College Football is back with a limited slate of on-the-board games for this weekend. Although there is just a single officially lined game Thursday night, three on Saturday, and one on Monday night, it is still a pleasure to have college football back as we start September. Presented here is the College Football Watchability Index for Week Zero. The chart shows the absolute value of the point spread (line) on the horizontal axis, which represents outcome uncertainty with lower point spreads being closer expected games, and the total on the vertical axis, which is expected scoring. Color of the circle represents day of the game (Red for Thursday, Green for Saturday, Blue for Sunday), and the size of the circle is the sum of the team power rankings taken from the always excellent Phil Steele’s College Football Annual Magazine for 2020 (specifically it is his 2020 Plus/Minus Power Rankings). Bigger circles represent better teams overall playing in the game.
No games are in the upper left quadrant, which most fans would likely prefer as those games have expectations of being close and high scoring. The lower left quadrant represents games which are expected to be tight, but relatively lower scoring. Two games are in this quadrant, BYU/Navy and Middle Tennessee State/Army, with BYU/Navy being the best game on the slate as it has the best teams (playing this weekend) and is expected to be extremely close (point spread of 1). The upper right quadrant has games which are expected to be blowouts but will likely involve lots of scoring. Arkansas St./Memphis is likely a slightly better game than SMU/Texas St., due to the overall quality of the teams in the matchup. The lower right quadrant represents what most would believe to be the least interesting games of the weekend as they are not likely to be close and offer fewer expected points scored. The game in this quadrant this weekend is Thursday’s tilt between South Alabama and Southern Miss.
There are more games next week, but for now it’s just great to have college football back. Enjoy!
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