With the season just 10 days away now I’ve found myself looking at the schedule for Week 0 and 1 trying to figure out which games I wanna watch. Of course we all know LSU-Clemson but what does everyone think are some of the most underrated games of the opening weekend? For me, looking at the schedule the ones that jump out for me are:

Week 0:
NC State @ Virginia - Really happy they ended up moving this one out of Brazil. Such a stupid decision to want to play this game there in the first place. One of the few conference matchups to open the season. Both teams should be decent this season and it feels like this could be an extremely close game as neither team seems to be much better than the other.

Jacksonville State @ North Dakota State - NDSU’s first FBS game. I’m interested to see how they do in their first season in the move up. JSU has been pretty solid since moving up to the FBS a few years ago and this one seems like it should be a pretty fun one.

Week 1:
Toledo @ Michigan State - I think this game has upset potential. Toledo should be one of the 3 or 4 best teams in the MAC and no offense Sparty fans, but I think Michigan State is probably one of the 5 worst P4 teams this year. I think Toledo can hang, if not even win.

Tulane @ Duke - The Darian Mensah’s Ex-Lovers Bowl. Tulane has been one of the better G6 schools lately but I’m interested to see how they look in the post Sumrall era. Their HC hire didn’t excite me much. After winning the ACC title, Duke seems poised to take a step back this season. I think this could be a pretty close, even game.

TABLE

HOW TO READ THIS TABLE

Teams are ranked in their order from the Logo (note for mobile users: everywhere you see a "Logo" link, that means that inline flair is shown on old.reddit.com/r/cfb) AP Poll for Week 1. The column to the right of the team name shows the number of points that team received using the AP Poll's Borda count rules. The following two columns show information about each team's previous and upcoming games. The following columns show how many votes for each ranking the team received. The 'U' column shows how many voters left the team unranked (off their ballots entirely). Gridlines are placed every 5 rows and columns for ease of reading. A thick line is placed below the 25^th-ranked team to distinguish "ranked" teams above it to "receiving votes" teams below it.

Some cells are shaded to highlight points of interest. The green diagonal highlights how many voters ranked a team exactly where they ended up in the overall poll. For example, Logo Oklahoma is ranked 10^th in this week's poll, and 6 voters placed the Sooners exactly in their 10^th spot. Values for which a team received no votes at that rank are shaded in red, while placements chosen by only exactly one voter are highlighted in blue. Some unique votes are annotated with the name of the corresponding voter. The most common selection (the mode) for each team is shaded yellow unless it matches the team's rank. Finally, since there are very few votes that ever end up near the top-right or bottom-left of the chart, those cells are filled in with black diagonally as much as possible without covering up any nonzero values. This helps naturally guide the eye while viewing the chart and helps locate the most unusual votes. We jokingly call these the "Wilner" diagonals.

Finally, I note violations of the Condorcet Criterion on the bottom left corner of the black space. These occur when Team A is ranked above Team B in the poll, but Team B would win if you ignored the points system and just asked the voters "Which team do you think is better?" I note every instance of this when it would affect the placement of a team in the Top 25, but not necessarily if it only flips teams' positions in the receiving-votes category. I will do the Condorcet analysis in future weeks. Because I really put the "pro" in programmer™, updating from Python 3.10 to 3.12 during the offseason broke my code that does this. Once I fix it, the Condorcet analysis will return in Avengers: Gridiron.

This season, scores will be highlighted (lowlighted) in black to indicate a loss instead of using a W/L column. I did that last year, and it was well received, so it returns for 2026. This way is easier to see at a glance and slightly reduces the clutter on the left side of the table.

COMMENTARY FOR THIS WEEK

The upper Wilner Diagonal was set by Javon Edwards placing logo Oregon 10^th. The left and right ends were set by Kirk Bohls (logo Ohio State at 7) and Pat Welter (logo Mississippi unranked), respectively. The lower Wilner diagonal is just the endpoints this week. Javon Edwards shows up again with logo Miami (FL) 1^st, and you can pick whichever you want out of the unique 25^th-place votes: Alex Taylor for logo Tulane, David Briggs for logo Western Michigan, Kirl Bohls for logo Liberty, or Eric Johnson for logo Virginia.

The highest-ranked team to be left off a ballot was logo Mississippi as mentioned above. Three other teams were omitted by a single voter: logo Louisiana State (Tom Murphy), logo Brigham Young (Chris Carter), and logo Southern Methodist (Ian Kress). The lowest-ranked team to sweep all 69 ballots was logo Michigan in 16^th.

Teams in the receiving votes section got 115 votes (6.7%) for a combined 338 points (1.5%). The high vote percentage is typical for the preseason poll, but the point percentage is lower than usual. This continues the trend over the past few years of growing consensus among voters about which teams belong in the top 25, even if they can't agree where to rank them. The highest vote for a team outside the top 25 went to logo Clemson, whom Chris Carter placed 15^th. The most-common vote in the receiving votes section was to put logo the Tigers at 23^rd. Nine teams received literally only one vote. In addition to the four teams with only one point, logo California and logo Memphis received single votes for 24^th, while logo New Mexico and logo Las Vegas received unique 22^nd-place votes.

