The Week 1 CFB Tournament Presented By Rotowire -- Final Results
Georgia-Clemson, Notre Dame-Texas A&M, USC-LSU, Miami-Florida and more highlight the Week 1 Prediction Tournament
Welcome Home
In honor of the fever dream of Week 0, when we rise from the hot summer coma to try to make sense of the juxtaposition of terms like Delaware State and Hawaii, when we are oddly comforted that New Mexico is a two-touchdown underdog to an FCS team and alarmed that, for all the change that's been wrought in college athletics we remain no closer to a system of promotion and relegation than we did back in the days when paying players meant they had to return their Heisman Trophy, and in honor of this particular Week 1 preamble featuring the release of a Connor Stalions documentary and related Michigan Notice of Allegations that will lend every Cynical Online Fan fresh lifeblood for their digital omniscience, I give you the Week 1 Robn College Football Tournament Presented By Rotowire, and the assorted highlights of its Entry Form in living color.
Normally, outside of providing a link to the Entry Form, this space is reserved for musings on the business of sports (MLB betting scandals, schools racing to cozy up to private equity, the rise and stall of Venu Sports, the DirectTV class action suit against the NFL), the cross-currents at the broader intersection of sports and culture (secular, illiberal, reductive), books, articles and studies that we would like to read but don't have time to read, personal anecdotes that we're eager enough to believe illustrate an important point, our own Tournament gameplay and outcomes, and the amplification of our partners' work.
It is the written equivalent of the U.S.'s "flyover country" for most of you. We take no umbrage at this, though we do take your subscription dollars. And thank you for those. Without those, none of this is possible.
Because many of you are new, we will skip that exercise this week and go straight into the meat of the matter: The Tournament itself.
How The Tournament Works
A series of Margin of Victory predictions for 12 different CFB games comprise the Entry Form.
In future weeks the Form could include other market types, including Team Points or Yardage performance, individual Player statistical accumulations, or the number of times Nick Saban is praised for his insights on College GameDay.
You will select one Margin of Victory prediction for each of the Form's 12 games. We are eating a large meal, altogether, like a family, and you're not skipping any courses.
Different predictions (if correct) earn you a different amount of points based on your risk appetite. You want to earn points, because each one of them inches you higher toward the way, the truth and the light that is the top of the Robn Leaderboard.
Because they are static and the market is fluid, these margins below will be absolutely rancid by the time these games kick off Saturday morning.
There is no excuse for those who don't find value aplenty.
We revealed our Week 1 games earlier this week on RobnPod, but not the games' individual markets.
Scroll below for some assorted market highlights, and an invocation of Polynesian root vegetables.
What's On The Week 1 Menu?
Clemson didn't hit the portal as hard as many would've liked this offseason, especially on defense. But if they win this game, say hello to the College Football Playoff. Probably. Unless they dribble down their leg to multiple of Florida State, NC State, Virginia Tech or Louisville.
If Clemson doesn't win this game but keeps it close, it'll tell us something meaningful about the Tigers, and they should still keep the College Football Playoff's number in their phone and text it around November 3rd. It'll pick up.
Even if Clemson's offensive line is healthier than last year's, one is dubious of the Tigers' ability to get any meaningful push against Georgia's defensive line, which is the only unit on the team that hasn't had a member recently arrested for a driving-related infraction.
The Commissioner
How is this, you ask, a highlight? Well, it's not Montana State-New Mexico, which is like a horror film you've already seen that you still can't turn away from (10 years ago in the regulated Nevada industry you could've gotten the Bobcats as an underdog at the window).
At least Oklahoma State is favored here, but one cannot refer to the back-to-back defending FCS champions as a David. South Dakota State has picked the wrong Plains States FBS teams to try to punk early in the season – Iowa, in 2022, which in the most predictable fashion ever ended in a 7-3 Hawkeyes victory, and now a (we think) under-rated Oklahoma State team in 2024.
