I ran 25 simulations of the 2024 season in College Football 25. Here’s what I learned

I have seen the future of college football, and it is dominated by Ducks.

My first objective upon downloading EA Sports’ College Football 25 was a fact-finding mission. I simulated the upcoming and unprecedented 2024 season in Dynasty mode to find out how the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff and this new era for conference realignment played out. And then I started over and simulated the season over and over again until I had 25 seasons of data.

I did not play any games, I did not alter the default settings or rosters and I did not get much sleep. After creating 25 Dynasty files, an Xbox notification urged me to stop. Still, sicko mission accomplished. Just like Doctor Strange on Titan, I went forward in time to see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflicts: conference races, Heisman winners, CFP brackets, even the coaching carousel. Here’s what I learned.

GO DEEPER

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Twenty-five attempts, 61 playoff teams

The Playoff expanding from four teams to 12 this fall means more programs across the sport get a real opportunity to enter the national championship race. Over the course of the 25 simulations of this upcoming season, 61 different FBS teams made at least one CFP appearance.

The 12 teams that most frequently earned playoff appearances: Michigan (23), Oregon (22), Georgia (17), Ohio State (17), Texas A&M (13), Alabama (12), Utah (11), Miami (10), Clemson (nine), Kansas State (nine), Notre Dame (nine) and Penn State (nine).

In the end, there were 46 teams that made multiple CFP appearances in the game. Texas Tech, Nebraska, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Iowa State and Syracuse are all on that list.

Colorado did not make a CFP in any of the simulations despite having the best QB in the game and a top-20 roster. In fact, Shedeur Sanders only finished in the top five in Heisman voting once. Nine different teams won Big 12 titles over the 25 sims, but the Buffs weren’t one of them.

There were several more curious snubs among the 23 Power 4 programs that never made the Playoff. Iowa earned zero bids despite its excellent defense. TCU came up short every time, and the computer frequently fired its coach. Indiana actually played in multiple Big Ten title games but could not break through to the Playoff. And oddly enough, UCLA did win one Big Ten title yet was left out that year.

The battle for bids in the SEC was rather remarkable to track. Fourteen of its 16 members achieved playoff berths over the 25 simulations, but would you have guessed it would be Texas A&M earning the second-most? Texas and Ole Miss got in seven times each and never managed to win it all. Missouri made it to three CFPs. LSU only got in twice.

And believe it or not, the SEC emerged with just five national champions over the 25 simulations.

Oregon is the best team in the game

One clear conclusion after all those simulations: The Oregon Ducks are extremely tough to beat in CFB25.

The newest member of the Big Ten won 15 conference titles in its 25 attempts, went all the way to the CFP title game a dozen times and won nine national championships.

That’s not a big surprise to anyone who has already played with super senior QB Dillon Gabriel and his wide receiver trio of Evan Stewart, Tez Johnson and Traeshon Holden. The Ducks’ offensive dominance shows up over and over again when you skim through the CFP box scores and end-of-season statistics in these simulations. Gabriel frequently puts up more than 5,000 yards and 50 TDs in this offense and became a Heisman Trophy finalist in eight different seasons.

Thanks to the addition of Oregon, the Big Ten secured 15 of the 25 national titles. Many of those seasons came down to Oregon-Michigan, Oregon-Ohio State or Michigan-Ohio State facing off three times between the regular season, Big Ten title game and Playoff.

Michigan, Ohio State and Georgia each secured three national titles over the 25 simulations. Alabama and Clemson won one apiece. The five other national champions were shockers. We’ll get to them soon.

The Heisman results

Four players emerged as the most consistent contenders for the Heisman: Gabriel, Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe, Georgia quarterback Carson Beck and Ohio State quarterback Will Howard. Milroe took home the trophy four times. So did Beck. Gabriel won three. Howard, Utah QB Cameron Rising and Liberty QB Kaidon Salter each won twice.

If you’re handicapping the 2024 Heisman race right now, those names are already high on the list. But the fun of this video game is all the random chaotic things that can occur in Dynasty mode when you hit sim on a season and let the computer go to work.

Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart winning the Heisman sounds plausible. Grayson McCall (NC State), KJ Jefferson (UCF) and Behren Morton (Texas Tech) winning one is a little less likely but not impossible. But the game gave us several more stunning dark horse wins.

How about former Baylor and USF QB Gerry Bohanon delivering a Heisman in his debut season at BYU and getting his team to the CFP semifinals? Purdue’s Hudson Card won it one year after leading the Boilermakers to 11 wins and a CFP bid. South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers got a Heisman after accounting for 47 touchdowns in his redshirt freshman season.

