Week 2 of the College Football season was capped off with a fantastic finish in Austin last night, as the Texas Longhorns stormed back in the 4th Quarter to beat Ohio State.

Quick Hits

Our Week 2 picks went 5-3 straight up, 3-5 against the number and 6-2 on totals. Alabama was the only clean sweep of the week, and it was the one we flagged as the pick that hurts. Texas hit the under by half a point on a game that needed a 21-point fourth quarter to get there.

The three straight-up misses shared a shape. Each was a game where our number sat above the market on a favorite, and two of those favorites lost outright. Two weeks in we are 6-6 straight up and 5-6-1 against the number.

Oregon was a L for us, and everyone else. We had the Ducks fourth in the power rankings and gave them a 71 percent chance of reaching the playoff, the fifth-highest figure overall. The stated reason for both was coordinator continuity – two elite units handed to two first-year play-callers, which the preview called the most interesting continuity test of 2026. Oregon then lost outright in Stillwater as a 22.5-point favorite, a week after needing a comeback to beat Boise State at home by seven. Oklahoma State had lost 21 straight to FBS opponents. Dan Lanning had not lost to an unranked team since 2021.

Oklahoma State; Who Are You? The Cowboys were the fifth of our five teams-we-like-better than most to start the year, and then they lost to Tulsa in their opener. And now they follow that-up with a win vs. Oregon.  Somewhere between those extremes lies what Oklahoma State actually is.

Michigan Moves Back Up.  This shouldn’t have been the surprise it was. After the Western Michigan game, we should have expected the Wolverines to be motivated to show something vs. the Sooners. Beating Oklahoma is a nice win for Michigan, that should help their resume all year.

We faded Minnesota in the preview and then picked them anyway. The preseason case was the plus-24 points-off-turnovers margin and a scoring profile closer to a four-win team than an eight-win one. Minnesota lost 38-13 at home to Mississippi State. The read was right and the pick, labeled a hunch, ignored it. That is the worst thing we did last week and it was entirely self-inflicted.

Alabama is pushing us toward Phil Steele. We had the Tide 15th nationally against his 7th, and wrote that if Keelon Russell hit, Steele is right and we look silly by October. Alabama trailed Kentucky 17-13 at the half and outscored them 32-0 after it. Russell’s athleticism jumps off the screen. Now in Year 3 of his tenure at Alabama, Kalen DeBoer’s squad is pointing up.

 

Power Rankings

#	Team	Record	Change
1	Texas	2-0	Up 5
2	Ohio State	1-1	Down 1
3	Notre Dame	2-0	Down 1
4	Indiana	2-0	Down 1
5	Georgia	2-0	—
6	Miami	2-0	Up 1
7	LSU	2-0	Up 1
8	Alabama	2-0	Up 7
9	Texas A&M	2-0	Up 1
10	Ole Miss	2-0	Up 1
11	Texas Tech	2-0	Down 2
12	BYU	2-0	Up 2
13	USC	3-0	—
14	Michigan	2-0	Up 6
15	Oregon	1-1	Down 11
16	Penn State	2-0	—
17	Tennessee	2-0	—
18	Oklahoma	1-1	Down 6
19	Iowa	2-0	—
20	Utah	2-0	New

 

Texas moves up five to first. The Longhorns own the only win over a top-five team in the country, and they got it from 20 points down with 21 unanswered in the fourth quarter. A one-point home win does not by itself establish who is better on a neutral field. But we picked Texas against our own No. 1 last week, and the point of being right is acting on it.

Ohio State drops one.  You could make the argument of dropping OSU behind Notre Dame.  Surrendering a 20 point lead leaves a bad taste. Still, it’s a 1 point loss to a Top 5 team on the road. Ohio State has eight new defensive starters this year. Lots of talk entering the year about how OSU needs to grow during the season. We will see what they take from this experience.

