Welcome to another season of buy or sell.
As has been the case for the past 2 seasons, I’ll use this space to recap the college football weekend that was, paying close attention to any advanced metrics that may back up — or run counter to — prevailing narratives coming out of the weekend.
While this year’s Week 1 slate was a bit lackluster relative to recent years, there was still plenty to dissect and much to learn about a few of the sport’s top teams.
Here are 5 ideas I’m buying or selling after Week 1:
Buying: Darian Mensah should be the Heisman Trophy front-runner
There’s no shortage of Heisman Trophy candidates after Week 1, but I agree with the market’s new favorite: Miami quarterback Darian Mensah.
Mensah is currently being priced at 14% to win the Heisman this season on college football prediction markets, far above the likes of Arch Manning (9%), CJ Carr (9%) and Jeremiah Smith (7%).
The surface stats from Mensah’s first game are wildly impressive: 27-of-30 for 401 yards and 5 touchdowns. The advanced metrics back it up — Mensah posted a completion percentage over expected (CPOE) of 29.7%. For context, that’s the best mark of any quarterback in the country this weekend (min. 20 charted attempts vs. FBS opposition).
And Mensah did that against Stanford — far from a juggernaut, but a power-conference program. By CPOE, Mensah outperformed the likes of Manning, Julian Sayin, Jayden Maiava and everyone else despite facing much tougher competition.
It’s important to not overreact to one week, but Mensah also fits the profile of a quarterback who could have a massively efficient season. He has much, much better teammates than he did a season ago at Duke and Miami seems likely to cruise to a College Football Playoff berth. A 12-0 record is certainly possible for the Canes. Meanwhile, top contenders in the Big Ten and SEC will likely sustain multiple losses over the course of a more-grueling regular season. The path exists for Mensah to be on the No. 1 team in the country in November while also putting up extremely efficient passing numbers.
At 14% after Week 1, I’m not going to argue Mensah is a bargain. The chance to get him for cheap is probably over. But I’m not rushing to the window to bet anyone else, either.
Selling: LSU should be in contention for the AP No. 1 team entering Week 2
LSU was utterly dominant in its Week 1 win over Clemson — I don’t want this to come across as critical of the Tigers’ performance in any way.
Rather, I just don’t think beating this Clemson program like a drum is worth getting too excited about. This just isn’t anywhere close to the same program Clemson once was at the end of last decade.
Per 247Sports, Clemson’s team talent composite rating slipped to 16th this offseason — its lowest rating at any point since at least 2015. You may say 16th is still strong, but Clemson has been getting diminishing returns on its talent since Brent Venables departed for Oklahoma. Per that same 247Sports analysis, Clemson’s talent composite ranked 7th last year when the Tigers went 7-6. They ranked 5th in 2024 when they went just 4-4 in ACC play.
This offseason, Dabo Swinney fired Garrett Riley and replaced him with Chad Morris — a potentially sensible move when considering that Morris was the OC when the Tigers were an elite program. But since then, Morris had a middling record as SMU’s head coach and then had one of the worst SEC coaching runs in conference history at Arkansas.
Morris followed that up with 5 jobs in 5 years (2 as an analyst and one was in high school football) and was out of college football entirely in 2025. His offense looked completely and utterly unprepared to go against LSU defensive coordinator Blake Baker. I’d like to give sizable credit to Baker for that, but the reality is that Morris will likely be outclassed a lot this season.
Defensively, Clemson had no answers for LSU. Defensive coordinator Tom Allen is in his second year with the program but the Tigers provided virtually zero resistance. Per Game on Paper, LSU had an early-down success rate of 47% and then went 11-of-15 on third down. Sam Leavitt rushed for 113 yards and also had a 59% success rate on passing downs. It’s impossible to live like that as a defense.
Below you’ll find Clemson’s defensive EPA-per-play allowed percentile over the past 5 seasons. Remember, Venables’ final season with the Tigers was 2021. Via Game on Paper:
- 2021: 92nd percentile
- 2022: 87th percentile
- 2023: 94th percentile
- 2024: 61st percentile
- 2025: 68th percentile
Venables did not poach any Clemson players when he moved to Norman, so the Tigers retained his high-level recruits after his departure. But by 2024, most were gone and Clemson’s defense has suffered for it over the past couple of seasons.
Based on what we saw on Saturday night, it would be at least mildly surprising if Clemson’s EPA-per-play-allowed was above average at the end of the season.
I would have Clemson power-rated outside the top 50 entering Week 2. I think that’s how we should think of this team moving forward. Would LSU be getting No. 1 hype if it had beaten Wake Forest by 41 points? What about Arkansas? I think not.
