The first college football games of 2026 occurred this past weekend.
This week really kicks things off across the country.
Here we look at fourteen games over five days, running from a Thursday kickoff in Atlanta to a Labor Day nightcap in Tallahassee. Three of them are inside a touchdown. Both of the tightest are after Saturday.
Win probabilities below come from ESPN’s Match-Up Predictor. Point spreads are DraftKings. Totals were from CBS Sports.
Our full season preview and initial Power Rankings can be found here.
Thursday, September 3
Colorado at Georgia Tech (8:00 PM, ESPN) — Georgia Tech is a 6.5-point home favorite, and ESPN gives them a 58.5% chance to win. Those two numbers do not agree. A 6.5-point favorite normally wins closer to seven times in ten. The model is shaving nearly ten points of probability off the market’s number, and it is doing so in the only Thursday game that isn’t a tune-up.
BSL has Georgia Tech outside the ACC’s top six. This is the first live test of that call, and it comes against a Big 12 opponent in the Yellow Jackets’ building. A comfortable Tech win doesn’t refute the position by itself — one September home game against a middling Big 12 team is not much evidence either way. But losing it would be the sort of result that makes the preseason ranking look correct for the wrong reason, and we’d rather be right for the right one.
The total is 50.5, which suggests the market expects this to be decided by whichever offense functions rather than by field position.
Friday, September 4
Miami at Stanford (9:00 PM, ESPN) — The Hurricanes are 24.5-point favorites with a 94.1% win probability. The interesting part is not whether Miami wins.
Miami finished 2025 with a +30 sack differential, best in FBS. That number is also the reason for caution. The Hurricanes lost 14,601 career snaps off both lines of scrimmage, and a pass rush that dominant is usually a function of the four guys doing the rushing rather than the scheme calling for it. Darian Mensah arrives from Duke to replace a quarterback who was drafted. Miami is BSL’s No. 7 team, a 46% favorite in the ACC, and 71% to reach the playoff. That’s a lot of confidence pointed at a roster that has to rebuild in the trenches.
Stanford is worth a moment. Tavita Pritchard won his head coaching debut 37-27 over Hawaii on August 29, closing on a 14-6 run over the final nine minutes after the Rainbow Warriors had cut it to 23-21. Michigan transfer Davis Warren threw for 252 yards in his first game action in roughly 20 months. It was one game against a Mountain West opponent, and the Cardinal have now had five straight losing seasons. But a program that has spent half a decade getting run off the field won its opener and then got a Friday night home date against a playoff contender. That is not nothing.
Fresno State at USC (9:00 PM, FOX) — USC is laying 23.5 with a 92% win probability, and this is the Trojans’ second game in six days.
The first one was instructive in both directions. Jayden Maiava went 25-of-29 for 286 yards and two touchdowns, added a rushing score, and USC led San Jose State 35-3 through three quarters. Trent Mosley had seven catches for 118 in his debut, 52 of it after the catch, plus a 41-yard punt return. Six of the ten Trojans who caught a pass were playing their first game at USC. That is the version of the roster reload Lincoln Riley was selling.
Then San Jose State scored 23 points in the fourth quarter against USC’s backups and the final read 42-26. Riley said afterward the way his starters played deserved to be a single-digit game. He is right, and the caveat is that the fourth quarter counts too. Gary Patterson’s first game as defensive coordinator was mostly sharp and then wasn’t.
USC also played without defensive tackle Jahkeem Stewart and receivers Tanook Hines and Terrell Anderson, all apparent injuries. Worth watching whether any of them are back Friday. BSL has the Trojans 15th nationally with a 33% playoff chance and 7% in the Big Ten, which is a hedge on exactly this question.
Saturday, September 5
Liberty at James Madison (12:00 PM, ESPNU) — James Madison is a 6.5-point favorite at 71.9%. The Dukes reached the 2025 playoff through the old access loophole and then lost Bob Chesney to UCLA. This is the first Saturday of finding out what’s left.
The broader Group of Six problem applies here. Only 23 of 76 returning all-conference players from the five non-power leagues stayed at the same school this offseason. Sustaining anything at that level now requires re-recruiting your own roster every winter, and JMU had to do it while also replacing the coach who built the thing.
Oregon State at Houston (12:00 PM, ESPN) — Houston is favored by 18.5, down from 20.5 earlier in the week, with a 91.3% win probability.
This is BSL’s sharpest published disagreement of the preseason. Phil Steele has Houston fourth in the Big 12. BSL has them seventh. The case for the lower ranking is not that the Cougars were bad. It’s that they were 6-1 in one-possession games, 4-1 in games decided by a field goal or less, won five times after trailing or being tied in the fourth quarter, and enjoyed the largest positive penalty margin in the country at 38 fewer than their opponents. Over four seasons Houston has ten wins by a field goal or less, most in the nation.