Oregon drops eleven, the largest move we have made. Two first-year coordinators inherited the SP+ No. 1 offense and No. 2 defense, and two games in the Ducks have a seven-point home win over an unranked team and a loss to a team that had not beaten an FBS opponent in 21 tries. Portland State on Friday will tell us nothing.  After that is is a trip to USC which will be highly significant for both programs.

Alabama moves up seven. Forty-five points on the road in an SEC opener. The preview’s case against Alabama was the running game and a profile that went 8-4 against FPI top-40 teams while outscoring them by two points total. Neither Kentucky nor Louisiana-Monroe tests that. But the defense is real and the schedule misses Texas and Ole Miss, which was always Steele’s argument.

Michigan up six and Oklahoma down six, from the same sixty minutes. Michigan’s win was built on the thing Kyle Whittingham was hired to build, holding a top-15 offense to ten points. Bryce Underwood isn’t a finished product, but he’s electric and competitive. The Wolverines were 20th on a defensive argument and the defense showed up. Oklahoma has the fourth-hardest schedule in America and just scored ten points on the easiest ranked opponent it will see for a month. Brent Venables has alternated six-win and ten-win regular seasons for four straight years.

Texas Tech drops two. Winning at Oregon State by eleven, a week after a pedestrian result against Abilene Christian, is not what the best yards-per-play defense of the playoff era looked like. Tommy Castellanos has been added to the QB room with Will Hammond. Important Big 12 game with Houston this Friday.

BYU moves up two. Provo against Arizona was one of the three toss-ups we said would decide their season, and the Cougars erased a halftime deficit to win it. They do not play Texas Tech or Houston.

Utah enters at 20 and Washington leaves. We had Utah outside our top 20 entirely. They beat up Arkansas 43-7 and join the ranking. Washington needed 16-10 against a Utah State team that lost to FCS Idaho State the week before.

Notre Dame, Indiana, Miami, LSU, Texas A&M and Ole Miss each shift a spot as a consequence of the moves above rather than on their own merits.

The outside check

CBS’s projection of the post-Week 2 poll has Texas first, which matches us, and Oregon 21st, which does not. We have the Ducks six spots higher. ESPN’s selection-committee projection leaves Oregon out of the twelve entirely. That was a costly loss for the Ducks yesterday, and puts them in a precarious position going forward.

The sharper disagreement is Texas Tech. We have them eleventh and as the Big 12 favorite. ESPN projects BYU as the league’s champion and leaves Texas Tech out of the bracket.

The Playoff Field

Team	Preseason	Now	Change
Notre Dame	78	79	Up 1
Miami	71	76	Up 5
Texas	62	72	Up 10
Indiana	72	72	—
Georgia	69	71	Up 2
Ohio State	76	71	Down 5
Texas Tech	64	58	Down 6
Alabama	40	52	Up 12
Oregon	74	50	Down 24
BYU	40	48	Up 8
Texas A&M	46	48	Up 2
LSU	42	46	Up 4
USC	33	44	Up 11
Ole Miss	40	42	Up 2
Michigan	29	38	Up 9
Oklahoma	40	26	Down 14
Penn State	26	24	Down 2
Tennessee	22	22	—
Iowa	20	20	—
Utah	—	20	New
Group of Six	1.00	1.05	Up 0.05
The field	1.34	1.16	Down 0.18

 

The twenty named teams, the Group of Six bid and the field still sum to twelve. Boise State’s bid strengthens on the head-to-head win over Memphis.

Conference Projections

ACC. Miami 51 (up 2), SMU 13 (down 1), Louisville 12 (down 1), Virginia 7 (new), Clemson 6 (down 1), Virginia Tech 5 (down 1), Pitt 3 (down 1), field 3. Virginia enters the table for the first time at 2-0 and ranked, Miami gains because nobody behind them did anything, not because 77 points against Florida A&M told us anything.

