Week 0 College Football Power Ratings and Projections for Every Game

Week 0 College Football Power Ratings:

Let’s all sit down at the college football table and enjoy some appetizers. Maybe we can consider them hors d’oeuvres, if you prefer. But, we have eight games and 16 teams taking the field in Week 0 and that is a glorious thing. Baseball is great and we had the World Cup to hold us over this summer, but football season has arrived and that’s awesome.

As usual, we head into the season doing a lot of guesswork. The betting markets have been molded into shape, at least in terms of season win totals and futures, even though most teams have undergone more modifications than the Kardashian family. The chaos of the transfer portal and coaching carousel is a hard thing to quantify and pin down, but it’s the nature of the beast and the challenge that we have all accepted.

This season, I did something very different with my power ratings. I surveyed six sources, some that I personally trust and some that serve as more of a market perspective, and got an assist from ChatGPT to recalculate those ratings to my normal range, which is about 40 to 95 at the start of the season, where my top team is somewhere in the low-to-mid 90s and my bottom team is around 40. I think AI does a terrible job with writing, but it seemed to do a pretty good job helping me with a lot of math that I didn’t want to do.

Those six sources? Our own Steve Makinen, the T Shoe Index of our own Tyler Shoemaker, frequent VSiN guest and my good buddy Brad Powers, Bill Connelly’s SP+, ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI), and TeamRankings. (As a side note, we’ll be getting more NFL Survivor coverage from our friends at TeamRankings/PoolGenius this season!)

Why did I decide to do what I did? The wisdom of crowds is a much more effective way to put a value on these teams than trying to do my own research and slapping a value on the position groups to ultimately get to a power rating. I will still make my own adjustments week to week, which is the “art” part, and I relied on those sources to help me with the “science” part.

I also think it’s a really good mix. Brad’s somebody who watches every spring game that he can find and he’s super plugged in. Steve and Tyler approach it more from a quant standpoint, same thing with Connelly and FPI. I think TeamRankings is a good gauge for the market as a whole since their numbers are publicly available.

I did make a few adjustments based on my thoughts from all the research I did for our 2026 College Football Betting Guide. I just wanted to have a good foundation to begin with and then build from there. How I came to my home-field advantage numbers is in the betting guide, but I’ll be posting that article to the website this week.

Lastly, before I list my 1 through 138 (hello Sac State and North Dakota State!), the function of these power ratings is to try and get some good line equity early in the week. It’s much harder to do that in Week 0 and Week 1 because these lines have been out forever. Generally speaking, Sunday-Tuesday, I’ll rely on my power ratings to give me a good number on a game and bet into the market accordingly. By Wednesday, my power ratings are less of a factor and the more qualitative aspects of the handicap come into play, things like weather, the schedule, the stylistic matchup, etc.

But, as always, I’ll be sharing my power ratings with all of you each week of the season, typically early Sunday afternoon. These updates will include my lines for every game of the week as well, plus some notes on the games that have bigger discrepancies that I am either betting or strongly considering.