Nearly every indicator there points toward regression. None of them guarantee it. Willie Fritz has now built a four-year pattern of winning close games, and at some point a pattern that long stops being described as luck and starts being described as a team. We are not there yet, but the argument gets harder to make each year it repeats.
Oregon State is in the relaunched Pac-12 and opens on the road against a ranked opponent. BSL has the Beavers last in the new league’s title odds at 3%.
Towson at Navy (3:30 PM, CBSSN) — Navy is a 30.5-point favorite at 96.6%. Local interest for our purposes. Towson is FCS, Navy is a legitimate AAC contender, and the number reflects both facts.
Boise State at Oregon (3:30 PM, CBS) — The Ducks lay 24.5 with a 94.8% win probability, and that number deserves attention.
BSL put Boise State in the unpublished bracket as the Group of Six representative and made them a 34% favorite in the new Pac-12, the shortest price in the league. The market has them as a three-and-a-half touchdown underdog in Eugene. Both things can be true — Boise can be the best of the non-power teams and still get run out of Autzen — but there is recent history here worth remembering. In 2025 Boise came into the year as the presumptive G6 favorite, went to Tampa in Week 1, and lost to South Florida 34-7. The non-competitiveness of that loss shaped how the Broncos were viewed for months.
Four G5 teams have made the playoff. Their average losing margin is three touchdowns. Boise’s task Saturday is not to win. It’s to avoid handing the committee a data point.
Oregon is BSL’s second-ranked team with the top defensive line in the country and the fifth-best staff, and Dante Moore is second in the quarterback rankings. Drew Mehringer’s first game as offensive coordinator.
Baylor vs. Auburn (3:30 PM, ABC, Mercedes-Benz Stadium) — Note the venue. This is a neutral-site kickoff game in Atlanta, not a trip to Jordan-Hare. Auburn is a 7-point favorite at 72.9%, with the highest total on the board at 59.5.
Auburn is a BSL higher-than-consensus call. Alex Golesh arrives from South Florida, DJ Durkin runs the defense, and Byrum Brown follows Golesh over from USF to play quarterback. That’s a coordinator, a head coach, and a starting quarterback all learning a new building at once. The bet is that Golesh’s offense travels.
Baylor has a regression argument running the other direction. The Bears fumbled 14 times and lost 12 of them. Their opponents fumbled 8 times and recovered 6. An 18.2% recovery rate on their own fumbles was the worst in FBS. Fumble recovery is close to random over a full season, and Baylor was on the wrong end of it about as thoroughly as a team can be. That should even out. It doesn’t mean the Bears are good.
These two met in Waco last September and Auburn won 38-24 behind 308 rushing yards.
Clemson at LSU (7:30 PM, ABC) — LSU is favored by 10.5 at 75.3%. The model is a bit lower than the number implies, though not dramatically.
Same matchup as last year’s opener, reversed. LSU won 17-10 in Death Valley in 2025, holding Clemson to 32 rushing yards on 19 attempts. Now it’s Baton Rouge, and almost everything else is different. Lane Kiffin is in his first year at LSU with Blake Baker running the defense and Sam Leavitt in from Arizona State at quarterback. Clemson has a new defensive coordinator in Tom Allen and a new offensive coordinator in Chad Morris.
Clemson entered 2025 with real hype and finished with two losses in three weeks. They enter 2026 unranked. That is a fast fall for a program that was a preseason top-five team a year ago, and this is the game that either starts the correction or confirms it.
One thing to keep in view: LSU’s schedule. SP+ ranks it 19th-toughest in the country, FPI has it 11th. Both are national ranks, and both say the Tigers will not get many soft weeks. BSL published LSU at 42% to make the playoff with an unpublished revision down to 40% after the FPI data arrived. The revision looks defensible.
UCLA at California (10:30 PM, ESPN) — California is a 1.5-point home favorite at 57.9%. This line moved. Earlier in the week the number had UCLA favored by 1.5 on the road, so it has crossed the three-point key number in the wrong direction for the Bruins.
Two first-year head coaches. Bob Chesney comes to UCLA from James Madison. Tosh Lupoi takes over at Cal after running Oregon’s defense. BSL flagged Cal as the ACC dark horse in the preview, and a Week 1 win over a Big Ten opponent, however modest that Big Ten opponent may be, would be a real start on that argument.
Kickoff is 10:30 Eastern, which means most of the audience for the closest game on Saturday’s board will be asleep for it.
Sunday, September 6
Washington State at Washington (4:00 PM, NBC) — The Huskies lay 21.5 with an 87.9% win probability. That gap is smaller than it looks but real: a three-touchdown favorite usually grades out in the low 90s, and ESPN is shaving a few points off. Rivalry games get shaved. Sometimes correctly.