LSU may well end up at No. 1 at some point this season, but I think we need to see a much more impressive win from the Tigers before adjusting our priors — in this case, a preseason No. 11 ranking — to that degree.
Is this actionable anywhere in the marketplace? I would say yes — via LSU’s win total. On Kalshi, you can get the Tigers to go under 10 wins at 49%. The implied win projection on Kalshi jumped by a full win — 9.1 to 10.1 — on the strength of LSU beating up on Clemson. I think that will prove to be too big of a jump.
Pick: LSU under 9.5 wins (49% on Kalshi)
Buying: Michigan’s offense has major problems
Regardless of what the final score ended up being on Saturday night in Ann Arbor, Michigan’s offense was abysmal. The advanced metrics back up the on-field product. The Wolverines posted a below-average EPA-per-dropback against a WMU defense that ranked 62nd nationally in preseason SP+ projections.
Next week, the Wolverines will face off an Oklahoma defense that has an argument to be the No. 1 unit in the country. The Sooners were largely untested in Week 1, but they did shutout UTEP in Norman.
Michigan doesn’t appear to have a quality Big Ten quarterback in Bryce Underwood, which is a significant roster construction issue considering the reported multi-million dollar deal he signed out of high school. Over a 10-game sample against P4 opponents, Underwood is worse than the average P4 quarterback across several efficiency metrics:
Again, that’s the average P4 quarterback against all P4 defenses. Underwood has clearly been below-average over a large sample size and this week he’ll be facing an elite stop unit.
Those numbers also don’t include Underwood’s Week 1 performance, of course. Prior to the controversial Hail Mary against WMU, Underwood was staring down a statline that featured 123 passing yards on 22 attempts and a pair of back-breaking turnovers.
Pick: Michigan team total under 18.5 points (53% on Kalshi)
Selling: Boise State vs. Memphis is for a CFP berth
While there’s still plenty of football to be played, what we’ve seen so far would indicate that Boise State and Memphis may be the best non-power conference teams in the country.
Fortunately for college football fans, the Broncos and Tigers will be squaring off this weekend. The matchup comes as Boise State played Oregon to within a touchdown on the road. Memphis has already picked up convincing wins over UNLV and Arkansas State to start the year.
I’m excited for this game, but I’m uncomfortable with the notion that it’s a CFP play-in game. That’s due to both the timing of the game — it’s only Week 2! — and also the relative strength of a few other contenders. If you look at preseason SP+ ratings, Boise State is the highest-ranked G6 team at No. 49.
Memphis lands at No. 67. Between them were the likes of UNLV, Navy and San Diego State. Not far behind: New Mexico, James Madison, UTSA and North Dakota State, among others. Until one of these G6 programs gets closer to a top-25 SP+ rating while maintaining a strong résumé, it’s too early to crown anyone as a CFP frontrunner.
Prediction markets generally agree — according to the latest odds on Kalshi, Boise State and Memphis aren’t even odds-on favorites to win their respective conferences. Saturday’s game could be one of the best G6 contests of the year, but I won’t be betting the winner to make the CFP next Sunday morning.
Buying: This was a really, really bad week for the Big Ten
The Big Ten’s week started out bad and never got much better. Rutgers fell to UMass as a 4-touchdown favorite in what may prove to be the biggest point-spread upset of the entire 2026 season (since 2014, only 9 teams have won outright as an underdog of 28 or more — good for a 1.6% win rate).
Then, the rest of the games happened. Michigan came as close to losing to Western Michigan as you possibly can, but won on a controversial buzzer-beating Hail Mary. Northwestern struggled with FCS South Dakota State. Oregon almost lost to Boise State as a 24.5-point favorite. Wisconsin got thumped by Notre Dame and Washington was in a one-score game against Wazzu into the 4th quarter.
The Big Ten did go 9-8-1 against the spread this week, so it’s not as if every team underperformed. But the underperformers were quite loud.
Of the 8 teams who didn’t cover the spread, they missed Vegas expectation by an average of nearly 16 points per game. The median, which helps adjust for the 46-point outlier miss that Rutgers wore, was an improved 9.5 points per game (but still worse than the SEC’s 7.5).
After winning 3-straight national championships, it’s understandable that the Big Ten would claim to have the best league. But it can’t have too many more weeks like this if it wants to keep up that claim over the SEC.
The SEC, for what it’s worth, went 16-0 straight up and 10-6 against the spread in Week 1 — the best cover rate of any P4 league.
The narrative battle will certainly continue this week with Ohio State and Texas meeting up in Austin along with Oklahoma making the trip up to Michigan. There’s also Mississippi State-Minnesota, giving the SEC and Big Ten 3 head-to-head matchups in Week 2.
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Spenser is a news editor for Saturday Down South and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.
