Rankings hold through Saturday; Notre Dame remains No. 3

College football opens its first full weekend of the season Saturday with the preseason Top 25 still standing as the sport’s official ranking. Voters do not submit a ballot between kickoff weekend and Week 1. The rankings released in August remain in place through Saturday’s games, and the first in-season poll follows.

The clearest consequence is at No. 3. Notre Dame lost to Miami 42-6 in the Week 0 opener and is ranked third this week, because the ballot that placed it there was cast before the game was played.

USC was the only Big Ten team to play in Week 0. The Trojans won. The conference’s other 17 members, Michigan State among them, open this weekend.

Michigan State is unranked and did not receive votes. The Spartans are 0-0 and host Grambling State, an FCS program from the SWAC, at noon Saturday. Michigan State plays at Notre Dame in Week 3.

Michigan State appears on neither list. The Spartans changed head coaches in the offseason and return a redshirt freshman quarterback who has not started a college game. No preseason ballot placed them in consideration.

Miami 42, Notre Dame 6

Miami led throughout and was not seriously threatened. It is the only game either program has played. Both poll positions, Miami at No. 6 and Notre Dame at No. 3, were set in August and are unchanged.

Notre Dame is expected to move in the first in-season ballot. How far is a matter of speculation until that ballot is published after Saturday.

The Michigan State connection

Michigan State plays at Notre Dame in Week 3. The game has been treated throughout the offseason as the first meaningful measurement of the Spartans’ new staff. The Week 0 result has changed the framing of that game without changing its date.

Coaches on both sides have been asked about it and have declined to engage with it. Michigan State head coach Nick Mansour was asked about Notre Dame on Tuesday and said he had not watched the game.

USC is ranked No. 15 and will hold that position through Saturday. No conference standings are affected; league play has not begun.

The remainder of the schedule is the standard opening Saturday: a large number of games in which ranked teams host unranked or FCS opponents. Michigan State–Grambling State is one of them. National viewing guides have listed it in that category.

Michigan State occupies a small place in national coverage this week. The reason is the hire. Nick Mansour is 28, has never played organized football, calls both the offense and the defense, and came to the position from public film analysis rather than a conventional coaching track. National outlets have covered the appointment as an unusual personnel decision by a Power Four institution.

Saturday’s game is not on a national broadcast window and does not appear in the lead section of published Week 1 viewing guides. References to it in national previews are generally brief and note the coach’s age or his time in the Spartan Marching Band.

Michigan State has played no games and has released no depth chart information beyond its Week 1 listing. Quarterback Leo Hannan, a redshirt freshman, will make his first career start.

Grambling State runs an option offense. Option teams require every defender to execute a specific assignment on every snap and to tackle in space. Michigan State is installing a 4-2-5 defense with lighter personnel that has not played together. That matchup is the principal football question available in a game the sport has otherwise categorized as an opening-week formality.