon), UNLV (hosts Wisconsin) and Colorado State (at Colorado in Denver) probably are not going to hold up their ends of the deal. Maybe BYU (hosts Jake Locker and some team... oh, it's Washington) will help out the conference's prestige-- ironically-- but that's not a game, or a team, that the Wimple is willing to go out on a limb for.
Utah answered a few questions: yes, Wynn is improved. Yes, the defense is going to be fine. Wynn's go-to receivers appear to be Jereme Brooks (no surprise there) and DeVonte Christopher. And Matt Asiata pushed the pile around at least as well as Dion Lewis-- and managed to do so for five quarters without a season-ending injury. Look for other pollsters to join the Wimple and rank the Utes before the Rebels come to town in a week.
Other Day 1 tidbits: Nevada looks very potent on offense, and very vulnerable on defense. The Wolfpack allowed 270 passing yards, and almost a yard more per carry than its own princely 4.9 mark, to a 2A team. Perhaps SMU's torching of Kaepernick's crew was not such an abberation after all.
Look for the Jacory Harris bandwagon to get really loud in the runup to the big showdown with Slohio State next weekend; Harris put up better numbers (against a 2A team) than Terrell Heisman did (against a 1A team) lastnight.
Florida Atlantic, of the zero returning starts at o-line, eked out a win over UAB, behind the strong QB play of Jeff VanCamp.
I have no idea if North Dakota is a decent team or not, but they couldn't make Idaho's rebuilt line look bad. Hopefully CSU will be able to, in a few weeks...