Model-driven college football coverage from the Gridpex desks.
It's Week 1 of 2026 — zero snaps of the new season to study. Here's how our preseason engine reads this rematch from last year, the portal, and the quarterback room.
On paper this is a marquee Big Ten road test, and we treat it like one — with a giant asterisk attached. The lean says Indiana, the recent track record says Oh…
The read on Oregon at Ohio State is almost stubbornly boring. These look like two of the best teams in the country, with Ohio State a hair ahead, the kind of g…
The most common way to build a team-strength rating quietly shortchanges the same three programs every single year, and it can't help itself. Hand it a recipe…
The case that Texas was a real national-title team in 2024 holds up. The reason everyone gives for it doesn't. The story you keep hearing is about Quinn Ewers…
UCLA finished 2024 looking like a team that knew how to win when it mattered, going 5-2 in one-score games while getting blown out everywhere else. That story…
The 2024 Miami Hurricanes went 10-3 and spent the season hanging around the No. 1 conversation. Once you account for who they actually played, they were a genu…
Here is a stat that does something most of our numbers can't: it tells you not who is good right now, but who is about to get better. The field-position gap —…
Texas Tech went 7-5 in 2024 and a certain kind of bettor sees a bargain: a name-brand program, a returning quarterback, and a record that supposedly undersells…
In the ten years we've been able to line up a team's raw talent against what it actually did on the field, nobody has missed by as much as Florida State did in…
There are games that are won and games that are survived. Indiana 13, Ohio State 10, under the roof at Lucas Oil Stadium, was the second kind — a heavyweight t…
This is the rare championship matchup with no obvious favorite and no obvious flaw to attack. Indiana walks into Indianapolis 15-0 and ranked first in our powe…
When it comes to betting on college football, many fans believe that certain situations, such as home underdogs or huge favorites, offer a significant edge. Ho…
Logan Bonner's 2021 season is a textbook lesson in how raw volume can fool you. Snap for snap, Bonner was solid but unspectacular. Yet pile up enough snaps and…
The distance between where a team recruits and how it actually plays can be jaw-dropping, and Army and Florida State are the perfect split-screen. Army signed…
Consider UCLA, which went 5-2 in one-score games but 0-5 in all other games. This disparity suggests that their overall record is propped up by close-game vari…
When evaluating a team's or model's performance, it's essential to look beyond the win-loss record. A more nuanced metric is Closing Line Value, which measures…
When you argue about which conference is the best, you have to be clear about what you're actually asking. There's the deepest league, top to bottom, and then…
A handful of teams in 2024 were flat-out better than their records say. Washington is the clearest case. The Huskies finished 5-7 and stayed home for the holid…
The biggest mover on the quarterback leaderboard is Texas's Quinn Ewers. Sort the passers by raw numbers and he sits 35th. But once you give him credit for the…
In betting, the number you really have to beat is the one the market settles on right before kickoff — the last, sharpest price after all the smart money has h…
Notre Dame had the first word. Five minutes into the night, Riley Leonard punched it in from a yard out, the Irish sideline roared, and for one quarter under t…
When looking at the 2024 power ratings, it's clear that the top teams are closely bunched, with Ohio State and Notre Dame's ratings differing by only 1.8 point…
Strip away the seeding and the storylines and you're left with a number that almost looks like a shrug: Notre Dame by the thinnest sliver at home, a game as cl…
Here's the catch with Harold Fannin: the raw stats look good, but they don't go as far as you'd think once you look at who Bowling Green is actually playing. P…
When you size up a running back, the real question isn't just how many yards he gains — it's how many of those yards hold up against the defenses actually in f…
Coming in, we made Georgia the better team here by about a touchdown — call it seven points. The oddsmakers barely had Georgia favored at all, more like a one-…
On paper, the bookmakers looked like the ones who blew it. Oregon got beat by 20, even though Vegas made them a small favorite, laying just 2.5 points. But her…
They came to the Bronx with a streak and a plan and a quarterback who runs downhill, and for one quarter Army even looked the part. Then Notre Dame turned Yank…
There are games you win with a haymaker and games you win by the width of a fingernail. Penn State left Huntington Bank Stadium on Saturday night having won by…
There is a kind of football game that gets decided by who has the best player on the field, and there is another kind that gets decided by who has the most wil…
For three quarters in Tempe, this was Cam Skattebo's evening and everyone else was just renting space on the field. He scored from three yards in the first qua…
For six minutes, the unbeaten visitors looked like they belonged. Indiana took the opening fight to Ohio Stadium, ground its way to the doorstep, and Ty Son La…
GAINESVILLE — Jaxson Dart threw for 323 yards Saturday night, and he will spend the rest of the season trying to forget every one of them. The numbers on the b…
Two teams arrive in South Bend playing better than their reputations. Army carries an 11-1 record built on the option, ball control, and a defense that gives u…
This is one of those November games we can read with more confidence than usual. The number we're leaning on isn't a dusty preseason guess or a tidied-up final…
Nobody should fall in love with either of these teams, and the smart read is honest about that. Color it Colorado by about four in Lawrence — a hair under a to…
This isn't a summer guess and it isn't a final report card on the season. It's a read taken right now, in week 13, that starts with what we expected from each…
We walk into Columbus with a clear but careful opinion: Ohio State by a touchdown. Back the Buckeyes, expect them to win by a little less than seven, and call…
The lean is blunt: Ole Miss should win at Florida by about 15 points, and the Rebels figure to leave Gainesville with the win roughly four times out of five. T…
Vegas hung Miami (OH) as a 30.7-point favorite over Kent State, treating this like a wipe-the-floor mismatch. The smart read had it a lot closer — Miami the be…
The number told one story; San Diego State told another. The betting line had the Aztecs as roughly a 17-point underdog. The smart read pegged them closer to a…
Going in, the smart read was that the betting public had Tennessee pegged too low. The market made the Volunteers a big favorite, but our number on them was bi…