Greetings oh great football fans! While I’m watching the Notre Dame at Louisville game (so, no, that game is not included yet: this statement is for a few of my friends, and yes, they know who they are). There were some upsets (although only one FCS school beat an FBS team (props to Central Arkansas over Western Kentucky) and some weird numbers. First let me show you this table:

The first section is the Power 5 conferences plus Notre Dame) and the asterisks are my way of acknowledging that game is still live – on the TV – in front of me right now. Which conference is looking the best so far is actually difficult to say in any kind of definitive way because of the diversity – the ACC played 3 conference games and 3 (plus ND) other Power 5 schools, the Big 12 was undefeated but played 7 FCS games, the ACC, the Pac-12, and the Big 10 all have losing records against other Power 5 conferences. Granted Louisville could bring that to even with a win tonight. Oklahoma State took care of business against Oregon State for the Big 12, but the SEC was 3-1 (plus a conference game) with the only loss being South Carolina to North Carolina. But look at the SEC’s record against the Group of 5 – keep in mind the Power 5 won ~77% of those type games, but the SEC was just 4-3 (Memphis, Georgia State, and Wyoming beating Mississippi, Tennessee, and Missouri, respectively). To be the best implies top to bottom in comparison to others and I just can’t make the call for a Power 5 conference. Let me explain more.

Now let’s look at the Group of 5 conferences (btw, Independ. is the non-Notre Dame unaligned schools). The Sun Belt won big in Tennessee, the American conference had Cincinnati besting UCLA and the previous mentioned Memphis win), but check out this week’s winners: the Mountain West. Non-Mountain West Group of 5s were a whopping 3-20 against the Power 5, but the crazy Westerners had a winning record against the big brothers (only the Big 12 with 1 game and the SEC with 4 can say the same). Let’s look at those wins: I’ve already mentioned Wyoming. Hawaii beat Arizona, Nevada kicked their way to a win over Purdue, and Boise State shut down Florida State. That’s wins over the SEC, Pac-12, Big 10, and ACC. As impressive as that is, let’s look at the losses. Utah State lost to Wake Forest by 3, but Vegas had the line at 4.5 – so a gambling win. The same thing happened with Fresno State against Southern Cal – lost by 8 with a line of 14. Only Colorado State failed to make upset gambling types happy with a 21 point loss to Colorado missing the 13.5 point line. 4 outright wins and 2 Vegas wins in 7 tries gets the Mountain West the best conference so far. History has shown that a Power 5 conference will eventually earn this title, but for now – congratulations!!

One more note: many of the FBS schools start their seasons with games against the FCS. I did not include the FCS conferences because, for the most part, they did not have great week 1 results. In fact the FBS beat the FCS 39-1 this past week. Likewise, some FCS teams play Division II or even NAIA teams during the season. To the sub-division’s credit, they were 8-0 against those lesser colleges, universities, high schools, neighborhood, shirts v skins type teams – whatever.

That’s it for this week. The 1st quarter is over and the game is tied 14-14. Could be a barn-burner and I’d really like to watch it.

Until next time,

r