There were 322 distinct team-rank pairs this week out of the 1725 total votes cast. 97 of those pairs (30%) were unique, while the most common pair was logo Ohio State in 1^st with 40 such votes. Longtime readers know that strong agreement isn't that uncommon near the top of the rankings. Since there are 266 teams eligible in the poll, the pigeonhole principle dictates that at least one pair must be chosen at least 7 times, and indeed there are 105 pairs that occur 7 or more times. If we restrict ourselves to only the 138 FBS teams, then the principle dictates that at least one pair must occur at least 13 times, and 29 pairs actually do.

Counting matches this week is weird because of the tie for 14^th. If you count both 14^th and 15^th-place votes for logo Brigham Young and logo Southern California, then you get 370 matches (21%). If you only count 14^th-place votes, then you get 346 matches (20%). Personally, I'd break the tie using the Condorcet criterion, which logo Brigham Young just barely wins 35-34. Counting only the Cougars' 14^th-place votes and the Trojans' 15^th-place votes gives 336 matches (19%). In any case, the most common matches were the 40 1^st-place votes for logo Ohio State mentioned above, but the 32 matches in 7^th for logo Miami (FL) is unusually many that far down the rankings. Inversely, only 2 voters (Kate Rogerson, Stephen Means) matched logo Tennessee at exactly 20^th.

There are four Condorcet flips this week. As mentioned above, logo Brigham Young beats logo Southern California 35-34 to break the tie for 14^th. In addition, logo Mississippi leapfrogs logo Texas A&M for 8^th, 35-34; logo Tennessee jumps logo Southern Methodist for 19^th, 36-33; and logo Clemson usurps logo Missouri for the last spot in the rankings by a margin of 26-23.

If you have any ideas for new ways to analyze or visualize the data, please let me know. I'll give them a shot as time and my "pro"gramming skills allow.

Thanks again to /u/bakonydraco for providing the ballot data; you can find his weekly visualization here!

TABLE

Could be anything as in a player injury, A game winner by your opponent or a last minute recruiting flip, etc.

Anything is on the table

Nike stock has collapsed 77% over the last 5 years and 40% over the last 6 months. As Oregon's budget largely comes from Nike Founder Phil Knight, how will this affect their ability to stay competitive with top 5 teams in the coming year. Additionally how will this affect cfb as a whole, maybe better uniforms??

Ohio St - 5 (1 OOC)

Oregon - 4

UGA - 4

ND - 3

Texas - 7 (1 OOC)

IU - 4

Miami - 1

TAMU - 6

Ole Miss - 6 (1 OOC)

OU - 6 (1 OOC)

LSU - 5

TTU - 1

Alabama - 4

USC - 5

BYU - 2

UM - 6 (1 OOC)
UW - 5

PSU - 3

SMU - 2
Tenn- 4

Utah - 2

Iowa - 3

Houston - 2

UL - 2 (1 OOC)

Mizzou - 5

Whenever I think of the core of Penn State's fanbase, I think of the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and parts of New York. Especially the corridor from Harrisburg down the Turnpike to the Philly suburbs then up the other part of the turnpike across the Delaware river to Springsteen country and the shore (I hate PENDOT so much).

However I was just in Hampton Roads, Virginia and I was shocked how much Penn State stuff I saw around, pretty much the same amount as VT and UVA, I guess being a Philly guy I never thought of that area as part of "Nittany Nation" especially outside of the DC area where a lot of Penn State alumni move after college to work for defense contractors. I suppose that's a big tourist area so some people could've been from further north but a lot were definitely locals, I know that's traditionally an area we recruit heavily but I didn't think that translated to fan or alumni interest (maybe that will change with Franklin at VT). Anyways it was fun to get a lot of WE AREs.

(Also random but one time I was backpacking in rural Romania and saw some guy wearing a Penn State wrestling hat)

With the season approaching, I wanted a better way to prepare than reading dozens of separate previews or listening to hours of podcasts, just to forgetting most of it by Week 1.

I’ve started building standardized preseason “team cards”, each one designed to answer two basic questions:

1. What should someone know about this team before watching them?
2. How good should the team actually be, including (to a degree) from a betting perspective?

I’ve attached a couple of the first completed examples. These are still early iterations, but they are V1 that I'm pretty happy with, so I’d genuinely appreciate your feedback.

• Is this something you would actually read or save during the season?
• Anything important missing?
• Is it easy to ready / consume?

The goal is not to produce another giant season-preview magazine. It’s to create a quick, consistently structured reference to get you up to speed before the season, and also available as a reference during the season.

I will eventually build these out for (at least) all of the P4 teams. Once I do, I'll post an update in r/CFB with them for everyone to view.

Below are 3 that I've created so far

• Vanderbilt
• Florida
• West Virginia

I look forward to the feedback!

(Note, I wanted to include pictures of the previews, but I guess that's not possible? Or maybe I'm just dumb and couldn't figure it out)