The last few years, first at the PFR Blog and later at Smart Football, I’ve tracked the college football season with a modified version of the Simple Rating System. The SRS thrives on interconnectivity — we need each of the teams to play each of the other teams as many times as possible. You can’t create a predictive version of the SRS until after several weeks of results: an objective strength of schedule can’t be created until the system seems how teams perform against multiple teams.

But we can see how teams performed in week 1 compared to expectations, by comparing the actual results to what the SRS would have predicted if the same teams had instead met at the end of the 2011 regular season. For example, the 2011 Pittsburgh Panthers had an SRS of 39.9, while the 2011 Youngstown State Penguins — an FCS team but a very good one — had an SRS of 28.0. With YSU heading to Pittsburgh, we would project Pittsburgh to win by 14.9 points, factoring in three points for home field.

As it turns out, the Penguins beat the Panthers by 14 points, meaning YSU surpassed “expectations” by 28.9 points. At least according to this unusual definition of expectations. But that wasn’t the biggest upset of the weekend, and not just because Pittsburgh was mediocre last year. In 2011, YSU handed eventual FCS National Champion North Dakota State their only loss of the season — in Fargo — last November. No, the biggest upset of the weekend came at the expense of the 13th best team in the SRS last year…. to a team playing its first game at the FBS level.

You may recall that the Houston Cougars started last season 12-0, and were in the running for a BCS Bowl berth before losing in the Conference USA Championship Game to Southern Mississippi. Since then, Cougars coach Kevin Sumlin jumped to Texas A&M while star quarterback Case Keenum finally exhausted his eligibility. Regression was expected — assumed, even — but to see the Cougars lose to Texas State was astonishing. Texas State plays in San Marco, Texas, located roughly halfway between San Antonio and Austin, and joined college football’s highest ranks this season. The Texas State Bobcats were an FCS school last year and went 6-6; against their only non-FCS opponents in 2011, the Bobcasts lost 50-10 to Texas Tech and 45-10 to Wyoming. And coming into the game, Texas State was a 34.5 point underdog. Update: This morning, Houston offensive coordinator Mike Nesbitt “resigned”, and head coach Tony Levine announced that Travis Bush will now handle the play-calling duties.

Here were the biggest “upsets” of week 1 according to the 2011 SRS. The final column shows the difference between the actual results and the expected score:

Team	PF	Opp	PA	Loc	TmConf	OppConf	EXP MOV	Diff
Texas St-San Marcos	30	Houston	13	Road	WAC	CUS	-40.2	57.2
Youngstown St	31	Pittsburgh	17	Road	fcs	BgE	-14.9	28.9
Ohio U.	24	Penn State	14	Road	MAC	B10	-12.1	22.1
Duke	46	Florida Int'l	26	Home	ACC	Sun	-1.5	21.5
Eastern Washington	20	Idaho	3	Road	fcs	WAC	-0.2	17.2
Nevada	31	California	24	Road	MWC	P12	-8.3	15.3
Colorado St	22	Colorado	17	Denver CO	MWC	P12	-6.4	11.4
Troy	39	Alabama-Birmingham	29	Road	Sun	CUS	-0.2	10.2
Arizona	24	Toledo	17	Home	P12	MAC	-2.8	9.8
McNeese St	27	Middle Tennessee St	21	Road	fcs	Sun	-3.8	9.8
Texas-San Antonio	33	South Alabama	31	Road	WAC	Sun	-4.7	6.7
Michigan St	17	Boise St	13	Home	B10	MWC	-1.7	5.7

Again, obviously not all of these were upsets. Boise State was expected to decline following the loss of Kellen Moore and a stellar senior class, and actually covered the spread in their loss to Michigan State. But this helps to at least give a hint of what were some possible upsets. The Pac-12 only went 2-2 in their games against the Mountain West this weekend, as Colorado and California came out flat against Colorado State and Nevada. In addition to McNeese State’s victory over MTSU, there was a 4th victory by an FCS school over an FBS team: but it doesn’t register as an upset on the SRS meter. Tennessee-Martin defeated Memphis 20-17 on a field goal in the final seconds; while UT-Martin was a 9.5 point underdog according to Las Vegas, they actually finished 6 points higher than Memphis in the SRS last year.

Impressive wins by Favorites

We can use the same formula to look at the most impressive wins by the SRS favorites in FBS games. Subjectively, it’s hard to top what Alabama did to Michigan on Saturday Night; if it’s possible for the #1 or #2 team in the country to look better than we thought, the Crimson Tide did just that this weekend. But looking at simple arithmetic…

Team	PF	Opp	PA	Loc	TmConf	OppConf	EXP MOV	Diff
Ohio State	56	Miami OH	10	Home	B10	MAC	15.4	30.6
Notre Dame	50	Navy	10	Dublin Ireland	IND	IND	14.2	25.8
Nebraska	49	Southern Miss	20	Home	B10	CUS	6.6	22.4
Central Florida	56	Akron	14	Road	CUS	MAC	21.6	20.4
UCLA	49	Rice	24	Road	P12	CUS	6.6	18.4
Alabama	41	Michigan	14	Arlington TX	SEC	B10	8.8	18.2
West Virginia	69	Marshall	34	Home	B12	CUS	17.3	17.7
Connecticut	37	Massachusetts	0	Home	BgE	MAC	20.2	16.8
Baylor	59	SMU	24	Home	B12	CUS	19.7	15.3
Brigham Young	30	Washington St	6	Home	IND	P12	9.5	14.5
Iowa St	38	Tulsa	23	Home	B12	CUS	0.5	14.5
Southern Cal	49	Hawai`i	10	Home	P12	MWC	26.1	12.9
Illinois	24	Western Michigan	7	Home	B10	MAC	6.3	10.7

Urban Meyer’s debut was about as good as he could have hoped, thumping a Miami of Ohio team that was solid in 2011. Notre Dame, excellent at disappointing its fan base, destroyed Navy in Saturday’s early game in Dublin. Nebraska’s Taylor Martinez had perhaps the best passing game of his career over Southern Miss, who is replacing head coach Larry Fedora (now in North Carolina). Baylor was only a 7-point favorite against SMU in its first game After RGIII; based on their success last year, the SRS projected Baylor as a 20-point favorite. Still, the Bears blew out Southern Methodist 59-24, in an effort to prove that they weren’t a one-man program. Not every school was as fortunate…

Honorable Mentions

San Jose State, a projected 32-point loser in Palo Alto, nearly pulled off a huge upset in Stanford’s first game After Luck. The Cardinal needed a last second fourth-quarter field goal to win, 20-17. Northern Iowa, a 25-point projected loser to Wisconsin, lost 26-21, a sign that the Panthers should be in for a good year. Maryland needed a 4th quarter touchdown to defeat William & Mary, 7-6, despite being a projected 15.5 point winner. In other depressing ACC news, Wake Forest got a scare from Liberty — a team they were projected to beat by 16.7 points — but won 20-17.