By the time the first real week of college football wraps up Monday night with TCU-North Carolina, opinions about various teams will harden based on how they played in their season opener.
That’s how it always works.
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But history shows there’s no bigger liar in sports than Week 1 in college football.
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In three months, much of what we thought we saw on Labor Day weekend will be revealed as a fraud. Several that looked like world-beaters will fade into obscurity. And at least one team that suffered an embarrassing loss will bounce back and prove it was a fluke.
Without an NFL-style preseason to work out the kinks and given how difficult it is these days to build cohesion from year-to-year in a college football program, the results of Week 1 games have never been less reliable predictors of future success. Throw in the fact that many of these early games are played at neutral sites, and it’s practically guaranteed some overheated takes about teams don’t hold up over the long haul.
A loss in Week 1 doesn’t necessarily mean a team is doomed this season. (David Rosenblum/Getty Images)
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Here are some examples from recent years:
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2024
It felt over for Clemson, didn’t it? Totally outclassed by the Bulldogs, Dabo Swinney was about as downbeat in his postgame news conference as he’d ever been. Many pundits were ready to hand Georgia a national championship. By December? Clemson had won the ACC and in some ways exceeded expectations, while Georgia’s quarterfinal loss to Notre Dame felt like a pretty big disappointment.
2023
Deion Sanders’ coaching debut with the Buffaloes tricked people into thinking Colorado was going to be good in 2023 because TCU came into the season ranked No. 17 in the AP poll and played for the national title in 2022. But in the end, it meant almost nothing. TCU finished 5-7 and Colorado went 4-8.
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2022
Remarkably, the Wildcats opened the season with a mild upset of the Cornhuskers in Dublin, Ireland. They would go on to lose their next 11 games while Nebraska at least managed to go 4-8 in Scott Frost’s final season.
You’d have never guessed after this Week 1 game in Salt Lake City that Utah would go on to win the Pac-12 title and play in the Rose Bowl, while Florida would struggle to a 6-7 finish in Billy Napier’s first season.
2021
Notre Dame 41, Florida State 38
This was one of the most dramatic games of the season, with Notre Dame surviving in overtime. But after this game, the two teams went in vastly different directions. The Irish lost just once in the regular season to Cincinnati, barely missing out on the College Football Playoff. But Florida State lost to Jacksonville State the very next week and spiraled to a 5-7 record.
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The Badgers started 1-3 against a tough schedule in 2021 but ended up as a nine-win team. Penn State parlayed the season-opening win over Wisconsin to a No. 4 ranking in early October but lost six of its last eight games to finish a highly disappointing 7-6.
2019
This is one of the all-time great box scores to look back on, given how much Bo Nix struggled as Auburn’s quarterback (13 for 31, 177 yards) before eventually transferring to Oregon and becoming a solid NFL starter. But within the context of the 2019 season, the Ducks remember this season much more fondly, winning the Pac-12 and beating Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl while Auburn went 9-4.
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2018
The Longhorns were the butt of many jokes after this game, and it was well-deserved. Texas was a two-touchdown favorite and ranked No. 23 but lost the turnover battle 3-0 and had no answer for Terrapins quarterback Kasim Hill. By the end of the season, though, Texas had beaten Georgia in the Sugar Bowl while Maryland didn’t beat another opponent of consequence and finished 5-7.
This isn’t a comprehensive list, of course. But it does provide a little bit of context for why Boise State fans shouldn’t panic yet after a stout spanking Thursday night at South Florida, or why we can’t write off Kansas State from the College Football Playoff race after losing to Iowa State last weekend under unique conditions in Ireland. Even though Nebraska was fortunate to hold on Thursday night against Cincinnati, 20-17, the Huskers dominated the game statistically to such an extent that a couple plays here or there could have broken it open and calmed a lot of anxiety this coming week in Lincoln.
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That’s just how it goes in Week 1. It’s not enough of a sample size to understand what we don’t know about any of these teams.
Remember last year, when USC was the belle of the ball after upsetting LSU, 27-20, in the season opener while people were fretting about Oregon after a narrow 24-14 win over Idaho?
As it turned out, those results were both outliers: USC didn’t play that well the rest of the season and Oregon didn’t play that badly (at least until the CFP quarterfinals).
So while we should all feel free to form our big, bold takes based on the Week 1 games we’re going to get from Clemson-LSU to Miami-Notre Dame to Ohio State-Texas and beyond, remember that many of the results this weekend are going to look very different in retrospect.
History tells us that opening weekend is a fickle beast in college football, leading us far too often to the wrong conclusions.
