Projecting the 2024 college football season in the four major conferences
With the soft launch of the college football season just days away, the time has come to go on the record with picks for major conference champions and participants in the College Football Playoff.
Per usual, I’ve used a secret recipe of my own power ratings and judgment to project the records of every team in the four power conferences plus Notre Dame. I then based the matchups in the conference championship games on those results. After that, I came up with a top 12 for the College Football Playoff rankings.
These picks will undoubtedly turn out wrong – very wrong, in all likelihood. Last year, I correctly projected:
One of five conference champions (Alabama);
Five of 10 qualifiers for the conference championship games (Bama, Georgia, Texas, Oregon, Iowa); and
One of four College Football Playoff teams (Alabama).
In other words, you should feel pretty confident if you don’t see your favorite team faring as well below as you hoped.
ACC
Note: As a quasi-ACC member, we’ll include Notre Dame here: 11-1.
Winner: FSU over Miami
*This conference’s scheduling illustrates realignment’s asinine impact on college football in general. Seventeen teams playing eight league games dilutes the connectivity between teams’ records to the point that useful comparisons hardly exist.
*Thankfully, the tiebreakers worked out easily enough here. Miami is in the conference title game due to its 8-0 record in league play. The second spot comes down to FSU and UNC, both of which are 7-1. The Seminoles get the nod by virtue of a head-to-head win over the Tar Heels in the regular season.
*For the record, UNC should be nowhere near a power conference championship game. The schedule couldn’t break more favorably for Mack Brown’s squad, though. The Heels avoid Clemson, Miami, SMU and Virginia Tech. Three of their four road league games are against the worst teams in the conference - BC, Duke and UVA.
This is just the new reality with bloated conferences.
*Nice start for SMU in its first season in a power conference. The Mustangs seem like a decent longshot bet to make the field of 12.
*Looks like the end of the line for Tony Elliott in Charlottesville.
Big Ten
Winner: Ohio State over Iowa
*Regarding the tie for second between USC and Iowa, I couldn’t find any guidance from the B1G on tiebreakers. The two teams don’t play one another during the regular season, so I defaulted to record against common opponents. A loss to Wisconsin by the Trojans makes the Hawkeyes the sacrificial lambs for Ohio State in the championship game.
You can take Iowa out of the B1G West, but you can’t take the B1G West schedule out of Iowa.
*The most dedicated readers of this space won’t like how this year works out for Lincoln Riley and Southern Cal. Despite the hype around the difficulty of this schedule for the Trojans, they don’t have much room to complain about their draw from the league office. A 9-3 finish probably won’t hurt – or significantly help – Riley’s standing with Heritage Hall.
*Does Nebraska really go 9-3? Probably not, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. The Matt Rhule Effect.
*Is 7-5 in year two what Wisconsin expected when the Badgers hired Luke Fickell?
*Look for Indiana to become this conference’s most improved team when all is said and done. The Hoosiers landed an elite coach in Curt Cignetti.
*Penn State consistently manages to win the games it should. Plenty of teams can’t even do that, so it seems silly to complain about the quality of the program. Nevertheless, the Nittany Lions are super boring.
*Purdue probably won’t sack Ryan Walters this year. Let’s just say he will be a coveted defensive coordinator in about 16 months.
Big 12
Winner: Utah over Kansas State
*Note that Arizona-Kansas State and Utah-Baylor count as non-conference games this season.
*This conference is a bloodbath – lots of teams of similar caliber lumped together.
*The vibes emanating from Salt Lake City point to Kyle Whittingham stepping down at the end of this season. Led by 11th-year quarterback Cam Rising, I have the Utes sending the head coach out in style in their first season in the Big 12.
*Where are the landmines for Kansas State? In consecutive weeks in October, the Wildcats travel to Colorado and West Virginia. The Mountaineers capitalize, although it might not be enough in the end to save Neal Brown’s job.
*Oklahoma State’s highwire act last season didn’t get enough attention. The Cowboys won four games by one score in 2023 and finished plus-seven in turnover margin in those games. Also, QB Alan Bowman started all 14 games for the Pokes, a first in his two-decade career.
Replicating that seems like a tall order. Mike Gundy is a great coach, but this season may go down as one of his bigger disappointments.
*The Buffaloes at 4-8? Not good, Coach Prime.
*UCF going 9-3 feels like sprinting into the trappiest of traps. Giving Gus Malzahn at QB like KJ Jefferson, however…
*Cincinnati may opt to send Scott Satterfield a pink slip comes season’s end – Bearcats have no juice.
SEC
Winner: Georgia over Texas A&M
*OK, so, A&M… I didn’t go into this exercise envisioning the Aggies as one of the SEC’s top teams. However, you can find plenty to like about this team. That starts with new head coach Mike Elko, who is inheriting one of the top defensive lines in the country with the addition of lethal edge rusher Nic Scourton of Purdue.
With Missouri, LSU and Texas all visiting Kyle Field this fall, the schedule sets up nicely for A&M to make a surprise run at a bid to the College Football Playoff.
*Speaking of great coaching hires, Alabama made one with Kalen DeBoer. But the SEC schedulers picked one hell of a year to load up the Crimson Tide’s schedule: Georgia, at Tennessee, Mizzou, at LSU, at Oklahoma, Iron Bowl. Yo.
A 9-3 finish against that slate may not live up to expectations around Tuscaloosa, but that would still make for a fine start for the program following the retirement of Nick Saban.
*You don’t have to be a hater to imagine Texas losing three games out of at Michigan, the Red River Shootout, Georgia, Florida and at A&M.
*LSU won’t solve all of its defensive problems right away. The Bayou Bengals may have the top pick in the next NFL draft under center, though, in QB Garrett Nussmeier. He’ll be operating behind an elite offensive line. How many teams can keep pace with that kind of firepower?
*Count on Sam Pittman and Arkansas to part ways, possibly before the season comes to an end.
College Football Playoff
The illustrious top 12:
Georgia
Ohio State
Utah
FSU
Notre Dame
Miami
Iowa
Texas A&M
Kansas State
LSU
Michigan
Liberty
National championship: Georgia over Ohio State
*I basically ordered the teams based on most wins/fewest losses. I’ve seen plenty of speculation that the selection committee will act differently with a 12-team field, but I’ll wait until we see it in action before factoring that behavior into the final numbers.
*Naturally, a big issue will be how the committee handles teams that lose in their conference championship games when a 9-3 Bama team or 10-2 Oregon/Penn State are hanging out there.