My father imparted a lot of wisdom upon me as I grew up. One thing that stuck with me was his confidence in the complete randomness of sports.

“There are no givens in sports,” he’d say. “None except for this: On any given day, any given team can beat any other given team.”

What a perfect way to sum up one of the craziest weekends in college football in recent memory.

A weekend in which six top 25 teams lost to unranked teams, including then No. 1 USC, No. 4 Florida and No. 9 Wisconsin.

Has the parity of college football ever been clearer than over the past two years? When a Football Championship Subdivision team opens the season by beating the No. 5 team in the nation at home (Appalachian State over Michigan last year), then you should know that nothing is certain in the college football world.

Over the last 12-plus months, we’ve seen some of the biggest upsets in the history of college football.

Illinois beating undefeated Ohio State at the Horseshoe and 41-point underdog Stanford going into Los Angeles and beating USC are two classic examples. The list goes on and on.

After USC’s thrashing of Ohio State this season, analysts said the only team that could beat the Trojans were themselves. Oh yeah, and Oregon State. Did they forget to mention them?

Imagine the euphoria of the Ole Miss student body after going into The Swamp and handing the Gators a rare home loss, or the excitement around Navy’s program as they got their first win over a ranked team since 1985 when they beat No. 16 Wake Forest.

This should do nothing but excite fan bases at mid-major schools. Their teams are routinely scheduled as early-season tune-ups for national powerhouses, and week after week there’s upset potential. Do you think West Virginia saw East Carolina coming the second week of the season?

Take NIU for example. Left on the schedule they have an away date with a perennial SEC power

in Tennessee and home match-ups against one of the most exciting quarterbacks in the nation, Central Michigan’s Dan LeFevour. Also, let’s not forget a late-season date in DeKalb with the same Navy team who just upset the Demon Deacons on the road.

Think about the implications for the fan base, as well as the football program, if they went into Knoxville and pulled off the upset. DeKalb would go absolutely mad. Fans parading in the streets, people dressing in nothing but cardinal and black; it would be absolute hysteria.

No matter how slim the chances of it happening are, I’ve learned over the past 14 months to know better than to count any team out of any game.

No matter how good a team NIU is playing, Huskie football fans should be more than able to get excited about their team’s chances, because we’ve witnessed over the last year that anything can happen.