Washington State is a member of the relaunched Pac-12, which now runs a seven-game round robin plus a flex week in Week 13. The Apple Cup survived the realignment. BSL has Washington 19th nationally at 22% to make the playoff, and has Washington State sixth in the new Pac-12 at 10%.
Louisville at Ole Miss (7:30 PM, ABC) — Ole Miss is a 6.5-point favorite at 73.6%, and this is the most interesting game of the weekend for anyone tracking BSL’s published positions, because two of them collide in it.
Louisville is a higher-than-consensus call. The case is specific. Isaac Brown averaged 8.75 yards per carry, first nationally by more than a full yard over second place. His backup Keyjuan Brown was third at 7.33. Edge rusher Clev Lubin carries the highest returning edge grade in FBS since 2024, with 110 pressures and a 24% win rate that led all P4 edges. That is a defensible foundation for a team most people have outside the top 20.
Ole Miss is the counterweight. The Rebels are ninth in the polls, BSL had them tenth at 40% to reach the playoff, and Pete Golding takes over from Lane Kiffin after running LSU’s defense. Trinidad Chambliss won his eligibility case in court and starts, and he is third in BSL’s quarterback rankings.
A Louisville win in Oxford would be the single most useful early result for the preview’s credibility. A comfortable Ole Miss win would put the Louisville call under real pressure by Week 2.
Wisconsin at Notre Dame (7:30 PM, NBC) — Notre Dame lays 20.5 at 94.3%.
The Irish carry BSL’s highest playoff probability in the entire preview at 78%, ahead of Ohio State. The supporting numbers are strong. Notre Dame returns 72% of its snaps, the most in the country. Its explosive play differential last season was +7.5%, best in FBS. The offensive line allowed 12 sacks and the team averaged 5.7 yards per carry, and that line is ranked first in BSL’s unit rankings with Joe Rudolph coaching it. Cornerback Leonard Moore has allowed 19 completions for a first down in his career, none of them while trailing, and four in his last eleven games.
The number to watch is health rather than performance. Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa was on modified activity in early August coming off a November ACL tear, and Marcus Freeman was hopeful he’d be available for the opener. That status is unconfirmed as of publication and worth checking before kickoff.
Notre Dame has no conference championship to fall back on. Every September result is a playoff résumé item whether it looks like one or not.
Monday, September 7
SMU at Florida State (7:30 PM, ESPN) — SMU is a 3-point road favorite. ESPN gives them a 51.5% chance to win. That is the widest model-versus-market gap on the entire board, and it closes the weekend.
A three-point road favorite normally projects somewhere in the high 50s. ESPN has this as a coin flip. Either the model sees something in Florida State that the market doesn’t, or it is discounting SMU’s road number. Worth flagging honestly: we do not know which, and it is a hunch rather than a finding to say the model is picking up on the Seminoles’ home environment.
Florida State beat New Mexico State 34-17 on August 29. That tells us the Seminoles took care of an FCS-adjacent opponent and not much else.
The relevant BSL context is that Florida State does not appear anywhere in the published ACC title odds. Miami 46, SMU 13, Louisville 13, Clemson 11, Virginia Tech 6, Pitt 4, field 7. The Seminoles are inside that 7% field. SMU sits third at 13% and is ranked 19th nationally. If FSU wins this game at home on Labor Day night, that field number gets revisited in Week 2, and we’ll say so.
What Week 0 Already Told Us
Three results from August 29 carry forward.
Virginia 34, NC State 8. Beau Pribula went 9-of-11 for 155 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 110 more on 15 carries, the first Virginia quarterback to hit 100 rushing yards in a game since Brennan Armstrong in 2022. The Cavaliers ran it 57 times for 258 yards, converted all four of their fourth downs, and put together a 23-play, 75-yard drive that consumed 12:15. NC State managed 168 total yards at 3.3 per play.
BSL has Virginia on the record as a lower-than-consensus team. That call looks worse than it did a week ago. The reasoning behind it was partly that Virginia returns 48,313 career snaps, the most in FBS, which is a roster built on accumulated age rather than accumulated talent. Saturday suggested the accumulated age is playing well. We’ll keep the position and keep testing it.
North Carolina 15, TCU 10 in Dublin. Billy Edwards Jr. threw for 232 yards with no touchdown passes, North Carolina lost two fumbles, and the Tar Heels won anyway because TCU took 11 penalties for 100 yards and went 1-for-5 on fourth down. TCU scored 10 in the first quarter and nothing after.
USC 42, San Jose State 26. Covered above.
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Chris Stoner founded Baltimore Sports and Life in 2009. He has appeared as a radio guest with 1090 WBAL, 105.7 The Fan, CBS 1300, Q1370, WOYK 1350, WKAV 1400, and WNST 1570. He has also been interviewed by The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Business Journal, and PressBox (TV). As Owner, his responsibilities include serving as the Managing Editor, Publicist, & Sales Director.