With the help of our trusty, TRACR-powered supercomputer, we’re providing college football predictions for every game each week.
As always, our projection model is spitting out its data-backed predictions for all college football games throughout the 2024 season.
In a relatively wide-open landscape this year, traditional SEC powerhouses Alabama and Georgia are among the favorites to win the national championship. Tennessee and Ole Miss are also contenders, with SEC newcomer Texas showing it’s also a legitimate threat.
Big Ten teams Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State all expect to be vying for a place in the newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. Miami could have its best team in over a decade and has established itself as ACC title favorites over Clemson.
Utah and Kansas State are the early favorites in an unpredictable Big 12, while Boise State, Notre Dame, and SMU hope to make the playoff from outside the Power Four conferences.
Now, all of that is a little far in the future to be given much consideration yet, but our TRACR-powered supercomputer is continuing to make predictions for every game this season.
TRACR (Team Rating Adjusted for Conference and Roster) is a net efficiency stat that measures how a team should play against a standardized level of competition. The model is based on an EPA (expected points added) calculation weighed by opponent strength.
A team with a TRACR of 0.0 is considered an average team in the FBS. So if a team with a 7.5 TRACR faced a team with a minus-3.0 TRACR, the better team would be a 10.5-point favorite, according to the model.
Each week throughout the NCAA football season, our model will have something to say about every game. No matter if it’s a headliner like Ohio State-Michigan in another chapter of a legendary rivalry, or a game we may all be a bit less excited about, it unsentimentally beeps its way through the model’s college football picks, boldly dropping predictions for each.
We kick off Week 6 with Michigan State at Oregon on Friday night before key matchups like Missouri at Texas A&M on Saturday. Undefeated Miami (FL) will face a road test at Cal on Saturday night to conclude the week.
For those matchups and everything between, we’ve taken plenty of data, pumped it through our predictive model and come up with its Week 5 predictions.
Note: The ranking below represents where the team sits in TRACR, while the percentage indicates win probability for the given matchup.
Friday Night
No. 64 Michigan State 21.9% at No. 14 Oregon 78.1%
Oregon QB Dillon Gabriel has 42 career games with multiple passing touchdowns, tied for
second most among all FBS players since 1996 (Sam Hartman) behind Kellen Moore (46).
Gabriel enters this week with 134 career passing TD, tied for third most in FBS history
behind Kellen Moore (142) and Case Keenum (155).
Saturday
No. 74 UCLA 7.0% at No. 7 Penn State 93.0%
Over 1000 different FBS players have recorded at least 500 passing attempts in their career
since 1996. Penn State’s Drew Allar has the highest touchdown-to-interception ratio among
that group (12.33), with the next closest being Alabama’s Mac Jones (8.00, 2018-20).
No. 15 Missouri 63.3% at No. 29 Texas A&M 36.7%
For the second straight season, Missouri has begun the year with four straight wins. The last
time the Tigers did that in back-to-back seasons was when they did so every year from
2006-10. Missouri also started 5-0 last year, its first time doing so since 2013.
No. 31 SMU 42.1% at No. 19 Louisville 57.9%
Louisville has outscored its opponents by 102 points through its first four games, its highest point differential through four games since 2016 (plus-164). The Cardinals’ +102 point differential is 20 points higher than any other FBS team that was not undefeated through their first four games this season (Arkansas, +82).
No. 37 Iowa 7.2% at No. 3 Ohio State 92.8%
Ohio State has won eight straight home games against Iowa dating back to 1995, with the
Buckeyes winning by an average margin of 19.7 points over this streak. Each of Iowa’s last two overall wins against Ohio State (2017, 2004) have been won by 26+ points.
No. 25 Auburn 24.8% at No. 8 Georgia 75.2%
Georgia has seven straight wins over Auburn, last losing to the Tigers in 2017. The seven-game losing streak is Auburn’s longest against a single team since another seven-game skid against Florida from 1995-2000.
No. 4 Ole Miss 91.4% at No. 34 South Carolina 8.6%
Ole Miss has accumulated 3,036 total yards through five games, the only SEC team this century with 3,000 yards through five games in any year. The last power conference team with 3,000 yards through five games was Oklahoma in 2019.
No. 11 Indiana 93.4% at No. 88 Northwestern 6.6%
Northwestern has won eight straight home games against Indiana, its longest active home
winning streak against a Big Ten opponent. Prior to this streak, The Hoosiers had won five
straight road games against Northwestern from 1986-93.
No. 48 Rutgers 32.2% at No. 21 Nebraska 67.8%
No. 5 Alabama 94.8% at No. 71 Vanderbilt 5.2%
Alabama owns a 23-game winning streak against Vanderbilt, the second-longest active win streak by any FBS team against another (Ohio State has won 29 straight against Indiana). The Crimson Tide’s last road loss to Vandy was in 1969 under head coach Bear Bryant.
Saturday Night
No. 9 Clemson 89.0% at No. 72 Florida State 11.0%
Florida State has been held under 300 yards of total offense in eight straight games, the longest streak by a Power Conference team since Tennessee in 2008 (nine straight). No FBS
offense has had a longer streak of failing to get 300+ total yards since UTEP in 2017 (10).
No. 109 Utah State 6.5% at No. 17 Boise State 93.5%
Boise State has won 20 of the last 21 meetings with Utah State dating back to 1998. Among
FBS teams to play each other at least 20 times since 1998, that is the second-best record in
any matchup (Ohio State 22-0 vs. Indiana).
No. 1 Tennessee 93.1% at No. 18 Arkansas 6.9%
Tennessee, of course, is the No. 1 team in TRACR, but that’s mostly because it has been so dominant defensively with the nation’s top defensive TRACR (minus-22.6) ahead of second-best Texas (-14.4). That doesn’t bode well for Arkansas, which ranks 27th in offensive TRACR.
No. 36 Michigan 41.9% at No. 23 Washington 58.1%
Washington lost last week at Rutgers 21-19 despite winning the yardage battle (521-299), committing no turnovers and not getting sacked. It was the third FBS game this century a team lost while outgaining its opponent by 200 yards and not allowing a turnover or sack. The others were Washington State against Cal in 2014 and Colorado against Cal in 2011.
No. 12 USC 75.7% at No. 40 Minnesota 24.3%
USC has had at least 300 yards of offense in 45 consecutive games, the longest active streak in the FBS. It’s also the longest streak for USC in the last 25 years.
No. 69 Baylor 20.0% at No. 16 Iowa State 80.0%
Four of the last five meetings between Baylor and Iowa State have been decided by seven points or fewer. The only exception was Iowa State’s 30-18 win in Waco last season, as the Cyclones outrushed the Bears 162-67.
No. 28 UCF 51.5% at No. 24 Florida 48.5%
No. 6 Miami (FL) 90.5% at No. 53 California 9.5%
Cam Ward has 35 passes of 20+ yards this season, the most completions of any FBS player. Xavier Restrepo has been on the receiving end of nine of these completions, the most receptions of 20+ yards of any ACC player (tied for eighth most in FBS).
Stats and facts provided by Stats Perform’s data insights team. Be sure to check out our MLB, NBA, NFL and college football coverage. And follow us on X and Instagram for more!