College Football

How Week 1 — yes, Week 1 — changed the postseason picture

Let’s track college football’s opening weekend top 25 impact, with an eye toward the Playoff.

Updated Sep 4, 2018, 3:18 AM UTC

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Here’s the easiest way to keep track of the long-term implications of what’s happening on the college football field, updated all Week 1 long.

In this weekly post, we’ll keep track of the national weekend strictly from the perspective of how these things are altering the New Year’s Six bowl picture. Yes, it’s early, but the Playoff committee goes back and reviews how each team did all the way back to Week 1, so it’ll all end up mattering. Or they’ll just give Bama all four seeds.

Remember the things the committee’s stated it cares about, in addition to its perception of team quality: wins over bowl teams, wins over teams that finish ranked, conference titles (sometimes), and stuff like that.

All games Saturday unless otherwise noted. All times p.m. ET. Completed games in italics.

Probably important

No. 9 Auburn 21, No. 6 Washington: The winner’s an instant Playoff favorite, and the loser’s not out of it yet. (That’s what I wrote ahead of time. Just leaving it.)
No. 7 Oklahoma 63, FAU 14: The Sooners pick up a gruesome win over a likely conference champ.
No. 10 Penn State 45, Appalachian State 38 (OT): App State took a top-10 Big Ten team into deep water on BTN — when has THAT ever happened before? — but Penn State snuck away with a win over a potential conference champ.
No. 12 Notre Dame 24, No. 14 Michigan 17: I don’t think the Irish controlled this game to quite the extent it felt like they did, but this should still be a victory over a nine-plus-win team.
No. 13 Stanford 31, San Diego State 10: An authoritative home win over a likely Mountain West contender (and a rare hot start for Stanford, beating a team to which it’d lost last year, no less).
No. 22 Boise State 56, Troy 20: Sneaky important! This very well could be the Mountain West champ whapping the Sun Belt champ, not to mention one of several pretty tough road games for the Broncos.
Maryland 34, No. 23 Texas 29: Important in the sense that a ranked team is now unranked, but Maryland beats Texas every year anyway.

Maybe important

No. 1 Alabama 51, Louisville 14: Very likely a large Bama win over a bowl team, whether the committee cares about Bama having those or not. (It didn’t care a lot last year.)
No. 4 Wisconsin 34, WKU 3: WKU has a decent shot at a bowl, though the Badgers’ schedule is pretty loaded anyway. Dominant start regardless.
No. 25 LSU 33, No. 8 Miami 17: This game was quite bizarre, so let’s hold off on projecting with a whole lot of confidence going forward for either team. But! Should be a solid win, at least.
No. 11 Michigan State 38, Utah State 31: USU should bowl, buuuuuut MSU didn’t start the resume off all that nicely.
No. 15 USC 43, UNLV 21: UNLV has a decent chance at a bowl.
No. 17 West Virginia 40, Tennessee 14: Far be it from me to predict either of these teams doing anything in any direction. UT might make a bowl, though.
No. 20 Virginia Tech 24, No. 19 Florida State 3: Probably the week’s most surprising final score! I ... have no idea whether it’ll matter.