Who is projected to have the most wins in the nation? Which teams have the best chances of reaching the new 12-team playoff? Our TRACR model answers those questions and more as we reveal our college football predictions for the 2024 season.

The College Football Playoff selection committee is a fickle beast, and no algorithm can perfectly predict its behavior.

(Good luck to any collection of code that tried to make sense ahead of time of an undefeated ACC champion, Florida State, not getting into the 2023 season’s FBS Playoff.) 

But that doesn’t mean a computer can’t take a decent crack at college football picks, and that’s where TRACR enters the fold. TRACR (Team Rating Adjusted for Conference and Roster) projects the offensive and defensive efficiency of each team, using last season’s play-by-play data and making adjustments for transfer portal activity and recruiting.

TRACR likes a handful of teams much more than the sportsbooks and college football betting markets do, and it likes a different handful of teams much less. 

TRACR rankings

Opta Analyst’s Playoff potential rating, which is a score on a 0-to-100 scale with two components: a team’s TRACR rating and its record. Does a team limit its losses, and does it put up good results against a strong schedule? Or, in the case of this preseason analysis, is it projected to have a pretty record against a difficult slate?

This is the question Playoff potential seeks to answer with a composite rating: 

Let’s say the Georgia ranks No. 1 in the nation, per TRACR. What if, instead of playing its own matchups, Georgia played Penn State’s Big Ten slate? If we simulate the Bulldogs playing Purdue on the road, Ohio, Auburn, etc., how often would they end up with what we project Penn State’s record to be?

In that spirit, the teams with the highest projected win total under TRACR are not exactly the teams with the highest Playoff potential ratings. There’s significant overlap, of course, but Playoff potential sees several teams with eight or nine wins having excellent resume cases at the end of the year. 

In the past, the wheelhouse for a Playoff-worthy team was to play to a Playoff potential rating of about 90. But that was in a four-team Playoff era. With 12 teams now making the dance, a Playoff potential rating in the upper 70s after conference championship weekend is likely to indicate a strong case. 

The model isn’t just throwing darts at the wall, either. In every Playoff season until last year’s snub of FSU in favor of a one-loss Alabama, the committee has aligned perfectly with the model’s year-end Playoff potential scores.

Here’s how our model views the field stacking up over the next three and a half months. They’re strictly projections now. As they become real, they’ll be a good indicator of the field. 

Playoff Potential Ratings: The Top 12 (xWins/Playoff Potential)

  1. Georgia Bulldogs (10.0/99.7)
  2. Oregon Ducks (10.0/98.4)
  3. Texas Longhorns (9.2/93.9)
  4. Notre Dame Fighting Irish (9.5/90.7)
  5. Ohio State Buckeyes (9.4/90.3)
  6. Alabama Crimson Tide (8.6/86.8)
  7. LSU Tigers (8.7/85.9)
  8. Kansas Jayhawks (9.5/85.8)
  9. Penn State Nittany Lions (8.9/83.3)
  10. Ole Miss Rebels (8.8/79.6)
  11. Missouri Tigers (9.0/77.9)
  12. Texas A&M Aggies (8.4/74.1)

Mostly, the preseason Playoff potential projections align with the preseason Associated Press Top 25. That isn’t a surprise. But two things jump out quickly about TRACR’s view of things. 

First, there’s nobody from the ACC. That doesn’t mean that TRACR thinks the ACC will not produce a team with a top-12 Playoff resume. In fact, the ACC is guaranteed a spot because the five highest-ranked conference champions will all claim berths.

However, TRACR doesn’t see either Florida State or Clemson as an overwhelming favorite in the league, and the model is skeptical that the non-ACC winner will wind up with a compelling resume to make the field. 

Second, Kansas! TRACR is utterly bullish on the Jayhawks, whose 9.5-win projection is fourth in the country behind the Oregon, Georgia and Notre Dame.

expected wins

But TRACR still loves the Jayhawks more than the sports betting markets, and it thinks they have the best chance to win the Big 12 and take that league’s Playoff automatic bid. 

Playoff Potential Ratings: The Best of the Rest (xWins/Playoff Potential)

  • Oregon State Beavers (9.4/71.3)
  • Miami Hurricanes (8.7/67.7)
  • Michigan Wolverines (8.2/67.0)
  • Arizona Wildcats (8.7/64.0)
  • Tennessee Volunteers (8.3/59.8)
  • Kansas State Wildcats (8.2/55.7)
  • Clemson Tigers (8.2/51.8)
  • SMU Mustangs (8.5/47.5)
  • Florida State Seminoles (7.6/45.9)
  • Louisville Cardinals (8.1/42.3)
  • Oklahoma Sooners (7.2/41.0)
  • Auburn Tigers (7.7/40.2)
  • West Virginia Mountaineers (7.6/38.3)

These teams make up the balance of the top 25 in projected Playoff potential score. And again, a few things jump off the page in how TRACR projects the resumes. 

First, Oregon State. The Beavers are in a two-team Pac-12 with Washington State that will stack the deck heavily against their Playoff football odds. Because the Beavers and Cougars won’t play a championship game, their small league won’t be eligible for the non-power conference automatic Playoff slot.

Playoff potential isn’t predicting that the Beavs will make the Playoff; they almost certainly will not. But it does think they’ve got a solid chance to win 10 games (or better) against a schedule with four historical power-conference teams and most of the best schools in the Mountain West. An 11-1 or 12-0 OSU would probably get left out, but it’s fun to imagine the Beavs making the committee sweat a bit. 

Second, the ACC. TRACR is high on SMU in its first year in the league, and it sees so much parity in the conference that no one team has a great shot to put together a Playoff resume. (Again, in point of reality, at least one team is guaranteed to do so.)

The model sees Florida State as having a chance in a reloading year, Clemson as still being right in the mix, and Miami as having a better chance than anyone. Then again, the model doesn’t account perfectly for the possibility of Mario Cristobal late-game shenanigans. 

Playoff Potential Ratings: Group of Five (xWins/Playoff Potential)

  • James Madison (8.7/23.0)
  • Texas State Bobcats (8.7/21.7)
  • UTSA Roadrunners (8.3/15.9)
  • Liberty Flames (8.7/15.0)
  • Toledo Rockets (8.7/12.8)
  • Tulane Green Wave (7.8/10.1)
  • Memphis Tigers (7.6/8.9)
  • Fresno State Bulldogs (8.0/8.2)
  • Georgia State Panthers (7.3/4.3)
  • Coastal Carolina Chanticleers (7.5/4.2)
  • Boise State Broncos (7.4/4.2)
  • Utah State Aggies (7.5/3.9)
  • Appalachian State Mountaineers (7.1/3.2)
  • Rice Owls (7.4/3.1)
  • UAB Blazers (7.4/2.9)

Nobody’s got a great Playoff potential projection now. That’s to be expected, with 62 NCAA football schools vying for exactly one bid. (Two Group of Five schools making the field isn’t strictly speaking impossible, but the committee’s history suggests it will only happen rarely if ever.) 

Of note, the committee is a strong believer in a Sun Belt Conference that has yet to produce a New Year’s Six bowl team in the Playoff era. TRACR likes James Madison and Texas State the most, and that’s even before getting to the team that most people see as the Sun Belt favorite during the regular season: Appalachian State.

There’s a reasonable chance that this will be the year the “Fun Belt” breaks through the national noise. 

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