While the focus of our “This Week In College Football” show is forward-looking as often as possible, we always take a glance back at the previous weekend in college football, too, and sometimes we’ll offer some quick mentions to those making impactful headlines on the gridiron, especially in the Atlantic Coast Conference or across North Carolina.

With that in mind, below are our Week One “Fun Facts and Shout-Outs,” brought to you by our good friends at Jimmy’s bar and King Neptune restaurant in Wrightsville Beach.

Jimmy’s has a full bar, nightly drink specials and live music 365 days a year(!). Right next door, King Neptune has become one of the best restaurants in the entire greater Wilmington area.

Week One “Fun Fact”

The ACC was the only conference in college football that posted two victories over top-10 opponents during the extended Labor Day weekend.

Miami beat #6 Notre Dame, and Florida State beat #8 Alabama. On top of that, Georgia Tech went to Colorado and beat Deion Sanders and the Buffaloes in a Friday night national TV matchup.

It was not a perfect week for the ACC by any means. Syracuse got crushed by Tennessee, Clemson lost at home to LSU, Virginia Tech fell to South Carolina in Atlanta, and UNC got annihilated by TCU at home.

However, those huge wins by the Hurricanes and Seminoles, in particular — on very big stages, and in national TV spotlights — offered an early indicator that the ACC is definitely willing to play a lot of big games against high-quality nonconference foes, and that at least several teams in the top portion of the ACC are capable of winning those big games, too.

Week One “Shout-Outs”

#1—Shout-out to fourth-year Miami coach Mario Cristobal and his top-10 Hurricanes.

UM’s 27-24 victory over #6 Notre Dame easily could be viewed as bigger and better than any of its victories from its 10-3 season a year ago, when star quarterback Cam Ward (now in the NFL) often had to rescue the Hurricanes with offensive fireworks, even against lesser opponents, when the Canes’ defense regularly had trouble stopping opponents or even slowing them down.

The win over the Irish on Sunday night was far from perfect, but it was much more of a well-balanced team effort.

Quarterback Carson Beck, the Georgia transfer coming off a scary injury, looked confident and competent against a well-coached Irish defense. The Miami defense held Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love, one of the best running backs in the country, to only 33 yards on 10 carries.

Finally, when the Hurricanes desperately needed stops down the stretch, defensive end Rueben Bain Jr. (one of their top NFL prospects) came up with one sack, and Akheem Mesidor (a sixth-year senior at the other defensive end spot) came up with another.

That sort of well-rounded effort bodes well for the Canes this season.

#2—Shout-out to sixth-year Florida State coach Mike Norvell and his resurgent Seminoles, who re-entered the national Top 25 rankings — and deservedly so — after their 31-17 victory over #8 Alabama in Tallahassee on Saturday.

It is a major test of your program’s fiber when you fall all the way from a 13-1 ACC championship campaign (2023) to a 2-10 train wreck (2024) in back-to-back seasons, and it obviously added some extra spice when it was the top-10 Crimson Tide coming to town for your 2025 opener.

Besides being much tougher at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, which is a great starting point, the Seminoles just had — unlike last season — people who fit their plan against Alabama.

New offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn, in conjunction with dual-threat quarterback Tommy Castellanos, who lived up to his bold “Nick Can’t Save Them” offseason declaration toward the Crimson Tide, made FSU infinitely more difficult to defend than was the case last year.

The talented and athletic Alabama defense seemed off-balance for most of the game, and that’s a credit to both FSU’s improved talent level and the Seminoles’ smarter game plan.

There’s still a long way to go, obviously, but that was a huge step back in the right direction for the Garnet and Gold.

#3—Shout-out to 13th-year NC State coach Dave Doeren and his Wolfpack.

It wasn’t always pretty, and State’s fans definitely wanted more, but the Pack’s 24-17 victory over East Carolina on Thursday both avenged the team’s ugly Military Bowl loss to the Pirates at the end of last season and extended Doeren’s remarkable record to a stellar 28-1 in nonconference games at Carter-Finley Stadium since the 2013 season, his first in Raleigh.

Doeren’s only home loss to a nonconference opponent from 2014 through the early part of this season came in 2023, on a strange day when a top-10 Notre Dame team beat the Pack after a two-hour-long lightning delay.

That ongoing 12-year run at Carter-Finley is a pretty impressive testament to Doeren’s well-earned reputation as a consistent winner and State’s all-time winningest football coach.

#4—Shout-out to first-year Appalachian State head coach Dowell Loggains and his Mountaineers.

Loggains took a largely rebuilt App State configuration to Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte on Friday night and left absolutely no doubt that his team — a possible contender in the Sun Belt Conference — was much better than the Charlotte 49ers of the American Conference.

The final margin at the Duke’s Mayo Classic was 34-11 in favor of App State, and the Mountaineers out-gained the 49ers by a stunningly wide margin (586-218).

Perhaps the most exciting detail in the win was that Loggains — an offensive guru with decades of experience in the NFL and in the Southeastern Conference — showcased multiple playmakers in Week One, just as many offenses across the country (including Charlotte’s) were struggling with their timing and execution.

App State quarterback AJ Swann, a former Vanderbilt starter who spent last year as a backup at LSU, completed 31 of 46 passing attempts for 368 yards, three touchdown passes and no interceptions. At running back, Rashod Dubinion, an Arkansas transfer, rushed 22 times for 111 yards and a touchdown. At wide receiver, Jaden Barnes, a small but really quick guy who was one of the top receivers in the country at the FCS level last season at Austin Peay, had six catches for 134 yards and a touchdown.

It was only one game, of course, and it came against a rebuilding opponent in the 49ers, but that was an absolutely brilliant debut for Loggains and the 2025 Mountaineers.

#5—At the FCS level, a huge shout-out to second-year Gardner-Webb head coach Cris Reisert and his Runnin’ Bulldogs, who went to #19 Western Carolina and shocked the Catamounts 52-45 on Saturday.

The Bulldogs were behind by 28 points in the third quarter of that game, 35-7, before putting up some pinball machine-style numbers down the stretch to claim the victory.

Fifth-year senior quarterback Nate Hampton, a 6-6, 240-pounder from Davie County High School who spent the past four years as a backup quarterback at Liberty, was named the FCS National Offensive Player of the Week after his Gardner-Webb debut. Hampton threw for 263 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 132 yards and four more scores in the comeback victory over the Catamounts.

The Bulldogs’ 28-point second-half comeback was the largest in program history, and it came on the road against a nationally ranked Western Carolina team that’s been pretty good in recent years under head coach Kerwin Bell.

Gardner-Webb immediately gets another huge challenge in Week Two, with a visit to Georgia Tech.

#6—Finally, a shout-out to all five of the Division Three football programs in the Old North State: Brevard College, Greensboro College, Guilford College, Methodist University and North Carolina Wesleyan University.

They all begin their 2025 seasons this week, including with Greensboro’s six-mile trip to nearby Guilford on Saturday night.

Best wishes to all five of those D3 programs here in our backyard, as they put their seasons into “launch mode.”