College football returned with exactly the big, dumb, beautiful, record-setting weekend we needed

College football's opening weekend was scheduled to last five days. It almost lasted slightly longer than that.

Every weekend of America's dumbest and oldest major sport is a special weekend, but this one was especially historic, bizarre, and inspiring. A few things that no other weekend can claim:

• The largest point-spread upset in college football history
• The other most surprising upset since THE YEAR OF THE UPSET itself, per ESPN

• The second biggest comeback in the recorded history of the sport (and here's how it happened)
• That comeback turning our Texas A&M blog into Maximum Good Bull Hunting
• Rarely seen levels of instant, raging Facebook hot-seat drama at the above university, not that we as fans root for people to be fired; just for the drama part
• A game won on an especially ruthless fake spike (still the same game)

• Another Sunday night game, totally overshadowed by the above game, that was so good, it managed to make the despicable FedEx Field bearable
• Maryland beating Texas, the comedy event of the summer
• A Labor Day barnburner to close out the whole thing in overtime and nearly stretch the weekend into SIX days of football
• The story of that Labor Day barnburner being tellable just by sorting through four hours' worth of FIRE BUTCH JONES tweets
• THREE silly entries in the odd sideline gear category: Miami's gold chain, A&M's pimp cane/drum major baton, and Tennessee's legendary trash can, the last one ranking as the season's best meme so far

• Les Miles making his television debut by wandering with a hot mic in search of a bathroom
• The return of UAB and a successful FBS debut by Coastal Carolina
• A damn 98-0 game (there have been 100-pointers, but the last game I can find with that exact score: 1953 Bethune-Cookman's W vs. Savannah State)
• And one of the most heartwarming, encouraging sports things you'll ever witness, at WMU-USC
• Plus all sorts of the other usual college football-y stuff, such as Rutgers briefly beating the reigning Pac-12 champion while New Jerseyans howled in a student section hot tub.

Welcome back, college football. Week 2 is huge and starts in about 60 hours.