The greatest wild card of them all: Memphis wide receiver Koby Drake. Not familiar with his game? In one simulated season, the 5-foot-11 slot receiver caught 89 passes for 1,545 yards and 22 TDs on a Tigers squad that won the AAC but missed the Playoff. Howard was the runner-up that year and responded to the snub by leading Ohio State to a national title.

Several Group of 5 quarterbacks — including Seth Henigan (Memphis), Jordan McCloud (Texas State), Jacob Zeno (UAB) and Tucker Gleason (Toledo) — pulled off second-place finishes in Heisman voting. It’s a quarterback award in this game. Ollie Gordon II and Donovan Edwards were consistently among the nation’s leading rushers but never finished in the top five in Heisman voting, and wide receivers (other than Drake) were rarely in the mix.

The wildest Playoff of them all

In real life, we’re probably going to get a College Football Playoff in 2024 that ends with Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon or another loaded powerhouse emerging victorious. Personally, I hope we get something as crazy as the fifth season in my run of 25 simulations. Let’s call it Season E.

Boise State defeats Nevada in the Mountain West title game to grab a Playoff bid. The Broncos are No. 21 in the final CFP rankings and get the No. 12 seed. They draw a 10-3 Alabama team in the first round and go down to Tuscaloosa and deliver a 49-14 beatdown. But there’s bad news: starting QB Malachi Nelson exits the game with a season-ending torn hamstring.

Boise State has to roll with 5-foot-10 backup Maddux Madsen, but the show goes on. The sophomore leads his squad to upset wins over No. 4 Miami and No. 8 Utah to reach the national title game. Then he throws for 329 yards and three TDs against Michigan’s defense and Boise State pulls off a fourth-quarter comeback for a 35-31 triumph. Madsen becomes an instant college football legend.

Who wouldn’t want to watch Season E?

The greatest comeback

Season W was another all-timer for CFP madness. Clemson fans aren’t going to like how it starts, but they’ll love how it ends.

Clemson gets off to a brutal 0-3 start and QB Cade Klubnik is injured for the rest of the regular season. Redshirt freshman backup Christopher Vizzina steps in, turns things around and the Tigers go 8-4 and reach the ACC title game thanks to a four-way tie in the conference standings. Klubnik is cleared to play in the game and leads an upset win over Boston College. Clemson finishes No. 21 in the final CFP rankings but is the No. 4 seed in the bracket thanks to its automatic bid.

For the Tigers, it turns out to be one heck of a draw. They get to face two ACC foes, defeating No. 5 Stanford in the Rose Bowl and No. 9 Miami in the Orange Bowl semifinal. On the other side of the bracket, Iowa State and Nebraska take down Georgia and Ohio State, respectively. After Nebraska’s head coach accepts the Auburn job mid-Playoff — yep, seriously — the Cyclones knock the Huskers off in the Cotton Bowl semi.

In the season finale, Klubnik throws for 330 yards and five TDs in a 38-21 rout, and the four-loss Tigers are the national champs.

Surprise contenders

Over these 25 simulations, the Big 12 produced four CFP national champions. Kansas State won two of them with Avery Johnson. The first one required wins over Tennessee, Florida and Georgia in their bracket. The second was just as epic: The Wildcats ruined a perfect 15-0 season for Oregon with a 48-46 upset in triple overtime.

Utah also pulled off a title game stunner against Oregon in a showdown of former Pac-12 foes. The Ducks were the No. 1 seed again in that season but couldn’t stop Rising (460 yards, six TDs) and his receiving duo of Money Parks and Dorian Singer.

We also had an all-Big 12 national championship game in another season when Oklahoma State met Kansas. The Cowboys got there thanks to a 200-yard performance from Ollie Gordon II to defeat the Ducks in the Rose Bowl. Gordon finished No. 2 nationally in rushing with more than 1,500 yards and 20 TDs and led a 42-14 rout in the title game.

A few more unexpected playoff runs that stood out over the 25 simulations:

• North Carolina made it all the way to the CFP championship game as a No. 12 seed by stunning Alabama and Texas. Oregon handed the Heels a 38-point loss in the title game.
• Wisconsin got a terrific season from transfer QB Tyler Van Dyke (40 TDs, 7 INTs) and played for a national title. After losing to Georgia, the Badgers’ head coach left for the NFL.
• Boston College, NC State and SMU each put together dream seasons and played in CFP semifinals. The Mustangs’ playoff run, during their debut season in the ACC, included an incredible 59-57 triple overtime win over North Texas in the Peach Bowl. Preston Stone and Chandler Morris combined for more than 900 yards and 14 TDs in the shootout.
• Florida had two seasons end in the Playoff semifinals and 12 other seasons end with a coaching change.

