College Football: Week 1

College football is back, and with a YUUUGE slate of games. When college football switched from the BCS to the College Football Playoff, one of the hopes was that it would create more incentive for teams to play tougher (i.e. more interesting) non-conference games. Looking at this week, that's certainly happened. We get USC-Bama AND FSU-OleMiss AND Wisconsin-LSU and and and! What fun.

Here are the top ten games by Watchability for week one. As you read this, recall that:

• Watchability combines how good the two teams are and how likely the game is to be close
• A team is shaded green according to their chance to win (darker = better chance)
• This post has more detail on the math behind Watchability

As promised, I added some content to the right sidebar. The top graphic shows the top 10 and bottom 10 teams, along with their rating and how their rank has changed from the previous week. The bottom graphic shows, for the top 3 games in Watchability, how likely each team is to win and how each game figures to impact their chances of making both a bowl game or the college football playoff.

If there's interest in seeing that data for a broader swath of games I can start making it.

Here's the full week one schedule. Football starts today! Let's get it!