A buzzer-beater with a most unlikely hero.
A season-opening conference loss -- 4,000 miles from home.
The return of Dan Mullen. Perhaps the arrival of Nicholls State?
Yeah. College football's soft-launch opening weekend -- just a handful of games, hardly a full slate -- already has provided signature moments.
Hawaii place-kicker Kansei Matsuzawa drilled a game-winning, clock-expiring 38-yard field goal to lift the host Rainbow Warriors over Stanford, Year 2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference and Game 1 under interim head coach Frank Reich, in the day's most dramatic contest.
A native of Chiba, Japan, Matsuzawa is in his second year with the Hawaii program after beginning his career in the junior college ranks at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio.
On the topic of distances, Nelsonville, Ohio, is approximately 6,700 miles from Matsuzawa's hometown, per Google. It's a 24-hour flight.
But he's in his senior season for Hawaii, and he's the island hero today after capping his 11-point performance with the field goal that proved the difference in his team's 23-20 win.
Kansas State, on the other hand, has that 4,000-mile flight home after enduring its own three-point loss, 24-21, to Big 12 Conference rival Iowa State in Dublin, Ireland.
The Wildcats had been instilled as slight betting favorites but trailed consistently throughout the game.
Now, with not only a season-opening loss but one that puts it behind in the conference standings, Kansas State has virtually no margin for error across the duration of its season -- not as it pertains to College Football Playoff hopes. And the Wildcats have such, entering the year ranked in the preseason polls and returning quarterback Avery Johnson, among notable others.
It was Cyclones quarterback Rocco Becht who carried the day. The redshirt-junior, now with 28 career starts, finished just 14-for-28 passing but threw for two scores and ran for his team's other touchdown.
ISU gets an early perch atop the Big 12 standings, faces a strong FCS program this week in hosting South Dakota and follows up that tilt with the annual Cy-Hawk rivalry game at home against Iowa in 13 days.
Topics on today's podcast also include discussing the latest on Pat Fitzgerald, the ex Northwestern coach who settled (read: won) his lawsuit last week against Northwestern, which was at minimum found to have prematurely if not wrongfully terminated Fitzgerald earlier this decade.
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