College Football FPI Release: Top Teams, New Playoff Trends

Big changes are expected for the 2024 college football season.

Familiar programs will move to completely different locations; the Big Ten will welcome Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA, for example, while the traditional Pac-12 will be gone. This is one of several realignments taking place this season. Additionally, the sport will have to continue to evolve how it compensates players. And perhaps the most significant new change of them all will come on the sport's most high-profile stage: The College Football Playoff will expand from four to 12 teams this season, giving more schools a chance to win a national title.

To help make sense of it all, ESPN will be releasing its Football Power Index (FPI) ratings and projections for 2024, including each team's projected record, their chances of winning a conference title, and, of course, their chances of making the playoffs and winning the championship.

Looking at the table below, many of the usual contenders are listed as favorites to win the national title, but there is also a lot of uncertainty.

Before we get into the details of the predictions, let's quickly explain how this all works. First off, the FPI is a power rating that tracks the strength of each team compared to the average FBS team. Teams are rated on offense, defense, and special teams, and the value represents points per game. (That means Georgia is rated at about 27 points per game better than the average team, which is pretty good!)

These numbers are then used to simulate a season schedule, including conference championships and CFP brackets, 20,000 times, simulating the selection process using an algorithm that mimics how a committee would typically select teams. Ultimately, once we have these results, we know how often each team will win their conference, advance to the playoffs, and achieve other milestones.

Heading into the 2024 season, let’s break down some of the major storylines emerging from the FPI numbers.

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Winner of two conferences

Georgia has topped ESPN's early playoff projections, making the expansion field in nearly 80% of simulations and with just over a 20% chance of winning the national title. Additionally, the SEC (53% chance of producing a champion) and Big Ten (32%) lead the way in the rankings of national title odds by conference.

Among teams with at least a coin toss chance of making the playoffs, the Bulldogs are followed by Oregon (76%), Texas (68%), Ohio State (67%), Notre Dame (60%), Penn State (59%) and Alabama (57%). After that group, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee top the list with 37% each, with the drop off in the next tier being pretty substantial.

How has the expanded playoffs changed the shape of these odds? Overall, 18 teams now have at least a 20% chance of making the playoffs in the preseason model, up from just eight at the start of last season.

A closer look at key buys

This season, the top programs have a better chance of clinching a playoff berth, but simply qualifying is no longer enough: It remains important to rank among the top four conference champions on the committee's list and earn a crucial exemption into the second round. Those teams still need to win three games to win the title (versus two under the previous CFP format), but that's still better than winning four games.

Here are the teams with the best odds of earning a first-round exemption:

Interestingly, Oregon is ranked the highest in the country here, ahead of Georgia, and that's the result of a couple of factors: the relatively high chance the Ducks will go undefeated in their new Big Ten schedule (16%), and the highest probability of winning a conference championship among schools from a powerhouse conference (37%), both of which are good factors for a top-four finish.

Related, sorry Notre Dame, your team does not get a bye. Only conference champions are eligible. But there is a 60% chance that the Irish are by far the most likely team to make the playoff outside of the ACC, Big 12, Big 10, and SEC. We will also see at least one non-power conference team make the playoff this year, because the fifth conference champion will be guaranteed a spot.

Here are the odds that each Group of 5 conference will send at least one team to the playoffs:

Are Florida and Washington moving in opposite directions?

But despite the importance of the new format, the 2024 season will still be defined by elite players and programs. In terms of pure talent, Georgia easily ranks first in the FPI thanks to the nation's second-best offense and third-best defense, and is projected to score about 2.3 points per game better than No. 2 Oregon. Five teams are projected to score at least three touchdowns better than the average FBS team: Georgia (plus-26.8), Oregon (24.5), Texas (22.9), Ohio State (22.2) and Alabama (21.9).

Several schools have improved since the end of last season. Florida has risen from 41st to 20th thanks to the return of 15 starters and a strong transfer portal. Auburn and Kansas have also jumped into the top 20 after finishing low last season. Tennessee's ranking is closer to a breakout season in 2022 than a return to reality in 2023. Meanwhile, Texas is projected to have its highest FPI ranking (3rd) since appearing in the BCS Championship Game in 2009. Meanwhile, USC is projected to maintain its 18th place ranking despite losing quarterback Caleb Williams, who was the No. 1 overall pick in this year's draft, to the Chicago Bears.

Additionally, the FPI projections show both teams in the 2023 championship game dropping in rank. Washington dropped to 31st and defending champion Michigan dropped to 12th. Both schools lost their head coaches, Karen DeBoer to Alabama and Jim Harbaugh to the Los Angeles Chargers, respectively, and also lost their starting quarterbacks and most of their starting lineups. How well both teams can bounce back will be a big focus this season. Another notable drop is Kansas State, which dropped from 11th to 22nd.

Here are our predictions for the top 20 FPIs this year:

Can't forget Dion's Buffaloes

Where do the Deion Sanders-led Colorado Buffaloes rank in our ratings? They're 36th, with a 16th-best offensive ranking and Shedell Sanders returning as quarterback (as well as a host of newcomers, as you'd expect from this team).

The projected 6.3 wins per season may not be to Sanders' liking, but the Buffaloes are projected to be the second-most improved team in the FBS in 2023 after moving up from 77th in the FPI, behind only Stanford (which moves up from 106th to 59th).

Colorado should benefit from a slightly easier schedule in 2024, with the Buffaloes ranked 45th in FPI's projected strength of schedule, down from 39th last year, and their points differential also points to them being a slightly better team than their record indicated last season, both of which point to continued improvement for Boulder.

But for the Buffaloes to truly reach their full potential, they must win against UCF on Sept. 28, Arizona on Oct. 18 and, most importantly, Kansas on Nov. 23. According to FPI, it's these three games that will determine Colorado's playoff chances the most: Losing any one of them would all but eliminate Colorado's chances of advancing to the tournament as Big 12 at-large or (more likely) conference winners.

Mark the most anticipated matches of 2024

Along those same lines, let's take a look at the best and most important games of the season, according to the FPI. There are a few ways to quantify this, but we'll start by looking at the overall ratings of both schools in a given matchup. By this metric, here are the 20 most important games on the 2024 schedule:

But there's another way to look at the top games in terms of how much they might affect how the postseason plays out. Our simulation has a handy feature called “Leverage,” which measures the average change in both teams' probabilities (national title odds, playoff odds, conference title odds, etc.) depending on whether a particular game is won or lost.

Here are the 2024 games that will have the most impact on CFP advancement.

Both rankings are dominated by SEC and Big Ten games, with a few Notre Dame games, some non-conference games and the ACC's Week 6 matchup between Clemson and FSU.

The expanded brackets have resulted in fewer games that significantly impact both teams' chances of making the playoffs, as more top-ranked teams now have a better shot at making the playoffs than ever before. But at the same time, the realignment has caused fans to see more intra-conference battles in these lists, which can greatly impact a team's chances of winning their conference and therefore earning one of the top four seeds.

That means fears that an expanded playoff format will diminish the importance of the regular season may be overblown. There are still plenty of games being played each week across the country, and the FPI rankings and projections can help you make sense of it all.