Hello … expanded playoff, super-sized conferences and later-date title tilt.
So long … Nick Saban, Khaki Pants and — already — FSU’s unbeaten season.
Wow! What a different landscape we are looking at with the 2024 NCAA football season kicking into full form this week.
The Power Five is alive with so many changes but looking more like a Power Four, to be honest.
That’s because the Pac-12 has been picked apart, with 10 teams having been plucked from the once-proud West Coast league.
Its four marquee programs — the Oregon Ducks, the UCLA Bruins, the USC Trojans and the Washington Huskies — have relocated to the Big Ten, which is now an 18-team monster.
Two others — the California Bears and the Stanford Cardinal — have taken their footballs to the ACC, which is now 17 strong and also includes the addition of the SMU Mustangs from the American Athletic Conference.
And four more — the Utah Utes, the Arizona Wildcats, the Colorado Buffaloes and the Arizona State Sun Devils — have joined the Big 12, which is now comprised of 16 schools.
That’s left just two crews in the Pac-12 — the Oregon State Beavers and the Washington State Cougars — to fend for themselves in a conference left for dead.
Meanwhile, the much-hyped move of the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners is now complete, with those two Big 12 powers set to open up play in the SEC this season. That brings that league up to 16 sides, as well.
And what awaits all of them is a new 12-team format in the College Football Playoff. That means an increase from two to four rounds of bracket ball, with the eventual NCAA king to be crowned after three or four playoff wins on Monday, Jan. 20 — the latest date ever for a championship game.
It’s all so very different — and strange.
SECOND DOWN
The first round of the 12-team bracket is a pre-Christmas four-pack (Dec. 20-21), involving the squads ranked fifth through 12th by the CFP committee after the 17-week regular season wraps up. The next round — the quarterfinals — are set for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, with the four top-ranked teams slotting in to play the winners of the first-round tilts. Then it’s the semifinals on Jan. 9-10 following up the championship finale set 10 days later for Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta … With a dozen teams now making the playoff, it means one bad game won’t necessarily sink a school’s chances of scoring the national title. That’s good. Also good is we’re going to likely see a few two-loss teams in the CFP mix, including those — such as Penn State, NC State and North Carolina — who have forever been plundered by the powerhouses around them. Those sides can finally find their way to the big dance even if they do get bullied in conference action. And that’s good, too … But the not-so-good is it does seem like the powerhouses — these days being Georgia, Alabama, Michigan and Ohio State — are already locked into the playoff, given there’s plenty of room for error. And that’s no fun for anyone.
THIRD DOWN
That said, teams can’t relax too much. Look at what’s already happened to No. 10 Florida State (0-1) — the pre-season favourite to win the expanded ACC. It suffered a Week 0 24-21 upset at the hands of Georgia Tech (1-0) in Ireland for its first regular-season loss since 2022 and is already in a hole. That already gives the CFP committee, which robbed perfect FLA ST of a final-four berth last year, an easy out to keep Mike Norvell’s bunch from this year’s playoff … Seriously, though, the 12-team bracket means an early season loser isn’t as far behind the 8-ball. But maybe that takes a bit of shine away from ranked-v.-ranked affairs, which are no longer do-or-die … Week 1 games has three of those premier-type games — No. 1 Georgia (0-0) vs. No. 14 Clemson (0-0) on Saturday (noon ET, ABC/TSN), No. 7 Notre Dame (0-0) vs. No. 20 Texas A&M (0-0) on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC/TSN2), and No. 23 USC (0-0) vs. No. 13 LSU (0-0) on Sunday (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC/TSN2) … What is Alabama going to look like now that Nick Saban has retired, taking with him his amazing 292-71-1 record with the six-time champ? New ’Bama head coach Kalen DeBoer — you’ll remember him from national finalist Washington last year — is certainly no slouch … Jedd Fisch lands in the Pacific Northwest from Arizona to take over for DeBoer at UDub, which isn’t even in the AP Top 25 pre-season poll.
FOURTH DOWN
So finally Texas is a top-of-the-heap team again. But with this move to the SEC comes a whole new set of challenges threatening to knock that program back down the ladder. Steve Sarkisian’s squad is facing Georgia, Florida, Kentucky and Texas A&M instead of the likes of Baylor, Kansas, Texas Tech and West Virginia. Sorry, Big 12, there is a big difference. Three losses in the SEC is easy to find … Same goes for fellow transfer Oklahoma … It’s gotta be Ohio State’s year, right? Jim ‘Khaki Pants’ Harbaugh has left the college ranks, leaving Michigan much more depleted than just its loss of graduated champs, such as QB J.J. McCarthy and RB Blake Corum. And Ohio State gained scoring whiz Chip Kelly as its offensive coordinator, after he surprisingly left the head-coaching post at UCLA … Sherrone Moore, who ran Big Blue for a good chunk of last year when Harbaugh was suspended for Stalions-gate, is the new head man at Michigan … Keep your eyes — and ears — on: No. 11 Missouri (0-0) among contenders — that’s a weird one; Heisman Trophy-frontrunner QB Dillon Gabriel leading No. 4 Oregon (0-0) in a bid to win the Big Ten after leaving No. 16 Oklahoma (0-0); QB Cam Rising back at full health at age 25(!) to helm No. 12 Utah (0-0); and a ‘gun culture’ at Colorado (0-0), where coach Deion Sanders has a revolving door with 43 new transfers into the bold program that can’t be good for chemistry. Is it ‘Prime Time’ or ‘Crime Time’ in Boulder? Stay tuned.
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AP TOP 25
Rank Team (last week) Record
1. Georgia (1) 12-0
2. Ohio State (10) 11-2
3. Oregon (6) 12-2
4. Texas (3) 12-2
5. Alabama (5) 12-2
6. Ole Miss (9) 11-2
7. Notre Dame (14) 10-3
8. Penn State (13) 10-3
9. Michigan (1) 15-0
10. Florida State (6) 13-1
11. Missouri (8) 11-2
12. Utah (NR) 8-5
13. LSU (12) 10-3
14. Clemson (20) 9-4
15. Tennessee (17) 9-4
16. Oklahoma (15) 10-3
17. Oklahoma State (16) 10-4
18. Kansas State (18) 9-4
19. Miami (NR) 7-6
20. Texas A&M (NR) 7-6
21. Arizona (11) 10-3
22. Kansas (23) 9-4
23. USC (NR) 8-5
24. NC State (21) 9-4
25. Iowa (24) 10-4
NR — not ranked
GAME TO WATCH
#14 CLEMSON @ #1 GEORGIA (-13.5)
Saturday, noon ET, in Atlanta, ABC/TSN
Georgia has some ’splaining to do after falling short of another title last year, and Clemson’s simply falling now.
PICK: GEORGIA
BEST BETS
(-3) #19 MIAMI @ FLORIDA
Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET, ABC
Everyone’s alive about Miami again. The Swamp should kill that.
PICK: FLORIDA
#7 NOTRE DAME @ #20 TEXAS A&M (-3)
Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, ABC/TSN2
Who’s the better team? Certainly not ever-underachieving A&M.
PICK: NOTRE DAME
BOSTON COLLEGE @ #10 FLORIDA STATE (-16.5)
Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, TSN2
Norvell & Co. get right quickly after that Week 0 drop in Dublin.
PICK: FLORIDA STATE
2023 RECORD: 28-26-2