In 2026? They take on Northwestern in Week 2. Give me all of the Jackrabbits at that moment in time, please.
Oklahoma State's strengths are its running back corps and offensive line. SDSU's strength is its defense. Phil Massey rates it as the 31st best defense in the country among FBS teams.
We had to phone a friend like on WWTBAM to get a line for this game to work our projections off of, and they gave us 13. After we hung up the phone, we realized the market was already live for this game at 10 (and it's coming down). Is this the rare instance in this over-bet world where the FCS challenger is undervalued?
The Commissioner
They say that you eat what you kill. Kalen DeBoer has killed the Crimson Tide Professional Fan Complex™ expectation of an acceptable level of complete dominance, and so he will dine on his failure. Will this game be his South Florida? Will this be his Waterloo? We he and Jalen Milroe ring in the season with the weak thud of a mere 17-point win? Will he stand inside unfillable shoes the size of giant booster-supplied Cadillacs?
Or might Alabama, now comprised of several of the best remaining non-NFL-bound Huskies from 2023, be just fine? The Tide have won their last 22 season openers and they are 17-5 ATS in those games. But what does that type of stat matter when the regime is unrecognizable?
Western Kentucky's coach is Clay Helton's younger brother. He and his OC Drew Hollingshead have a pass-happy pedigree that spans Timmy Chang to Mike Leach. That approach won't fly no matter how vanilla Bama has become to some.
Even when the quarterback directing said approach is former SEC (backup) QB TJ Finley, coming on in the role of random villain.
The Commissioner
The dry, defensive battle between Notre Dame and Ohio State that kicked off the 2022 season lives rent free in my head. Even in a losing effort, I was sold in that moment on Notre Dame and its defense, believing they could finish as a Top 5 or 6 team. They instead lost to Marshall and coughed up a track race to USC, then squeaked out a Gator Bowl win to finish 9-3. In other words, they went on that year to be... Notre Dame.
I envision this game, though not necessarily its outcome, taking on a similar feel as that Irish-Buckeyes, though perhaps what I'm feeling is just the stubborn residue of Jimbo-era Texas A&M no-offense meconium, or the sharp pangs of a really strong Notre Dame secondary led by Xavier Watts.
Speaking of Jimbo, check out our full preview of this game in which the former coach rises from the ashes to claim his buyout through a mix of destitute force and cunning.
The Commissioner
There is something so odd and so appealing about Hawaii in primetime on CBS. Not CBS Sports Network. Not Paramount Plus. Not a long-ago-dead RSN. No paunchy color commentator avec lei guiding you through the 2am hour in standard definition.
I'm talking network CBS. I have not seen a broadcast pairing but I would bet my life that Rich Walz is on the call. The whole thing screams Rich Walz, now sadly only the second-most famous Walz in America.
Listen, this might be the high point of the year for the Bruins. After this, and then hosting Indiana (it can only be a basketball game), they have LSU, Oregon and Penn State in succession, after which point it's Good Night, Charlene.
What you should be asking, is, "What is the Poi Bowl?" It was a Bowl Game that Hawaii hosted for four consecutive years pre-World War II, and that earned its name – after a tropical root vegetable – from a newspaper man named Red McQueen. In other words, it's perfect, and the example of something we don't have in the world any longer.
I will be thinking during this game of the 1936 USC Trojans, the 1938 Washington Huskies and the 1939 UCLA Bruins who each braved the fierce wintertime Pacific Ocean just to get to this game.
How To Enter The Week 1 Tournament
- To enter, input your valid Robn Entry Code when filling out the Tournament Entry Form linked below.
- To obtain a valid Robn Entry Code, you may complete either a paid monthly or annual subscription to RobnSports.
- After you submit, make sure you receive a confirmation email of your predictions to the email address you provided.
Entry deadline is Noon ET on Saturday, August 31.
The link to the Tournament Entry Card is below.
Enter the Robn Week 1 College Football Tournament, Presented By Rotowire
