Get ready for the 2024 College Football Season with Preview and Predictions for the Independents and Group of Five teams. Who exceeds expectations and who fails? What teams will make the CFP? Check out the detailed season predictions!
The 2024 season will be a whole new world for college football fans. One and maybe even two losses will not ruin your team's chances to make the new 12-team College Football Playoff.
Over the next two days we will go conference by conference to give you my predictions for how each team will end the season and the detail for every team vying to be in the top 25 and ultimately in the CFP.
Next up is the Independents and Group of Five conference teams. Can the independents get a team in the CFP? The Group of Five conferences are guaranteed one spot, but can they get a second?
I have created a system to generate projections for every team given their schedule and relative team strengths. I will also create an index post for you to access everything from. Here are links to the other FBS Conferences. (Added when published).
Here are my predictions for all of the independents and Group of Five conferences. In these conference standings I have also added the Vegas Over/ Under Win totals for you to compare to.
For the teams in the Conference Championship games, I have added the detailed breakdown.
In these detailed season predictions, for each game you can see:
The opponent
Home / Away / or neutral site
Whether the opponent is a Power 2, Mid 2, Group of 5, or FCS or below opponent.
The preseason over/under projected by Vegas for each opponent
My projected point spread for the game. You can use this as a guide for action if you want.
I have a home field advantage built into my model prediction.
I will periodically post the actual results in these tables on the right.
For the season you can see
The Projected Win total of that team's opponents by adding the over/ under for each opponent. This is like a traditional Strength of Schedule.
A WEIGHTED Projected Win total that factors in also the level of each opponent. This is my Strength of Schedule
A season projected win-loss prediction
I KNOW some fans will hate this. I think it is the reality of how the CFP Committe will think of relative conference records. I know it is a simplification to correct for teams that schedule a lot of lower division cupcakes. Fans hated when I told them that the SEC and B1G will have between 7 to 9 teams in the CFP every year. Don't hate the messenger because you don't like the message.
For the CCG and CFP teams I also show the projected post regular season games including their projected CFP Seeding.
Sometimes the projected point spread is less than one. In these cases, I gave the win to team even if the margin was +0.01.
Let's go through the conferences.
Here are the Independents
Notre Dame is a lock for the CFP is they go 11-1.
Yes, their Strength of Schedule may be weak compared to some of the Power 2 teams, but there is NO WAY an 11-1 Notre Dame is not in the CFP. They probably seal their spot by beating FSU and avoiding an upset at rival USC (by ONE POINT!?!)
Here are the two teams playing in 2024 in the Pac 12.
Both may exceed Vegas expectations but are not likely to make a CFP case.
Here are the American conference projected standings.
I have UTSA getting to 11-1, BUT then losing the CCG to Tulane
Here are my predictions for the Conference USA.
Liberty is likely to run away with the conference again. I have New Mexico State WAY WAY better than the Vegas Over/ Under. Will the lack of conference competition hurt their CFP chances? We will address that below.
Here are the projections for the MAC.
I have Miami (OH) and Toledo in the MAC Championship and AGAIN the underdog wins.
Here are my projections for the Mountain West Conference.
Boise State dominates here, and its only loss is to Oregon in Eugene.
The Sunbelt Conference may be the deepest of the Group of 5 this year and here is how I see it playing out.
James Madison and Troy project to have great seasons. I reviewed Troy several times and I must be unaware of something that is holding them down with others.
Troy wins and epic SunBelt CCG.
The Group of Five conferences should have some great seasons.
I believe the Group of Five CFP berth comes down to these five teams
I think the two loss Tulane and three loss Miami (OH) will be eliminated from consideration.
I think Liberty will be dismissed due to their relatively weak schedule.
My data says the choice probably SHOULD be Troy. I think the committee will give the G5 spot to Boise State.
So, leave a comment on your bold predictions for your team in the comments below,
Check out all of the other conferences and CFP predictions here:
Data from ESPN, Pro Football Focus, Vegas Insiders, NCAA.com
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