College Football Playoff 2018: Who is still alive after Week 1?

There are four different types of season openers for playoff contenders

A season opener at a neutral site is different than a season opener at home or on the road. A season opener against a ranked opponent is also a lot different than a season opener against an opponent from the FCS.

Looking at conference and subdivision affiliations of Week 1 opponents

First, let’s look at this by affiliations of the College Football Playoff participants’ Week 1 opponents in terms of conference and subdivision:

As one might expect, the margin of victory gets progressively bigger as the level of competition drops down through the strata of the college football hierarchy. But in general, teams that emerge as contenders take down fellow Power Five opponents by two touchdowns and a field goal. They up that by three touchdowns against Group of Five opponents, and win by 44 on average against FCS opponents.

Playing a mid-major or a lower-tier school in the season opener in no way disqualifies a team from reaching the College Football Playoff. But there are higher benchmarks to reach in order to remain in the discussion when playing such opponents. Keep that in mind when we look at the field of contenders a little later.

Looking at the geography of where Week 1 games are played

There are also varying expectations based on where College Football Playoff participants have played their opening games of the season. Here is the breakdown based on home, neutral, and away games:

The bulk of College Football Playoff participants played their season opener at home that year. And they have won by an average margin of victory between five and six touchdowns as a result. Two of those games were against Power Five opponents, two others against FCS competition, and the remaining five against Group of Five challengers.

In terms of neutral-game contests, we could almost just call this the Alabama category. The Crimson Tide have opened every season of the College Football Playoff era at either AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas or at either the Georgia Dome or Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Four out of the five games in the neutral-site category are Alabama games. The fifth is Ohio State’s 2014 trip to Baltimore for a 34-17 win over Navy to open the inaugural post-BCS season.

The two away games for playoff teams came were Michigan State’s 2015 win at Western Michigan and Clemson’s takedown of Auburn on the Plains in 2016. In general, expectations are that a team will win by around 10 on the road, between 17 and 22 points at a neutral site, and more than five touchdowns at home.