Conference title scoreboard

Here are the conference title game winners over the 25 simulations. This should inspire a little hope for a few fan bases wondering whether their team can make a run this year. (Scroll to the right for full list of winners.)

The G5 in the CFP

How did the computer handle the CFP committee’s task of selecting and seeding at least one Group of 5 team for the 12-team bracket? Fourteen different G5 schools managed to earn Playoff bids over these simulations. Boise State led the way with four CFP appearances while Liberty, Miami (Ohio), Texas State and UAB each earned three.

Beyond Boise State’s national title run, there were two other instances of G5 teams breaking through to the final four. UAB went on a run with a 13-0 team that earned a No. 4 seed and blew out Alabama in the Peach Bowl but lost to Ole Miss, and Liberty made one by upsetting Kansas State and NC State as a No. 12 seed before running into Oregon.

In three of the 25 simulations, the G5 got two teams into the bracket. One year, Old Dominion went 11-2 and secured the No. 4 seed, knocking surprise Big Ten champ UCLA out of the bracket, with UAB earning the No. 12 seed. Another time, it was Memphis and Texas State earning Playoff bids over ACC champ Clemson.

In one especially funky year, a 11-2 Tulane team actually secured the No. 3 overall seed with Liberty getting the No. 11 spot. The virtual selection committee had a bunch of issues that season and sent a trio of four-loss SEC teams to the Playoff as well.

New CFP challenges

In NCAA Football 14 and past college football games, Dynasty users were at the mercy of the game’s BCS formula deciding who plays for championships. The folks who built this game have participated in mock CFP selections and tried to apply lessons about what the committee values in their formula to generate 12-team brackets. After 25 simulations, my sense is they did a solid job.

There were mildly surprising decisions at times based on team records (as is the case in the real world) and I didn’t see awful glitches. More than anything, because we’ve never had the 12-team experience, it was fascinating to see the various permutations their computer logic produced.

The Notre Dame problem popped up several times, as expected. The Fighting Irish cannot earn a top-four seed and a bye without winning a conference title. They suffered first-round losses in seven of their nine simulated CFP appearances. Several of those home losses came against 8-4 teams, including a 52-16 loss to Clemson. Five of those losing Notre Dame teams finished No. 1 or No. 2 in the final CFP rankings but were stuck with No. 5 or 6 seeds. One of their No. 1 ranked 11-1 teams did make it to the CFP semifinals, but the new Playoff experience was not a fun one for the video game Irish.

It was exciting to watch conference title game upsets lead to messier brackets. In one season, Florida lost to Miami, UCF and FCS Southeast but went 6-2 in the SEC, upset Georgia and stole the No. 4 seed as a five-loss team. A four-loss Oregon team upset No. 3 Michigan in the Big Ten title game in that same season, setting up a Playoff where the top four seeds all went one-and-done and No. 9 Ohio State won it all.

As we saw with the aforementioned Nebraska vacancy, the coaching carousel didn’t slow down during the Playoff. To be clear, CFB25 does not feature real coaches — they’re randomly generated and nothing like their living counterparts — but it was still curious to follow how the game generated hot-seat situations and coaching moves.

There were many more instances of head coaches at CFP schools accepting new jobs before their team had been eliminated. Florida State lost its coach to Penn State and Miami lost its coach to Oklahoma while both were still in the Playoff. The No. 3 seed Seminoles lost their first Playoff game and then hired Colorado’s head coach. For some reason, Florida State’s coach bailing on a Playoff team for Penn State happened yet again in another simulation. Kansas State also lost its head coach to Iowa in one simulation despite being a No. 3 seed.

As far as problems go for this expanded Playoff, though, that’s a relatively predictable one. The 25 simulations raised another possibility with which the real-life committee will have to reckon: Sometimes there just aren’t enough great teams.

It’s not just the four-loss teams that regularly popped up in CFB25 brackets. In one season, Texas A&M earned a No. 10 seed despite going 7-5 and 0-3 against ranked opponents. The Aggies made the virtual committee look smart by upsetting No. 7 Georgia and No. 2 Missouri and advancing to the CFP semifinals.

In another season, Georgia got in as a No. 9 seed with a 7-5 record. In a year when half the Playoff field came from the SEC, the Bulldogs’ having wins over two CFP teams (Texas and Ole Miss) was good enough for a berth. Guess what they did next? They won three in a row and played for a national title.

That probably sounds like an absurd outlier, an outcome only a video game could conjure. After doing this 25 times, though, I’ve learned my lesson: In this brand-new world of the 12-team Playoff, it’s too early to call anything impossible.

(Screenshots courtesy of EA Sports)