Welcome back to the carnival that is college football! As you navigate your way through the 2024 season, please note that some of your favorite attractions have changed since Michigan won the national title in January. Jim Harbaugh has left for the Chargers, and Nick Saban decided he had done enough winning for this lifetime, retiring shortly after the season concluded. The Pac-12 After Dark is now a relic of a conference that exists in name only, as all but Oregon State and Washington State have departed for new homes in the Big Ten, Big 12, and ACC. Divisions within conferences are being undone in this era of realignment, shifting schedule structures and when you’ll see certain rivalry games played for at least the upcoming season.
The College Football Playoff has expanded to 12 teams, too, which drastically alters the bowl-season landscape and how many losses teams can afford without being eliminated from playoff contention.
With all of this change, no one can blame you if you get lost in the modern era of college ball. We’re here to help you, with five early story lines to follow as Week 1 kicks off.
Deion Sanders Is, Once Again, the Main Character
Deion Sanders will once again be the central character in this college football season—and that has little to do with how Colorado actually performs on the field in his second season in Boulder. So much about the way Sanders and the Colorado football team are covered and consumed by the national sports media and casual college football fans parallels what I see in women’s basketball, at both the college and pro level. Any story about Sanders and the Buffs these days tends to reach far beyond the bounds of the typical college football consumer, giving the casual sports fan the impression that Colorado’s magnitude is bigger than it actually is—or that there’s something happening within its walls that isn’t everywhere else.
The latest report to stir up the take machine was Colorado’s decision to refuse all questions from Denver Post columnist Sean Keeler, citing “personal attacks on the football program and specifically Coach Prime.” Paul Finebaum decried the restrictions on ESPN, likening CU’s treatment of media to an “autocratic country.” His colleague Desmond Howard defended Sanders, calling him an “advocate for mental health” and saying he was protecting the best interest of his program. The juxtaposition of those stances (and similarly extreme reactions across talk shows and social media platforms in recent days) perfectly illustrates everyone’s inability to be normal here.
Let’s briefly ground ourselves in some reality: Sanders is the same kind of control freak as any high-profile college football coach. This isn’t the first time Sanders has denied questions from a publication this summer, and the list gets longer when you go back to his stint at Jackson State. The difference now is that he and CU are fighting this battle publicly. More than anything, I find myself disenchanted with all the drama. Sanders’s CU team simply hasn’t been interesting enough on the field to justify all the histrionics, and the transfer-aided roster churn comes across more like desperation than like the machinations of building a winning team. According to 247’s recruiting rankings, Sanders’s classes finished no. 21 in 2023 and no. 22 in 2024, which is decent relative to Colorado’s history, but Sanders has brought in 43 transfers, and the chances of finding enough impact play and continuity to contend feel slim.
Really, the only thing that strikes me as unique about Colorado is our infatuation with celebrities in leadership positions. We can all but guarantee that the Buffaloes will draw disproportionate eyeballs on Saturdays, even if they’re shitty again. ESPN reported that Colorado remains a hot bet—despite going 4-8 last season and leaving the Pac-12 for a deeper and more competitive Big 12 this year. The most comfortable contests on Colorado’s schedule are its season opener against North Dakota State (which considers its loss in the FCS semifinal as a damning failure of former head coach Matt Entz) and a road game against Colorado State (who took the Buffs to double OT last season).
There’s no way to gauge what success even looks like for Sanders and this Buffs program in 2024 because it’s entirely possible that this team is much more talented than last year—and will still finish with a losing record. Setting everything else aside, I’ll be tuned in to see whether QB Shedeur Sanders looks more like an NFL-ready passer, and whether Travis Hunter can endure the wear and tear of being an impact player on both sides of the ball. If both boxes are checked, I’ll be happy to wash my hands of the whole Colorado experience and celebrate that the program gave us future pros to enjoy on a weekly basis.
Y’all can have all the other nonsense.
