2017 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 1

Officially, the college football season is underway thanks to Week 1 Creep. Five games were played on Saturday, and for many of these teams, they'll play their second game this coming weekend as part of Week 1 because I don't know.

Pretty much everyone else is beginning sometime between Thursday and Monday, and this post will measure the schedule strength as far as non-conference games are concerned.

Each week I will take a look at the schedule, pick out the non-conference games, and assign the involved teams a score ranging between -1 and 3. Most weeks, because a majority of team schedules are built around conference games, a team's score will be zero. For the other three or four weeks of non-conference games, this is where these measurements come into play. You can view a full primer on how the scoring system works back in my season preview post.

These scores are then averaged out across full conferences, and those averages get posted below. Each team and conference will get an aggregate score at the end of the season, but week by week I'll update the numbers for each team. At the start, some of the Power Five conferences will be towards the top, but they'll shrink towards the bottom over the next couple weeks. This is partially based on how the formula works (the Group of Five conference teams tend to travel to face Power Five opponents in non-conference, which boosts their scores more than the Power Five teams do for hosting these games).

Without further ado, here are the week's rankings, with average scores in parentheses. Writeups for each conference explaining how they arrived at those scores are included.

1. MAC (1.67). The MAC may end up leading the nation in this category the rest of the way after this strong showing, by my count the second-highest Week 1 start in the history of the Death to the BCS Playoffs (the Sun Belt in 2015 started off at 1.91). Toldeo and Ohio messed it up a bit with FCS games, but otherwise it's a tough slate. Eastern Michigan hosts Charlotte for one point, Miami (Ohio) visits Marshall for two, Northern Illinois hosts Boston College for two, and everyone else is on the road against a Power Five opponent, worth three points apiece. Major props.
2. Sun Belt (1.33). Partially a function of geography, the Sun Belt usually starts pretty well as well. This year New Mexico State, Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, South Alabama, and Arkansas State all open at Power Five opposition. Louisiana Monroe opens at Memphis and Troy is at Boise State for two points apiece, and then the bottom falls out. Coastal Carolina gets UMass for its first FBS game and one point, while Georgia State, Idaho, Louisiana, and Texas State all lose a point for FCS games.
3. Big Ten (1.21). This may be one of the final seasons the Big Ten opens this strong, as there are no FCS games on the table this week. The lowest scores are zero to Ohio State and Indiana, who open conference play right away, which is weird. Otherwise, it's a lot of one's and two's. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Penn State, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern, and Nebraska all host Group of Five teams, Rutgers gets two points for a home game against Washington, while Maryland, Michigan, and Purdue are all part of neutral site games. Maryland is getting three points for a visit to Texas.
4. SEC (1.14). Last year's leader after Week 1 takes a little bit of a hit, but the conference is no slouch this year in Week 1. Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi State all get their cupcakes out of the way right away, while Georgia, Auburn, Ole Miss offset that with Group of Five home games and LSU gets a point for a neutral site game with BYU. Kentucky and Vanderbilt play Group of Five road games, and then South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee all get two points for their neutral site games. Texas A&M gets three points for visiting UCLA.
5. Mountain West (0.83). As I was entering these, I thought the MAC's dominance and maybe the old Sun Belt record was in trouble. Then I ran into the string of Air Force, San Jose State, New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV, Fresno State, and Hawaii all hosting FCS games this weekend. San Jose State and Hawaii get one point for the week, however, thanks to their "Week Zero" games this past Saturday. Utah State, Wyoming, and Nevada all visit Big Ten foes for three points apiece and Boise State gets one for a Sun Belt home game. Colorado State has a technically impossible score of four for the week, but that's based off a "Week Zero" game at home against Oregon State, followed by a neutral site game against Colorado this weekend.
6. Conference USA (0.79). It's a solid start here despite UAB (welcome back!), Old Dominion, North Texas, Louisiana Tech, and Western Kentucky all playing down a level. Florida Atlantic, Marshall, and UT San Antonio each get a point for Group of Five home games, Rice got two points for its "Week Zero" game against Stanford in Sydney, while Florida International and Charlotte got two points for Group of Five road games. Southern Mississippi and Middle Tennessee get huge boosts though from visits by Kentucky and Vanderbilt, respectively. UTEP gets three points for its visit to Oklahoma.
7. Pac 12 (0.75). It's not a bad week for the Pac 12. Utah, Oregon State, Oregon, Washington State, and Arizona have the only FCS games, though Oregon State more than offsets that after having traveled to Colorado State this past weekend. Arizona State and USC each get a point for hosting Group of Five teams, UCLA gets two for hosting Texas A&M, while Washington and Cal pick up three points apiece for heading off to face Power Five teams.
8. ACC (0.64). Most of the points this week come from the handful of neutral site games. NC State, Louisville, Florida State, Virginia Tech, and Georgia Tech all get two points for these contests. Boston College matches their scores for the week thanks to their heading to DeKalb to take on Northern Illinois, while North Carolina hosts Cal for two points of their own. Going down in the numbers, Clemson gets a point for hosting Kent State, and then Wake Forest, Syracuse, Miami, Pittsburgh, Virginia (I won't talk about the ESPN debacle more than I already have), and Duke all start the season at -1 thanks to FCS games, but this early in the year, it's fine.
9. American Athletic (0.58). One "Week Zero" game ended up here with South Florida playing San Jose State over the weekend, which they got two points for since it was a road game. Their score for the week drops to a single point because they host an FCS team. Cincinnati, Connecticut, East Carolina, SMU, and Tulane are also getting their cupcake games out of the way right away, but will start at -1 instead of 1 like USF. They make up for some of this with UCF hosting Florida International and Memphis hosting Louisiana Monroe for a point apiece. Navy, Temple, and Houston each get two points for visiting Florida Atlantic, Notre Dame, and Texas-San Antonio, respectively. Tulsa gets off to the best start in this metric though thanks to their visit to Oklahoma State.
10. Big 12 (0.00). It's unusual for a conference to average this low a score after one week, but an FCS-heavy schedule will do that. Texas Tech, Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and TCU all get their one point loss out of the way right away on Saturday. These losses are offset by a point apiece from Oklahoma State and Oklahoma, who host Tulsa and UTEP, respectively, while Texas gets two points for hosting Maryland and West Virginia gets two for its neutral site game with Virginia Tech.

To see the updated spreadsheet, click here.

The above spreadsheet features the aggregate scores for every school in the FBS and the conference averages. You'll note that I didn't include the aggregate for the independents because, by nature, every game is a non-conference game. If they were a conference, they would rank fifth this week before eventually running away with the title.

There will be a little bit of shifting as the season goes on, but the top and bottom will most likely remain the same; the Big 12, by virtue of its nine game conference slate, means only three non-conference games which means they'll end up with the lowest score. The SEC will go from fourth to closer to the bottom because of Nick Saban is a Coward Week, and in general, the Group of Five will trend upwards while the Power Five trend downwards.

This is it for college football for the week; I don't do a Playoff Points post on the Monday after Week 1 because everyone will have zero points, except maybe for the "Week Zero" teams, but it's not worth it to do it just for them. The first of those posts will come after Week 2. Next Tuesday, I will have the Week 2 NCSS rankings out.