SEC. Georgia 24 (down 1), Texas 21 (up 4), LSU 14, Alabama 13 (up 4), Texas A&M 12, Ole Miss 8, Oklahoma 4 (down 4), field 4. Texas closes on Georgia without passing them.

Big Ten. Ohio State 32 (up 1), Indiana 27 (up 4), Oregon 15 (down 9), USC 12 (up 3), Michigan 7 (up 4), Penn State 4, field 3.

Big 12. Texas Tech 36 (down 6), BYU 26 (up 4), Utah 13 (up 4), Houston 8 (new), Kansas State 5 (down 2), Arizona 4 (down 4), TCU 3 (down 1), Oklahoma State 3 (new), field 2. This is the league where our numbers moved most and where we are least comfortable.

Pac-12. Boise State 44 (up 6), San Diego State 14 (down 1), Texas State 12 (down 1), Fresno State 11 (down 3), Washington State 8 (down 2), Utah State 5 (down 1), Oregon State 4 (up 1), Colorado State 2 (up 1).  SP+ places Fresno outside the top 90, so they drop here, with Boise the beneficiary.

Conference Overviews

Two weeks in, we rank the Conferences as the SEC, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the ACC and the Pac-12. Again, the SP+ figures below come from its September 8th run and do not include Saturday.

1. The SEC. SP+ put eleven of its top 25 in the league and six of its top eleven, and then Texas went out and beat the No. 1 team in the country, which is the best win anybody owns. Behind that sits a middle class — Florida, South Carolina, Missouri, Vanderbilt, Auburn — that most conferences would run as a top tier. What the league still does not have is a consensus best team, which is what we wrote in August and what this weekend will not settle either. LSU at Ole Miss is Lane Kiffin walking back into Oxford eight months after leaving, on the first road trip of his LSU tenure. Florida at Auburn puts two teams we were higher on than the market against each other, which guarantees one read gets graded and the other gets nothing.
2. The Big Ten, which keeps the spot on Ohio State and Indiana rather than on anything that happened Saturday. Oregon, Ohio State, Minnesota, Illinois, Purdue and Rutgers all lost, four of them to the ACC or SEC, and that is the worst day any league had. The preview’s argument was that the Big Ten had the three best teams in America and seven of the worst. Oregon’s loss only makes you less confident in the overall strength at the top of the conference .The two teams that came out looking better were Michigan, and Indiana, which has not played anybody. A conference with three straight national titles is going to spend September being told its top is thinner than advertised.
3. The Big 12 is the league that changed most and the one we understand least. Five teams in the SP+ top 25, a 43-7 win over Arkansas, and the loudest single result of the weekend in Stillwater. The trouble is that the loudest result came from a team we would have placed fourteenth in this league in August, and the team we placed first has now looked ordinary twice. Texas Tech was pedestrian against Abilene Christian and got all it could handle at Oregon State. This is a deep conference without an apex.
4. The ACC. The league had the best week relative to expectation of anyone: Duke beat Illinois, Wake Forest beat Purdue in double overtime, Boston College beat Rutgers, Pitt handled UCF. Against that, SP+ had exactly two ACC teams in its top 25. On best team the ACC wins easily, with Miami fifth in SP+ and the best Big 12 team fourteenth. On depth the Big 12 wins and not by a little. We went with depth because the Big 12 also owns the better head-to-head result.
5. The Pac-12 is the best of the rest. Boise State beat an unbeaten Memphis team at home after trailing by fourteen, which is the most valuable non-power result of the young season. If those two emerge as their conference champions, the head-to-head should largely settle the Group of Six bid in December. The Broncos have both of their hardest non-conference games behind them.

