Projecting the best records for the top college football conferences
USA TODAY Sports’ Paul Myerberg breaks down who he thinks will win the in each of the Power 4 conferences and the Group of Five.
Sports Seriously
Conference championships aren’t won or lost in Week 0. The games still count the same, though.
No. 21 Iowa State’s 24-21 win against No. 20 Kansas State in Ireland was the headliner of a five-game Week 0 slate that served as the amuse-bouche to the main course of the regular season, set to begin in earnest on Thursday.
There just aren’t enough data points to form any big-picture takeaway: Kansas State could be really good, which means Iowa State might be terrific; both teams could be pretty average; both teams might be pretty good, which seems like the most likely scenario.
Thinking down the line, though, you can see how the Cyclones’ win ends up carrying serious weight as a tiebreaker in a Big 12 that once again looks anything but predictable. Honestly, the Wildcats didn’t have to go all the way to Dublin to lose Farmageddon – they’d been doing that just fine stateside for the past seven years.
That’s one reason why the season-opening loss feels familiar for Kansas State. A year ago, the Wildcats opened the year as the league’s co-favorites alongside Utah but dropped four games, three in November. While the Big 12 abolished the preseason poll after Arizona State’s worst-to-first finish in 2024, KSU was by consensus seen as one of the favorites for the conference crown and bid to the College Football Playoff.
The good news is there’s three months to go. Maybe Kansas State’s really, really good and was undone by two turnovers, too many penalties and an inability to get one key stop late in the fourth quarter. Maybe Iowa State’s the best team in the Bowl Subdivision. Who knows?
There’s no…
Source link : https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2025/08/23/college-football-winners-losers-week-0/85803442007/
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Publish date : 2025-08-24 03:31:00
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