A Regional Sport Has Gone National Thanks to Realignment
Sit down, boys and girls, and let’s share stories about the great consolidation in college football.
The USC-UCLA rivalry now belongs to the Big Ten—and that’s just one small change to college football tradition. This season, college football fans in Indiana and Wisconsin will learn why USC’s Tommy Trojan statue is covered in tape in the week leading up to the UCLA game. There are probably couples in New Jersey and Maryland having their 14th conversation about why traveling to Eugene, Oregon, for a regular-season football game is not (and will not) be in the budget. The Big Ten added a Pacific quadrant and is now made up of EIGHTEEN schools. Even if you’ve been closely following the drip of realignment news over the course of several years, it will probably be jarring to see Oregon and Ohio State competing for the same conference title and Penn State, Iowa, and USC battling it out for a playoff spot.
For the teams in the Red River Rivalry (Texas and Oklahoma), the move to the SEC was always a matter of when, not if—and that time is now. Georgia and Texas are probably the teams to watch here, but I’d caution against anyone dismissing Alabama as a potential conference winner, even as it begins the post-Saban era.
In response to losing its biggest national draws, the Big 12 responded by calling back one familiar team and introducing several new ones from the West Coast. Colorado returns to the Big 12 after leaving in 2010 and brings with it Pac-12 stowaways Utah, Arizona, and Arizona State. Add them to Houston, Cincinnati, UCF, and BYU, who joined last season, and this conference is a hodgepodge of competitive teams that aren’t championship contenders, and it feels certain to be the most unpredictable of all the new-look conferences. That said, Kansas State and Utah feel like the two best teams in that conference right now, with Kansas and Oklahoma State potentially playing spoiler.
Last, Stanford and Cal joined the ACC to avoid being programs without a real conference home, as did SMU after the Big 12 passed on adding it to its already bloated 16-team league. Please don’t ask me about the logistics of weekly travel from Berkeley or Palo Alto to … anywhere along the Atlantic coast. Oregon State and Washington State are left blowing in the wind after this round of realignment, forming a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West to keep some sense of regional normalcy in sports. Trust anything you see from the ACC at your own risk, but Miami and Clemson should be meeting in the title game.
Phew, caught up now?
The tough part for college football fans might be figuring out how to watch it all because with realignment came major changes to broadcast rights. The SEC departed CBS and, like the ACC, is now an ESPN property into the mid-2030s; the Big 12 will split broadcasts between Fox and ESPN. The Big Ten is now split by Fox, CBS, and NBC.
Give yourself some grace to start the year because the cadence of the college season you’re used to is gone. In exchange, we won’t have to wait until the end of the year to see the top teams in the country match up with one another.
The QB Class Is Thin, but the 2025 Draft Class Looks Loaded With Talent
Conference realignment has brought on a new era of college football, and NFL fans looking for intrigue on Saturday will find plenty of high-profile games between teams loaded with pro-level talent. At Georgia, which is one of the favorites to win the SEC and contend for a national title, quarterback Carson Beck and edge rusher Mykel Williams would both have been top three at their respective positions in the 2024 draft, and both may be top-10 picks next spring. Beck’s arm talent and accuracy are evident on tape, and his feel in the pocket seemed strong for a first-year starter. Williams’s length and explosiveness will be a draw for any team in need of a pass rusher—though I’d like to see more evidence of him winning out on the edge and without the help of Georgia’s scheme.
In the Big Ten, Michigan cornerback Will Johnson has the size, speed, and polish in coverage to be a premier lockdown corner, an increasingly rare commodity in the modern NFL. Penn State’s hybrid defensive end Abdul Carter is drawing Micah Parsons comparisons, and while I expect to see Carter play half of his snaps off the ball this season, his production as a blitzer and edge rusher should make it clear that his best value at the next level will be on the line of scrimmage.