Week 0 College Football Power Ratings

Rank	Team	PR	HFA
1	Ohio State	93	3.5
2	Notre Dame	92.5	3.5
3	Oregon	92	3.5
4	Indiana	90.5	3.5
5	Georgia	90.5	2.5
6	Texas	90.5	3.5
7	Miami (Florida)	87.5	3
8	Texas Tech	86.5	3.5
9	Texas A&M	85.5	2
10	Alabama	84.5	3.5
11	LSU	84.5	3
12	Oklahoma	84	3
13	Mississippi	83.5	3.5
14	USC	83.5	3
15	Michigan	83	2.5
16	Tennessee	81	2.5
17	Penn State	80.5	2.5
18	Florida	80	2
19	BYU	79.5	3.5
20	Washington	79	3.5
21	Missouri	78.5	3.5
22	Iowa	78	3.5
23	SMU	78	3.5
24	South Carolina	78	2.5
25	Auburn	77.5	2
26	Clemson	77.5	2.5
27	Utah	77	2.5
28	Louisville	76.5	3.5
29	Vanderbilt	75	2.5
30	Arizona	74.5	3
31	Houston	74.5	2
32	Illinois	74	2.5
33	Florida State	74	2.5
34	Kansas State	74	3
35	Virginia Tech	74	2
36	Pittsburgh	73.5	2.5
37	TCU	73.5	2.5
38	Virginia	73.5	2
39	Nebraska	73.5	2
40	Arizona State	72	2
41	Georgia Tech	71.5	2
42	Kentucky	71.5	2
43	Wisconsin	71.5	2
44	Boise State	71.5	3.5
45	Minnesota	71	2.5
46	UCLA	71	1.5
47	Arkansas	70.5	1.5
48	Mississippi State	70.5	2
49	North Carolina State	70.5	2.5
50	Baylor	70.5	1.5
51	Oklahoma State	70.5	2
52	Kansas	69.5	2.5
53	Northwestern	69.5	1.5
54	Duke	69	2.5
55	Wake Forest	69	2
56	Cincinnati	68.5	1.5
57	Maryland	68.5	2
58	California	68.5	2
59	West Virginia	68	2
60	UCF	68	2
61	Colorado	67	2.5
62	Rutgers	66.5	2
63	UNLV	66.5	2.5
64	North Carolina	66	2
65	Navy	66	2.5
66	Michigan State	66	1.5
67	Iowa State	65.5	2.5
68	San Diego State	65.5	2
69	Syracuse	65.5	2.5
70	Fresno State	65	2
71	UTSA	65	3.5
72	James Madison	64.5	3.5
73	Tulane	64.5	2.5
74	South Florida	64.5	3
75	Memphis	64	2.5
76	New Mexico	64	2
77	Purdue	64	1
78	East Carolina	63.5	2
79	Stanford	63.5	1.5
80	Army	63	2.5
81	North Dakota State	62	3.5
82	Texas State	62	2
83	Boston College	62	2
84	Old Dominion	61.5	1.5
85	Hawai’i	61.5	3
86	Washington State	61.5	3
87	Air Force	60.5	2
88	Western Michigan	60	3.5
89	Utah State	59.5	3
90	Western Kentucky	59.5	3
91	Miami (Ohio)	59	3.5
92	Liberty	59	2.5
93	Toledo	58.5	3.5
94	Troy	58.5	3
95	Marshall	58.5	3.5
96	North Texas	57.5	2.5
97	Florida Atlantic	57.5	1.5
98	Jacksonville State	57.5	3.5
99	Temple	57	2
100	Louisiana-Lafayette	57	2
101	Tulsa	56.5	1
102	Arkansas State	56.5	2.5
103	Oregon State	56.5	3.5
104	Louisiana Tech	56.5	2
105	Georgia Southern	56	3.5
106	Kennesaw State	55.5	2.5
107	Delaware	55.5	1
108	Connecticut	55	3
109	Ohio	55	3.5
110	Colorado State	55	2
111	Wyoming	54.5	2
112	Appalachian State	54.5	2
113	South Alabama	54	2
114	Central Michigan	54	3
115	Florida International	53	2
116	Nevada	52.5	1
117	Coastal Carolina	52.5	2
118	Buffalo	52	2
119	San Jose State	51.5	2.5
120	Rice	51.5	3
121	Eastern Michigan	51.5	2.5
122	Bowling Green	50.5	2
123	Missouri State	50	2
124	New Mexico State	50	2.5
125	Southern Mississippi	49.5	2
126	UAB	49.5	2.5
127	Akron	48.5	2
128	Middle Tennessee	48.5	1.5
129	Sacramento State	48	2
130	Georgia State	48	1
131	Northern Illinois	47.5	1.5
132	UTEP	47	1
133	Kent State	46.5	1
134	Louisiana-Monroe	46	2
135	Sam Houston State	44.5	2
136	Charlotte	44.5	1
137	Ball State	44	3
138	Massachusetts	40	1

This spot will be reserved for some notes and updates on my biggest power ratings movers on a weekly basis. Early in the season, I try to hold on to my priors and the research that I did heading into the season, but there could be some very sizable adjustments coming in Weeks 3-5.

My Week 0 College Football Lines

(note: games are ordered by rotation number)

Date	Away	Home	Line
8/29	North Carolina	TCU (N – Dublin)	-7.5
	New Mexico State	Florida State	-26.5
	Sacramento State	Eastern Michigan	-6
	Hawaii	Stanford	-3.5
	San Jose State	USC	-35
	Memphis	UNLV	-5
	NC State	Virginia	-5
	Jacksonville State	North Dakota State	-8

Games to consider:

New Mexico State +31.5 (+26.5) at Florida State: I’m not an Ashton Daniels fan. In fact, I royally pissed off some Florida State fans on the College Football Betting Podcast episode about the ACC a couple of weeks ago. This is my biggest discrepancy of the week.

Sacramento State +9.5 (+6) at Eastern Michigan: I don’t think I’ll play this one because I have no idea what Sacramento State will look like, but this is a byproduct of how I am lower than the market on Eastern Michigan. They’re a fade team for me early in the season, just probably not here with the Hornets in their first FBS game a long way from home. There are 10s out there, including one at Circa at time of writing, and I’m intrigued by that. Maybe I’ll wait and see if a 10.5 or 11 shows up. I don’t think Sac State will get much love this week, so I can be patient.

We’ll fire up our regular weekly cadence on the College Football Betting Podcast next week, but I’ll be on every Monday to discuss some things about my power ratings, fire off some more hot takes so other fan bases can hate me, and give you an early look at my thoughts on the games, especially when we have weeknight action.

I’ll be posting this weekly Power Ratings update all season long, including my lines on the games. Keep it locked in right here at VSiN and bookmark our weekly College Football Hub to get all of our written content every week during CFB season.