A note about this weekend

This has been one of my favorite weekends for college football, ever -- and I say that despite the fact the Florida spent the first twenty-seven minutes of yesterday's game trailing Furman by as many as 15 points.

Something I've missed desperately in the two and a half years since I left UF is the fervor surrounding college football in the South. People in D.C. just don't get excited for it the way the Gator Nation does. This is Skins Country, it's Caps country, it's ACC basketball country, but it isn't college football country. Sure, you have your Terps and Hokies fans, the occasional overly enthusiastic West Virginia grad -- but college football isn't the dominant event of every weekend for most Washingtonians the way it is for me.

But you wouldn't have been able to tell that from last night.

This just happened to be my twenty-fifth birthday weekend, so I was in the basement of a dingily spectacular Capitol Hill bar with twenty to thirty friends when it all went down.

Florida State losing to UVA. Oregon falling to Southern Cal. Oklahoma getting stunned by Baylor. All on top of Clemson and Okla State already having been upset.

Fever pitch. Insanity. Jumping up and down. Hugging and cheering. My dear friend Thomas, a long-time Ducks fan, crumbling to the ground with wails of "Nooooo!" Wide-eyed staring at each other with looks that clearly said, "What could happen next?" For the first time in years, I found myself with people who truly cared about what was happening on those screens. We grabbed one another, running through all the feasible outcomes from the weekend, reasoning our way through every option, trying to guess who would end up in the BCS championship game. Could Virginia Tech somehow do it, after an entire season of being overlooked? (I love the idea, by the way, of the SEC -- already having dispensed with teams from the Big 12, the Pac 10 and the Big 10 on its way to winning five straight national titles -- getting a chance to round things out by beating an ACC school, too.) Did the improbable happenings of Saturday night void Oklahoma State's seemingly crippling loss on Friday, creating exactly the circumstances needed for them to be able to claw their way back to No. 2? What if Auburn beats Bama next week? What if it doesn't? What if Georgia pulls out the win in Atlanta? Is there a role for Houston in all of this? Have all the pieces aligned just so, such that we'll actually see a rematch of the "Game of the Century" from Nov. 5? And who the heck is Robert Griffin III?

What an evening of wonderful, magical chaos.

I have no idea what is going to happen, and neither do any of you. Because with LSU having to face No. 3 (I'm assuming) Arkansas on Friday, and the Iron Bowl still to come, anything could happen. Anything at all. I highly doubt this season's handed us its last surprise. Which is, of course, what makes sports so much fun in the first place.

I can't freaking wait to watch the next few weeks play out.