It's a tradition like no other: We wait more than seven months for college football to return, and we overreact with vigor to all we see. We know we're going to regret some of the things we say when we're flying off the handle, but it's just so much fun to do it. So I make sure to do it after Week 1 each season.

Week 1 of the college football season wasn't a wall-to-wall thriller -- it almost never is -- but it was educational and sporadically entertaining, and on Saturday evening it gave us a couple of different opportunities to yell, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" (That could have been justifiably directed toward the timekeepers in Ann Arbor or the entire Clemson football program.)In the end, we got plenty of overreaction fodder. So let's overreact. LSU is a national title contender It should never be a national title contender It should never be an overreaction to proclaim LSU awesome, but with zero top-10 finishes in the 2020s, the Tigers hadn't put together all that many awe-inspiring performances of late.

But they annihilated Clemson 51-10 in Lane Kiffin's debut as LSU head coach. A transfer-heavy offense mowed down Clemson's defensive front to the tune of 309 rushing yards, and Arizona State transfer Sam Leavitt completed at least one 20-yard pass to four different receivers. Winston Watkins Jr., one of a few transfers from Ole Miss -- the school Kiffin so controversially left last season -- led the way with seven catches for 110 yards.

The defense was even more dominant than the offense. Kiffin smartly retained coordinator Blake Baker and supplemented a pretty experienced defensive core with some star transfers. Tennessee transfer Jordan Ross and Ole Miss transfer Princewill Umanmielen combined for four tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and, via Ross, a pick-six.

Returnees end Dylan Carpenter and linebackers Davhon Keys and (especially) Whit Weeks were endlessly disruptive. At halftime, LSU had gained 336 yards and allowed 54. LSU did all this despite electing not to roster tight end Dae'Quan Wright and defensive tackle Zxavian Harris; the duo had signed with professional teams as undrafted free agents, but both were recently released and had declared their intentions to play for LSU. (Calling them "former pros," as has become customary from those who benefit from people being scared of this development, makes everything seem far more menacing.) LSU and the SEC had seemingly spent the past week in court arguing with each other about whether this was legal and what the repercussions might be if Wright and Harris played.

In the end, the Tigers didn't need them at all. Most top-ranked teams avoided serious challenges this weekend, but even in a sea of blowouts, this one stood out. LSU means business and looks quite interested in its first serious national title push of the decade.

Dabo Swinney's laziest hire will doom him Clemson's rise in the 2010s was the product of what might at first seem like two conflicting traits: Dabo Swinney's ability to trust his gut instincts and his humility in understanding what he didn't know. A career position coach and ace recruiter, Swinney had never been a coordinator when he landed the top job at Clemson late in 2008. After a bumpy start, he recruited two of the most exciting coordinators in the game: Tulsa offensive coordinator (and longtime Texas high school wizard) Chad Morris in 2011, then Oklahoma defensive coordinator Brent Venables in 2012.

He sought energy and innovation, landed the ace quarterbacks required to win big -- top-60 prospect Tajh Boyd in 2009, top-20 prospect Deshaun Watson in 2014, top-two prospect Trevor Lawrence in 2018 -- and proceeded to win big. Clemson enjoyed six straight AP top-four finishes, and although Nick Saban is the best coach in colleg...