Projecting the best records for the top college football conferences
USA TODAY Sports’ Paul Myerberg breaks down who he thinks will win the in each of the Power 4 conferences and the Group of Five.
Sports Seriously
Iowa State’s victory in Ireland might be the impetus for back-to-back seasons with double-digit wins in program history.In the debut of a shiny, new stadium, Kansas showed to be a Big 12 contender to watch.Stanford interim head coach Frank Reich made a crucial mistake in a loss to Hawaii.
Conference championships aren’t won or lost in Week 0. The games still count the same, though.
No. 21 Iowa State’s 24-21 win against No. 20 Kansas State in Ireland was the headliner of a five-game Week 0 slate that served as the amuse-bouche to the main course of the regular season, set to begin in earnest on Thursday.
There just aren’t enough data points to form any big-picture takeaway: Kansas State could be really good, which means Iowa State might be terrific; both teams could be pretty average; both teams might be pretty good, which seems like the most likely scenario.
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Thinking down the line, though, you can see how the Cyclones’ win ends up carrying serious weight as a tiebreaker in a Big 12 that once again looks anything but predictable. Honestly, the Wildcats didn’t have to go all the way to Dublin to lose Farmageddon – they’d been doing that just fine stateside for the past seven years.
That’s one reason why the season-opening loss feels familiar for Kansas State. A year ago, the Wildcats opened the year as the league’s co-favorites alongside Utah but dropped four games, three in November. While the Big 12 abolished the preseason poll after Arizona State’s worst-to-first finish in 2024, KSU was by consensus seen as one of the favorites for…
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