LSU tackles Will Campbell and Emery Jones Jr. should be an even better combo than Joe Alt and Blake Fisher were for Notre Dame last year, and there’s a litany of NFL-ready receivers, like Tetairoa McMillan (Arizona), Luther Burden III (Missouri), and Isaiah Bond (Texas) to watch. Running back Ollie Gordon II and safety Malaki Starks are excellent prospects that aren’t at premium positions—but should absolutely be considered first-round prospects, something that’s become rare in recent drafts.
This only scratches the surface of names to put on your early 2025 NFL draft watch lists, and it didn’t even touch on Tennessee edge rusher James Pearce Jr., who may be the best overall prospect in this group. Pearce has flashed in every facet of pass rushing: winning with speed and bending off the edge, pushing the pocket with power to make QBs uncomfortable, and getting home on his second and third efforts. There are still some minor inconsistencies and gaps in his game, but he has the physical profile and high-level traits to make an immediate impact at the next level.
The 2025 class is loaded, and there will be ample chances to watch these guys play against other top prospects throughout the year.
Notre Dame: Real Contender or a Fraud?
As a Southern California native, few things pain me more than acknowledging Notre Dame as a legitimate contender for a national championship, but its combination of adequate talent and strength of schedule makes it hard to ignore this as a possibility in 2024.
Quarterback Riley Leonard transferred in from Duke, and while he’s still a bit raw, he’s one of my dark horse picks to win the Heisman Trophy and find himself in the conversation as a top-five quarterback in the 2025 draft. Leonard has a strong arm and the mobility to escape and extend plays. He’s still sorting out how to navigate muddy pockets—and he needs some work on throwing into closing windows with touch and anticipation—but his ceiling is high, and I’m banking on his dual-threat production to lead the way for this offense. Defensively, Notre Dame brings back four of its top seven in solo tackles—including one of the nation’s best corners, Benjamin Morrison.
Best of all for head coach Marcus Freeman, his team’s toughest game is likely this Saturday, on the road against Texas A&M. They’ve got Florida State on the schedule in November—but the Seminoles lost to Georgia Tech last week, so that game seems less daunting now. And unless USC’s defense takes a major leap forward when these two teams play in late November, there’s not much reason to think Notre Dame can be tripped up on its way to the playoff.
If there are multiple conference champions with two losses, Notre Dame would be an easy choice to make it in at 11-1, giving us all a tradition unlike any other: watching the Irish getting chopped to pieces by the best teams from the Big Ten or SEC come bowl season.
How Much Respect Will the Best Group of Five Teams Get in the Expanded Playoff?
My guess is little to none. The most likely Group of Five representatives in the 12-team 2024 College Football Playoff are Boise State, Memphis, and Liberty, and the margins are razor-thin for all but the Flames. Boise State has to play Oregon early in the year, and that projected loss alone may be disqualifying for the Broncos unless they win the Mountain West convincingly. With Florida State looking vulnerable after its Week 0 loss to Georgia Tech, SMU and Memphis don’t stand to gain much help from their respective strength of schedules. Liberty could go wholly unchallenged this year, and a 12-0 team serving as the sacrificial lamb to Notre Dame or the best at-large no. 5 seed feels true to the history of the playoff committee.
More than anything, the Group of Five teams have to be nervous about how forgiving the committee may be to power-conference teams with two losses and conference runner-ups. If the Big 12 has a conference championship with, say, 11-1 Utah and Kansas State teams, the loser has a great case to make the playoff field, putting a squeeze on remaining spots. I assume that Notre Dame will make it, the Big Ten and SEC will each get a minimum of three teams in, and the ACC and Big 12 will put both championship representatives in. That would leave only one spot for a team outside the power conferences. I can’t wait to see how the committee twists itself into knots to justify leaving 11- or 12-win G5 teams out of the field.
If the G5 can’t find its way into the inaugural 12-team playoff, we can kiss the hope of any Cinderella stories in the future goodbye for good.
