2021 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 1

With the NCAA football season beginning with a "Week Zero" starting on Saturday the 28th, it's time to get the posting back into more regularity. There are a handful of games being played that day, but we're going to wrap those games into Week 1 for the sake of not breaking things horribly.

It's been a couple of years since I ran this weekly piece leading up to the Death to the BCS Playoffs, and I figure it's time to get back into the swing of it. I mentioned in my season intro that these rankings are somewhat of a secondary feature; their primary role is my way of making sure who is/isn't playing too many FCS teams, but it's also a nice additional metric to see the way teams are scheduling things.

So in this feature, I rank the conferences based on their average scores cumulatively through the season, though obviously this only factors in one, maybe two games for those who played in Week Zero. Independents are considered their own conference for the purpose of this metric, though they don't get ranked in this feature as every game for those teams is a non-conference game and that skews the standings.

So without further ado, here's how Week 1 shakes out.

1. MAC (1.50). MACtion leads the way despite four teams (Ball State, Buffalo, Eastern Michigan, Toledo) hosting FCS schools. Helps when literally half the conference is on the road against Power Five opponents.
2. Conference USA (1.21). Despite Florida International, Middle Tennessee, Western Kentucky, North Texas, UAB (at a neutral site, interestingly enough), and UTEP all playing FCS opponents, enough of the rest of the league is off playing tough road games to get this league in at #2 in the initial ranking.
3. American Athletic (1.09). A strong showing among what's probably the best Group of Five league at the FBS level. Only Memphis, SMU, and Tulsa go down a level in the opening week, with South Florida and Temple more than negating that by hitting the road to play Power Five opposition, while Tulane gets Oklahoma at home.
4. SEC (1.07). Top showing among Power Five conferences, which isn't all that unusual for a college season. Three neutral site Power Five matchups (Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss), plus an LSU road game help buoy the league. Also helps that only South Carolina and Vanderbilt get their FCS games out the way early.
5. Mountain West (1.00). A majority of the conference (Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, Wyoming, Hawaii, San Jose State, UNLV) get their FCS game done within the first week, but this is largely offset by three teams having Week Zero games. This is why Fresno State logs an otherwise impossible score of 4 through a single week on the chart.
6. ACC (0.93). Boston College and Virginia are the only teams playing down a level in their openers, so you'd think this score would be higher, but a UNC-VT conference matchup drags the score down a bit as well. Most of the scoring comes from a few neutral site games, plus Duke and Syracuse opting to travel to Group of Five schools.
7. Pac-12 (0.75). UCLA gets off to a strong start here thanks to its Week Zero game against Hawaii, as does Oregon State with a Power Five road game. Washington, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah all drag the league down a bit with FCS games, however.
8. Big XII (0.70). We'll call it a tie. The dying Power Five league has four FCS games (Iowa State, Kansas, Oklahoma State, TCU), but the rest of the league does pretty well. The major shoutout goes to Oklahoma, who plays at Tulane in the opener.
9. Sun Belt (0.70). An identical score with only some slight variations from the other ten team league. The Belt has four FCS games on tap (Coastal Carolina, Georgia Southern, Troy, Arkansas State), offset by both Louisiana and Louisiana-Monroe off to play at Power Five schools.
10. Big Ten (0.43). This ranking is a little misleading; only Nebraska has an FCS opponent on the docket in the opening week, though that follows the season opener with Illinois. The reason the Big Ten scores so low is because there are five conference games in the opening week. The main scoring here comes from Power Five home games for Purdue and Maryland.

To view full spreadsheet, click here.

Ultimately what will likely end up happening as the season goes on, aside from the above writing getting significantly shorter once we hit conference play, is that the Group of Five teams will likely creep higher in the rankings. It's the nature of how non-conference scheduling seems to shake out; so many of the Power Five schools play seven or eight home games, with balance in conference and a home-heavy non-conference slate featuring mostly Group of Five and FCS teams. Nothing wrong with that; it's just the reality of college football.

Normally I'd follow up the weekend's action with a Playoff Point feature, but it doesn't make sense to do that after one week since almost everyone would have no points. That feature will likely wait until the aftermath of Week 2. So the next college football post will be the follow up to the NCSS rankings as we factor in Week 2!