A weekend of blowouts led us to the game of the week on Sunday night. Ole Miss and Louisville traded punches in the second half as the quarterbacks took center stage in a showdown between a veteran and a rising star, but the Rebels walked off with the win as time expired in Week 1's only ranked-against-ranked matchup. Ole Miss 41, Louisville 38 was a perfect segue into Labor Day after many of the elite teams ran away with wins in Week 1.
Case in point, the SEC mostly ran away with games, going 16-0 with an average margin of victory of 37.6 points. It's the first time since 1997 that the SEC ended Week 1 undefeated. In the CBS Sports Power Rankings model, we saw some big shifts, with a couple of teams falling out of the rankings and a few more making big jumps after better-than-expected performances.
Miami and LSU are among the latter after their offenses demolished Power Four opponents in Week 1. If you're wondering how this model works, here's a brief explainer to put your mind at ease: A model I developed runs, pulling data on opponent-adjusted efficiency, Elo, and week-to-week consistency across all 138 FBS teams. It includes other data as well.
The model runs every Sunday afternoon. After that, I go through it by hand and make tweaks. In September, that second step is much more important because one game gives the model almost nothing to read, and it leans hard on preseason projections based on a variety of data points, including returning production.
That's why LSU climbs to third after dismantling Clemson, and why Michigan and Clemson fall out of the top 25 entirely after appearing there before the season. You can expect a lot of volatility in the CBS Sports Power Rankings during the first three weeks of the season. The model needs fresh data to detect trends and build resumes.
The data will carry more weight, and the human corrections will get smaller, as the season progresses.
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