We finally have real, live football to talk about! That’s not necessarily a good thing for everyone.

We’ve reached a point in college football where every week is a referendum on conferences, teams, coaches and players. This is a sport where the most you can play is 17 games, so we have to make use of every data point available to us. Even when that data point is a home matchup with a school we genuinely did not know had a football program before Saturday.

Regardless, we learned something about each of the 16 teams in the conference. Like all of our Quads, this isn’t a 1-16 power ranking (more to come on that later this week eyes emoji), but it is a helpful guide on how things have changes after 60 minutes of football.

These teams went into Week 1 needing to prove something against a worthy opponent and did. As always, success is relative.

We’re self-imposing a three week moratorium on Brian Kelly jokes after the Tigers went to (the other) Death Valley and silenced what looked to be a really good Clemson team. You have to be careful about not overreacting too too much in a positive direction, but the defense looked awesome, Garrett Nussmeier is still really good, and the team avoided any of the messes that led to previous season opening defeats.

Hard to think of a better way to honor Frank Beamer than by taking a 10-5 lead in the second quarter, then blowing the game open with a special teams touchdown. The Gamecocks weren’t firing on all cylinders, but comfortably winning when things aren’t working perfectly is a really good sign for the team.

The Volunteers looked more than solid against a Syracuse team that has enough juice to knock off a really good team or two this season. New quarterback Joey Aguilar had some accuracy issues, but avoided the big turnovers that haunted him at App State.

This might be more of a “didn’t fail the test” than “passed with flying colors” review, but the thing about quads is that there’s only four of them. We’re not going to pretend to be excited about giving up 419 passing yards to Baylor quarterback Sawyer Robertson, but the big question all offseason for Auburn was the offense – and it delivered.

Played nobody and it looked like it.

Marshall had 70 new players on the roster, and Georgia treated this game exactly like it needed to. Likely more of the same next week with Austin Peay.

The biggest surprise of the week was discovering that Long Island University does, in fact, have a football team and is not one of the old “FCS Northeast Sharks” teams from the EA Sports video games.

John Mateer broke Baker Mayfield’s record for most passing yards in an Oklahoma debut and a converted linebacker had five catches for 90 yards. Great!

Ended Georgia State’s winning streak against the SEC, and honestly looked exactly like every Lane Kiffin team in an opener.

Taylen Green threw six touchdowns. As a reminder, we think he’s going to be very very good.

As a Vanderbilt fan, it’s hard to express just how refreshing it was to not worry for even a second about the outcome of a game against an FCS team.

Beau Pribula showed off a passing skillset far beyond what we had previously seen in his time serving as Grond for James Franklin’s Penn State teams, which is at least a little inspiring despite the competition level.

Uninspiring winners.

Not that the game was ever truly in doubt, but concerns about the A&M defense appear to be completely founded after giving up 6.2 yards per carry to a retooling UTSA team.

Playing a mid-tier MAC team, Zach Calzada went 10/23 for 85 yards and no touchdowns. A win is a win for Kentucky, but it really feels like there aren’t many more of those left on the schedule.

Needed a massive third quarter run to pull away from a completely new Southern Miss roster. The only reason to think this season will be an improvement from last year’s 2-10 is that Alcorn State and Northern Illinois are still on the schedule.

Ruh-roh.

Former PGA Tour Player (and noted East Carolina fan) Harold Varner once told me that the best hole to make a double bogey on is the first one, because then you’ve got it out of the way and have the rest of the round to make up for it. The expanded playoff means the opening loss against Ohio State doesn’t end the season for Texas, but the margin for error just got a lot thinner.

Arch Manning didn’t look good in this game, but in retrospect that probably should have been the expectation. He’s still an excellent prospect, but an unfinished one despite the marquee last name. Most quarterbacks don’t come out of the gates setting the world on fire, and that’s okay! Seeing how he develops over the course of the year is still one of the more interesting storylines in the league.

That was ugly. The Tide got bullied on both lines, let Gus Malzahn do the same horseshit high school football thing (complimentary) Gus Malzahn always does to Alabama, and Ty Simpson does not look like the answer at quarterback.

To get out in front of a narrative that’s already building – no, Alabama is not going to pay $70 million to fire Kalen DeBoer this year. However, if this season ends up without even contending for a playoff spot, the administration and boosters are going to find ways to make it very uncomfortable for him to stay – they’re very adept at that, as Ray Perkins, Bill Curry, Gene Stallings and Dennis Franchione can attest.