Deion Sanders won the opening Saturday of the 2023 college football season with Colorado's 45-42 upset of No. 17 TCU. An 80-minute drive down Interstate 35, GJ Kinne won the opening Saturday night.
In his first game as Texas State's head coach, 34-year-old GJ Kinne guided the Bobcats to a 42-31 upset of Baylor in Waco.
Statistically speaking, Texas State's upset of Baylor was an even bigger than Colorado's of TCU. The Buffaloes beat the spread by 24 points, winning by three as 21-point underdogs; the Bobcats, however, beat it by a whopping 37.5, winning by 11 as 26.5-point underdogs.
At a program that began playing football in 1904, Kinne's first game already stands, at worst, as the fourth biggest win program history. There were the back-to-back Division II national championships in 1981-82. There was the run to the FCS semifinals in 2005. Texas State also has 14 conference championship trophies somewhere in a dustbin in its football offices.
But celebratory moments have been few and far between since joining FBS in 2012.
The Bobcats entered 2023 riding a string of seven consecutive losing seasons. Even more sad, in Texas State's two .500 seasons (a 6-6 mark in 2013, and a 7-5 season in 2014), the Bobcats were not selected for bowl games. Texas State was winless against Big 12 opponents before Saturday, including an 0-9 mark against Baylor. By my count, Texas State entered Saturday at 1-20 all-time against so-called "power conference" programs, the one win coming over Rice, then a member of the Southwest Conference, back on Sept. 27, 1986.
But none of that mattered on Saturday night.
The Bobcats yielded a Baylor field goal on the Bears' opening drive -- and that would prove to be their only deficit of the night. Texas State scored on the ensuing possession, led 14-6 after the first quarter, 28-13 at the half, and stretched their lead as far as 18 points in the second half. The last point Baylor had the ball with a chance to take the lead was the 2:26 mark of the first quarter.
Texas State's win not only represented a 37.5-point win over the spread, it was a 46-point turnaround from a 42-7 Baylor win over the Bobcats last season.
As has been the case his entire career, quarterback play was the key for Kinne. Auburn transfer TJ Finley went 22-of-30 for 298 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions. The 189.7 rating is the second highest of his career.
Kinne's last quarterback, Lindsey Scott, Jr., set an FCS single-season record for touchdown passes (60) and touchdowns responsible for (71) en route to winning the Walter Payton Award, the FCS version of the Heisman, while leading Incarnate Word to the FCS semifinals.
That success earned Kinne the Texas State job, and in one game his hiring has already proved successful.