The Week 3 Board

Game	Kickoff / TV	Spread	ESPN %	Total
Syracuse at Pittsburgh	Thu 7:30 ESPN	PITT -10.5	82.5%	53.5
No. 22 Houston at No. 12 Texas Tech	Fri 8:00 FOX	TTU -10	75.7%	n/a
Florida State at No. 10 Alabama	Sat 3:30 ABC	BAMA -17.5	88.9%	50.5
No. 15 SMU at No. 23 Louisville	Sat 3:30	LOU -1.5	52.8%	58.5
Florida at Auburn	Sat 7:00 ESPN	FLA -2.5	50.2% AUB	51.5
No. 6 LSU at No. 8 Ole Miss	Sat 7:30 ABC	LSU -2.5	65.0%	58.5
West Virginia vs No. 24 Virginia	Sat 7:30 ACCN	UVA -9.5	84.1%	53.5
James Madison at San Diego State	Sat 10:00 CW	n/a	59.1%	n/a

 

Spreads and totals are from DraftKings, percentages ESPN Match-Up Predictor. Rankings are CBS’s projection of the post-Week 2 poll. No total had posted for Houston at Texas Tech and no line at all for James Madison at San Diego State as of press time; neither gets a call it cannot support.

One venue note, West Virginia at Virginia is not in Charlottesville. It is at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, with Virginia as the designated home team.

Predictions

Pittsburgh 24, Syracuse 14. Pitt has averaged more sacks per game than anyone but Clemson since 2015 and Syracuse has not solved that particular problem in some time. We are shaving this one — ten points is a win, not a cover at 10.5. Under.

Texas Tech 31, Houston 20. The game we said in August would move this number, and it arrives with Houston 2-0 and ranked 22nd. Our case against the Cougars was never about talent. It was 6-1 in one-possession games, 4-1 in games decided by three or less, the easiest schedule in the league and the largest positive penalty margin in the country. None of that has been tested yet and Lubbock on a Friday night is where it gets tested. We hold Houston outside the top six and take the Red Raiders to cover. No total posted, so no call.

Alabama 38, Florida State 17. Two weeks of second halves that look like a top-ten team and first halves that do not. Florida State has had eleven days to prepare and has a coach who needs a result. We still think Alabama covers, and we think the number of points involved is why Steele has been winning this argument. Over.

Louisville 34, SMU 30. Lincoln Kienholz threw for 332 and four scores against Villanova, which told us nothing, and Kevin Jennings threw for 337 and five against UC Davis, which told us the same. This is the first real Saturday for both. Isaac Brown led the country at 8.75 yards per carry and Clev Lubin is the best returning edge in FBS, and at home that is enough by a possession. SMU has played seventeen ACC games and had a chance to win on the final play of every one of them, which is the reason we cannot take them by more than we are giving. Over.

Auburn 24, Florida 21. The one game on this board where the model and the market name different favorites. ESPN has Auburn at 50.2 percent, DraftKings has Florida laying 2.5. We were the ones who put Auburn first among teams we liked better than the projections, on the strength of 0-6 in one-possession games and a coin that does not land on its edge six times running. Alex Golesh, Byrum Brown and a defense returning most of its production, at home, at night. We take the upset. Under.

LSU 30, Ole Miss 24. Kiffin is 12-2 in his last fourteen SEC games and scored 21-plus in thirteen of them. He is also now walking into Vaught-Hemingway against the quarterback he recruited, on the only road trip LSU takes until October 10th. Sam Leavitt threw three interceptions against Louisiana Tech including a hundred-yard pick-six, and if he does that here it is over early. The reason we take LSU anyway is the defense, which SP+ rated second in the country and which held Clemson to ten. Under.

Virginia 31, West Virginia 17. We faded Virginia in August on the one-score argument and they have answered with two comfortable wins. This is the week to say plainly that the fade is not looking good. Neutral site in Charlotte, which historically favors the ACC team in this particular building. Under.

San Diego State 24, James Madison 21. No line posted, so no call against the number and none on the total. San Diego State’s secondary allowed eight completions on 52 attempts of twenty-plus yards last season, the best rate in FBS. Billy Napier’s first James Madison team put up 87 points yesterday vs. Wagner. How they handle flying across the country, and facing a step-up in competition will be interesting to watch.