Wait for it college football fans ... it’s the ACC!

This column will be devoted almost entirely to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The ACC earned the clear-out space in advance of Saturday night’s enticing matchup of No. 10 Clemson at No. 4 Florida State. ABC trotted its “A” team to Tallahassee and ESPN dressed Lee Corso up in a headdress and war paint (seriously) and then had him plant a pregame spear in a patch of grass.

The ACC is entitled to close-up examination after so many years of pundits’ harping on the fact the league is only 2-13 in BCS bowls. The ACC, for the first time last year, put two teams in BCS games. Both Clemson and Virginia Tech lost. Clemson surrendered 70 points to West Virginia in the Orange Bowl.

That was then, though, and this was Saturday.

This was the ACC’s night, so let’s get right to it.

First, though, briefly, you would not believe what took place elsewhere:

•No. 15 Kansas State did it again. It stunned No. 6 Oklahoma, 24-19, when the Sooners expected it least. It was almost more improbable than 2003, when Bill Snyder’s team wiped No. 1 Oklahoma off the field in the Big 12 championship game.

Seriously, though, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Oklahoma won last year’s game by 41 points in Manhattan. Sooners Coach Bob Stoops was 14-0 against ranked opponents at home.

Not anymore.

•Auburn nearly stunned Louisiana State. You read that right: the Tigers team that needed overtime to beat Louisiana Monroe last week almost took down the Tigers team ranked No. 2. The final score was 12-10.

Write this down, though. LSU’s close scrape will barely register a blip down South and in the big picture. In the SEC, close wins over inferior opponents increase in value over time. They turn into character builders and defensive epics.

“This IS an impressive win,” the ESPN analyst said before the game was even decided. “This is not an easy win for them to come in here and get.”

See?

•Notre Dame is back. The Irish are 4-0 for the first time since 2002 after Saturday’s 13-6 victory over Michigan. The Irish avoided a fourth straight loss to the Wolverines and have defeated ranked opponents in consecutive weeks for the first time since 2005.

Notre Dame is a legitimate top-10 team and maybe something else. Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine and Lou Holtz all won national titles in their third seasons. This is Brian Kelly’s third season as coach.

•Colorado, those sad sacks out of Boulder, actually won a football game. The outfit that couldn’t tie its shoelaces last week in a 69-19 loss to Fresno State scored three touchdowns in the final seven minutes to stun Washington State, 35-34.

Jon Embree’s barreling Buffaloes went from 173 in the Sagarin ratings to unbeaten in Pac-12 play. Get at load of the Buffs’ being 1-0 in the South division, ahead of USC and UCLA.

•UCLA fell on the first day of fall. The Bruins once again overestimated the level of their sudden loftiness and maybe underestimated the Oregon State Beavers of Corvallis. All this talk about secrecy and injury policies in the Pac-12 and guess what: UCLA lost to a team whose coach opens its practices to the public.

•Matt Barkley tossed a couple more interceptions but USC rebounded from the gut-wrench at Stanford to dispose of California for the ninth straight time. Some of us satellite subscribers unable to watch it on TV were forced to a primitive form of communication.

“The Bears will go left to right across your radio dial,” Trojans play-by-play announcer Pete Arbogast reported, like it was 1938, right after kickoff.

USC, from what we could hear through the static, sounded good.

•Top-ranked Alabama allowed a touchdown for the first time since the Saturday before Labor Day. The Crimson Tide defeated Florida Atlantic “only” 40-7. It marked the second time in three weeks Alabama has not covered the spread, but we don’t think Nick Saban’s job is in jeopardy.

•The Mid-American Conference went 4-1 against the Big Boy leagues. Central Michigan defeated Iowa, Western Michigan outlasted Connecticut, Northern Illinois beat Kansas and Ball State upended South Florida.

What a punch by America’s midsection.

Oh, wow, sorry, what about the ACC?

Well, ESPN’s ticker reported something about Clemson rushing off to an early lead but Florida State rallying back for an impressive win, 49-37.

Florida State improved to 4-0, while Clemson fell to 3-1.

Sorry we couldn’t dig deeper into the details . . . we ran out of space.

[email protected]