GIE projection: San Diego State by about two · San Diego State 34th, James Madison 36th · the strongest weaker-side quality of any game in this series.
Some games are sleepers because the teams are obscure. This one is a sleeper because the teams are good and still obscure — which is the more interesting problem.
James Madison flies across the country to San Diego State in Week 3, and the model rates both inside the top 40. That's the highest floor of any game in this series: the weaker side here is better than the favorite in most of the other nine. These are two of the strongest non-power pedigrees in the sport over the last half-decade, and they're meeting on a neutral national radar where neither gets the coverage its record earns.
There's a realignment wrinkle that makes it more than a curiosity. San Diego State is now a member of the rebuilt Pac-12 — the eight-team league of Oregon State, Washington State, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Texas State, and Utah State. So this is a Sun Belt flagship testing itself against a program stepping up into a reconstituted conference, both trying to prove the same thing: that the gap between the "Group of Five" label and the sport's upper tier is mostly a branding exercise.
In the trenches, San Diego State is the slightly bigger and growing side — about 291 pounds a man across the lines, up three from last year, against James Madison's 288. Marginal, but in a game this tight the small size edge sits with the home team.
The projection — inside a field goal — says they're right. Two very good teams, one very close game, almost no national noise. That's a needle worth pulling out of the haystack.