Nothing that happens in this college football season should shock us. Not after Appalachian State won at Michigan. Not after Syracuse and its Pop Warner offense lit up Louisville. Not South Florida in the top 5. Not a weekend with five of the top-10 teams in the AP poll losing — four of them to unranked opponents.

Yet Saturday offered up a jaw-dropper big enough to make all those moments take a distant back seat.

Stanford 24, USC 23.

Stanford was 1–11 in 2006. It had lost three previous conference games this season by a combined score of 141–51. It had a backup quarterback, Tavita Pritchard, making his first college start. The game was at the Los Angeles Coliseum, where USC hadn’t lost since the first year of George W. Bush’s first term. That’s USC, the team of the three regular season losses the past four seasons. The Trojans were favored by anywhere from 38 to 41 points, making this possibly the largest point-spread upset in college football history.

This was Mike Tyson losing to Buster Douglas in Tokyo. This was the Jets beating the Colts in Super Bowl III. If it wasn’t quite the equal of the Miracle on Ice, it’s only because there were no geo-political implications. Even so, in football terms, the Berlin Wall just fell.

How so? For one, every one-loss team just regained a legitimate shot at the national title. Heck, if half the top-10 keeps losing each weekend, a two-loss team like Florida could be in play for a spot in the BCS championship. For another, South Florida and Cincinnati probably only need a loss each by Cal and Ohio State to control their own destiny for a trip to New Orleans for the title game. Yes, you read that correctly.

For now, USC’s stumble means that LSU is the consensus no. 1 team in the nation after the Tigers rallied to beat Florida Saturday night. Many will caution against assuming that LSU can run the table in the SEC, and if this season has taught us anything it is that assumptions are unwise. Still, the SEC is not what it was a year ago. Only LSU has looked dominant, and the Tigers have but two games remaining against opponents that are currently ranked: They play Kentucky and Auburn the next two weeks before they presumably would face the East Division champion in the SEC title game. As of today, the favorite to take that spot might well be Tennessee, a team with two losses (including a 39-point stinker at Florida) that nonetheless controls its own destiny to get to Atlanta.

LSU was hardly overwhelming against Florida. The Gators ran the ball over, around, and through LSU’s vaunted defense for much of the contest before untimely turnovers and LSU coach Les Miles’s riverboat gambling swung the game in favor of the home side. His decision-making, which included going 5-for-5 on fourth downs in the contest, was akin to hitting on and endless series of 16s in blackjack — without ever busting. He passed up a chip-shot field goal to tie in the final two minutes in favor of yet another fourth-down run. That’s the kind of call that, should it go wrong, ends up getting the coach hanged in effigy around campus.

As if just to make things a little more difficult, Miles even opted to risk his final timeout, while trailing with 10 minutes to play, to challenge a call that netted his team a whole 10 yards of field position.

Strategically, LSU hardly benefited from USC’s loss. But try telling that to a fan base that is still bitter over having to share a national title with the Trojans in 2003. When the final score of the USC game was announced in Baton Rouge, the crowd celebrated wildly, as did the LSU team on the sidelines, despite the fact they were trailing Florida at the time.

Assuming it can beat Kentucky next week, which is coming of its first loss of the season, LSU will be atop the BCS standings when they are first issued on October 14. Ohio State, on the other hand, will surely be sending Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh a Christmas card if the Buckeyes are able to make it to New Orleans. Then again, Harbaugh is a Michigan man so salutations from Columbus are unlikely, but Stanford did Ohio State a huge favor nonetheless. In what was supposed to be a rebuilding year, the Buckeyes are 6–0 and should be heavy favorites in each of their remaining games.

Cal, which was idle Saturday, is also in prime position to reach the title game, but the Trojans’ loss may have actually hurt the Bears. Cal wasn’t going to reach the championship without beating USC November 10, but a win now will be somewhat less impressive to the voters and computers that determine the BCS standings.

Boston College, which has been flying under the radar all season, also now finds itself in position to begin thinking this could be a special year. The Eagles still have considerable hurdles, to wit: four of their final six games are on the road, including a trip to Virginia Tech, and that doesn’t include a potential rematch with the Hokies in the ACC title game in Jacksonville.

Despite all the chaos over the season’s first six weeks, there is much to be decided. There are still 11 undefeated teams, two more then at this time last year. Remaining conference games will trim that number by at least four teams and based on the way this year has gone, odds are that several others will get upset. Not even Miles would hit that particular 16.

Mr. Levine is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com.