Getting Through Introductions

Wild Weekend One, which concludes tonight with No. 11 Florida State at No. 12 Miami in the unranked Orange Bowl, was about debuts: some good, some bad, some you couldn’t really couldn’t get a handle on.

One problem with the new 12-game format is that a school such as Montana State had to go out and find an extra easy-money game against a school such as Colorado.

The glut of matchups featuring the majors vs. I-AA clouded any definitive analysis regarding rankings, coaches, players and coordinators.

Naturally, that wasn’t going to stop an expert from breaking it down with concrete clarity.

The 11 coaches who made debuts at new schools went a combined 6-5. Chuck Long came up short at San Diego State, Ron Prince at Kansas State would have been a pauper had his Wildcats not held off Illinois State and Bret Bielema, taking over for Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin, kept the cheese ball rolling in Madison.

One of the all-time stinkers matching debut coaches involved Buffalo Coach Turner Gill outlasting Temple Coach Al Golden, 9-3, in a game that was 3-3 at the end of regulation.

How about this for a regulation: Temple and Buffalo never being allowed to play each other again.

Best debut by a coach: Pat Fitzgerald, who at age 31 inherited the Northwestern job this summer when coach Randy Walker died suddenly. All Fitzgerald did was lead Northwestern to an emotional, 21-3 win over Walker’s alma mater, Miami of Ohio.

Worst debut: Colorado Coach Dan Hawkins. Colorado’s 19-10 loss to I-AA Montana State could only have been made worse had it been revealed that “Ralphie,” Colorado’s live bison mascot, was born in Montana.

It’s true?

OK, then, just shut down the program. Colorado fans thought nothing could be worse than last year’s 70-3 loss to Texas in the Big 12 Conference title game.

And then came Saturday.

Hawkins, who came to Boulder after a successful stint at Boise State, was brought in to work wonders at Colorado, not make people wonder.

Best debuts by quarterbacks:

1. USC’s John David Booty. He had the double-whammy task of succeeding Matt Leinart and taking over the reins first against a Southeastern Conference school on the road.

2. Texas’ Colt McCoy. It wasn’t a question of whether Texas was going to clobber North Texas. The question was whether McCoy, the redshirt freshman replacing already-a-legend Vince Young, could keep his knees from shaking long enough to complete a few passes. McCoy did more than that in throwing for three touchdowns and running for another.

3. UCLA’s Ben Olson. He had more rust on him than a junkyard pickup yet was nearly flawless in the Bruins’ 31-10 win over Utah, unless you have a problem with 318 passing yards and three touchdowns.

4. Georgia’s Matthew Stafford. Joe Tereshinski got the start in the Bulldogs’ cruise-control win over Western Kentucky, but the buzz in Athens was true freshman Stafford getting in and throwing a touchdown pass. In so doing, Coach Mark Richt burned Stafford’s redshirt season and all but threw the situation into a tizzy.

Explaining the excitement of playing his first game “between the hedges,” Stafford told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “If you didn’t feel it, you were dead.”

5. Nevada Las Vegas’ Rocky Hinds. Following in the transfer footsteps of Jason Thomas, the former USC quarterback who found a starting job in the desert, Hinds broke in with UNLV by throwing for 322 yards in his team’s wipeout win over Idaho State.

Take that ... Pete Carroll?

Best debut by a new coordinator: Tennessee’s David Cutcliffe. The man who coached Peyton and Eli Manning in college was hired back in Knoxville to see what he could do with enigmatic Erik Ainge. All Ainge did under Cutcliffe’s wing was dismantle a highly touted California defense with touchdown tosses of 12, 42, 80 and 50 yards. Ainge had only five touchdown passes last season.

Heart surgery prevented Cutcliffe from joining Charlie Weis’ staff last year at Notre Dame and it could be just the break Tennessee needed to recover from last year’s 5-6 season.

Best coordinator debut, defense: UCLA’s DeWayne Walker, whose battered Bruins held Utah to 10 points and 287 total yards.

Weekend Wrap

How did the Pacific 10 Conference fare in its rivalry with the Southeastern Conference? Not so well. Call it a Winn-Dixie. The Pac-10 went 1-2 in three SEC road games. Most expected USC to beat Arkansas and Washington State to lose at Auburn. The swing game was No. 9 California’s sit-in protest loss at Tennessee.

Times have changed department: The price of a Super Bowl III ticket at the Orange Bowl, the game in which the New York Jets’ Joe Namath guaranteed his team’s victory, was $12. The cost of a media parking pass for tonight’s Florida State-Miami game at the Orange Bowl: $35.

Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden seeks his 360th career victory tonight against Miami. And while Bowden ended a six-year losing streak to Miami in last year’s Labor Day weekend opener, it only improved his record against the Hurricanes to 12-19.

Looking ahead: Next week No. 1 Ohio State becomes the first top-ranked school to play Texas in Austin since 1950.

Southern Methodist was the last one.

Think anyone will tune in?

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com