It’s been a very long off-season, oh great and wonderful college football fans, but the season is finally here! There are just a handful of games, but there are games. We kickoff with a most definitely neutral site as Florida St and Georgia Tech game in Dublin, Ireland with noon (all times Eastern) start. The games are then spread out with a couple in the afternoon and a few in the evening before we culminate with a Hawaii home game when the clock starts at midnight.
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In the GCR, every Division I team from Alabama to Youngstown St, from Abilene Christian to Wisconsin, are all tied for 1st (or last if you are a pessimist). The point is every team has to earn its ranking, good or bad. I have no pre-season rankings or assumptions other than that, as a rule, the Core 4 (ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC, and Notre Dame) are different than the Group of 5 (American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac (1)2, Sun Belt and remaining Independents) which are different than the FCS (Big Sky, Big South/Ohio Valley, Colonial, Ivy, MEAC, Missouri Valley, Northeast, Patriot, Pioneer, Southern, Southland, SWAC, UAC, and the FCS Independents). These differences impact Strength of Schedule (SOS) more than performance, however, there is a discount for playing down a level or two and a bonus for playing up a level or two, especially when a lower league team beats a higher league team.
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In general and in varying ways either in the performance score or the SOS score or both, the GCR looks at the following: where the game was played, how good (or bad) the opponent is (back to this verb in a second), league (as described above), margin of victory (diminishing returns to avoid credit to running up the score), the opponent’s SOS and opponent’s opponent’s SOS, and result of game (win/loss). I used the verb “is” because the GCR plays all games that have played at the same time. At the end of the season, there is no difference in “timing” week 0 or the last game of the season. They all happen simultaneously. It bothers me when a team beats an AP top 25 team, who ends up 4-8, early in the season only to be hyped as beating the #18 Overrated University all season long. In the GCR if a team beats a 3-0 team they get credit for that win (who is now a 3-1 team) as a 3-1 team at the time. But if that team ends up 3-9, the performance and SOS scores are adjusted as part of the formula each game to show that. It was a 3-9 team all season long regardless of what they looked like at the time. Just to be clear, future games have no impact at all on the rankings. If a team has 3 games remaining with 3 undefeated teams, those games do not count (other than in opponent’s opponent’s SOS calculations) in their SOS until the games are played. This means that there could be fluctuations to both performance and SOS scores throughout the season fully testing the worth of each team.
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I hope that made sense.
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In the very brief table below, we see the games of this weekend. I won’t use this table after this week but it’s the best way to show what’s on tap tomorrow. I hope you are excited as I am. Thank you for reading and especially for sharing. Let the games begin, G
| Time | Team | Team | Location | Vegas |
| 12:00 | Florida St (ACC) | Georgia Tech (ACC) | Dublin, Ire | FSU-10.5 |
| 3:30 | Tarleton (UAC) | McNeese (Southland) | at Tarleton | NL |
| 4:00 | New Mexico (Mountain West – Group of 5) | Montana St (Big Sky – FCS) | at New Mexico | MTST-14.0 |
| 7:00 | N Alabama (UAC) | SEMO (BSOV) | Montgome | NL |
| 7:30 | Norfolk St (MEAC) | Florida A&M (SWAC) | Atlanta | NL |
| 8:00 | Nevada (Mountain West – Group of 5) | SMU (ACC – Core 4) | at Nevada | SMU-27.0 |
| Midnight | Hawaii (Mountain West – Group of 5) | Delaware St (MEAC – FCS) | at Hawaii | HAW-40.5 |
