The Touchdown Rundown Newsletter

I’d be lying if I said the first round of this year’s College Football Playoff was very compelling. Alabama-Oklahoma was fun because of how the Crimson Tide stormed back, and while I personally enjoyed Miami-Texas A&M, I know most people don’t like rock fights. But I also think the complaints around the Group of 5’s inclusion are rather shortsighted. The CFP has always had blowouts. Last year, it was Tennessee. In the four-team format, it was Oklahoma.

Bowl season is always a bittersweet time of year. Getting extra games between blue blood programs is always a welcome bonus, and of course, the expanded College Football Playoffs will provide (mostly) high-quality matchups. But with the arrival of Pop-Tarts-themed hijinks comes the end of the college football season. It’s been a wild ride, with lots of surprises and unexpected results.

It feels like a bit of a sleepier weekend in college football, but football never sleeps, and the weekends without marquee matchups often sport the best upsets. I’ll dive into LSU-Texas A&M, Vanderbilt-Missouri, and more… but first, the week that was. Here’s how the model did last week… Week 8 Record: Moneyline 43-17 (71.7%), Spread29-31 (48.3%) And that brings ZeLO’s total to… Season Record: Moneyline419-111 (79.6%), Spread 241-248 (49.3%) ZeLO currently trails FPI 422-107 to 419-111.

I don’t think a lot of people expected too much out of last weekend. We only had two top-25 matchups, and Alabama ended up pulling away from Vanderbilt in the second half. But Florida upset Texas, putting Steve Sarkisian’s Texas program in jeopardy of missing the CFP after only five games. The much crazier upset, however, was UCLA knocking off Penn State, thanks in part to a TD drive on its opening possession combined with a surprise onside kick.

I know I tend to start a fair bit of these weekly posts by talking about how last weekend was incredible. But. Last weekend was incredible. Not only did Penn State and Oregon go to double-OT while Alabama and Georgia traded haymakers, but Ole Miss knocked off LSU, Iowa put a scare into Indiana, and Tennessee needed overtime to survive Mississippi State. I genuinely feel like last weekend’s games pretty much delivered across the board, unless you were an Arkansas fan.

Welcome to the landing page for the TDRD’s Quad-Point Index, or QPI. QPI’s goal is to evaluate a given college football’s resume based on two criteria: where the game took place, and how good the opponent was. That’s it. QPI uses this chart to determine the “quad” a game falls into, and this means that games can fall into different quads for both teams. For example, last year, NIU would have been a Quad 4 opponent for Notre Dame, but Notre Dame would have been a Quad 1 opponent for NIU.

I try to avoid hyperbole when writing about college football, I really do. It’s a landscape filled with bad takes and overly dramatic reactions to every game. But this may be the biggest week of the season. The headliners are Oregon-Penn State, Alabama-Georgia, and LSU-Ole Miss. Oregon could prove they're just as good as last year, while Penn State could finally win “the big one”.

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If you’ve paid attention to college football at all in the last few weeks, you're well aware of the discourse surrounding the AP Poll. It’s something I talked about briefly here last week, but the discourse has continued into this week as No. 24 Notre Dame (0-2) remained in the top-25 but USF (2-1) fell out despite winning two top-25 contests and losing to No. 4 Miami.

Last weekend may not have had as many marquee games as Week 1, but I found it incredibly enjoyable. Kansas-Missouri delivered one of the most memorable games of the season to date, Florida was upset, Mateer looked good against Michigan, Baylor won in OT, and Iowa State beat Iowa in the annual rock fight. But this weekend sees the return of more marquee games, including ACC and SEC showdowns that could start to define both leagues’ championship game races.