2024 College Football Preview: Four Talking Points for the Start of the Season

Back to school, back to college football. If you’re in search of the top headlines you should know heading into the new college football season, we’re here to help. In our annual report, our ace correspondent (and my big brother) Vincent Thomas is sharing a preview of what you need to know about NCAA college football 2024, including compelling storylines, fun facts and potential breakout stars. It’s tailgate time!

2024 College Football Preview: Four Talking Points for the Start of the Season

Summer is ending. The 2024 college football season is beginning.

There is consensus among college football commentators that the 2023 season was the final season of NCAA college football as we had come to know it. The 2024 season will be unlike anything we’ve ever experienced.

Dandelion Chandelier would not leave its readers unprepared for change of this magnitude in one of our country’s favorite sports. You’ll be ready to talk about the brave new world of college football with family, friends, and coworkers if you remember one or more of these four talking points:

Big Changes = Big Games and Big Conferences

Stanford University and the University of California-Berkeley are now members of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC.) The fact that two highly respected institutions located in the San Francisco Bay Area decided to join a collegiate athletic conference whose headquarters are in Charlotte, North Carolina is evidence of how dramatically different NCAA football will be in the 2024 season and beyond.

Why would Stanford and Cal join the ACC? Television broadcast rights revenue.

When ESPN/ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox negotiated their most recent agreements for the rights to televise NCAA sports with the “Power Five” conferences (the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and Southeastern) two of the five – the Big Ten and the Southeastern (SEC) – reached agreements that would bring significantly more television rights revenue per institution to their members than the remaining three conferences. Pac-12 and Big 12 institutions reacted by migrating to the Big 10 and SEC. The Universities of Texas and Oklahoma migrated from the Big 12 to the SEC. The Universities of California-Los Angeles, Oregon, Southern California, and Washington migrated from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten. The Pac-12 institution’s decisions caused Stanford, Cal, and four other Pac-12 institutions to migrate to new conferences, resulting in the Pac-12’s demise. The “Power Five” is now the big four.

As a result of these new conference memberships, there will be more “big” regular season games in which two highly ranked teams play each other.

Before the conference realignment, the University of Oregon (ranked third nationally in the preseason Associated Press Poll) would likely only play a game against The Ohio State University (ranked second nationally in the preseason Associated Press Poll) if the teams won the Pac-12 and Big Ten championships, respectively, and qualified for the College Football Playoff. Because Oregon joined the Big Ten, it will host Ohio State in a regular season Big Ten conference game on October 12. On that same date, Pennsylvania State University (ranked eighth nationally in the preseason poll) will play a Big Ten conference regular season game against another Big Ten newcomer, the twenty-third ranked University of Southern California (USC.)

The University of Michigan, the 2023 College Football Playoff Champion, is ranked ninth in the preseason poll. Previously, it would have played games against two teams unranked in the preseason poll -the University of Maryland and Rutgers University – as part of its Big 10 East Division conference schedule. After the conference realignment, the Big 10 replaced those games on Michigan’s 2024 schedule with games against Oregon and USC.

Years ago, I faithfully read a weekly NCAA football column in the Minneapolis StarTribune in which the author sarcastically identified “This Week’s Game of the Century.” The television networks are paying hundreds of millions to the largest four conferences to ensure that there is more than one “Game of the Century” per week.

Collegiate athletic conferences, like entities in other markets, have grown substantially larger via consolidation. When I was a student at the University of Michigan, our athletic teams needed to finish ahead of nine other teams to win the conference championship. In the 2024-2025 academic year, Michigan’s teams will need to finish ahead of 17 other teams to claim the title of Big 10 Champions.

Best Teams

There is remarkable agreement among college football commentators on the list of the top five teams in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision. Every preseason article I read and podcast I heard had the University of Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon, the University of Texas, and the University of Alabama as the five best teams. The preseason Associated Press and American Football Coaches Association polls agreed, both on the teams and their rankings:

1. Georgia
2. Ohio State
3. Oregon
4. Texas
5. Alabama

It is rarely “chalk” (the outcomes are exactly as predicted) in college athletics. We are, after all, talking about games that will be played by nineteen-year-old men.

Here are five other teams who could be ranked in the top five by the end of Thanksgiving Day weekend:

• Defense wins championships. Michigan’s will be great.
• Louisiana State University. Somehow, the Tigers always exceed my expectations.
• The University of Missouri. If college football programs were stocks, investment analysts would issue a “buy” recommendation for Missouri. They’re a program on the rise.
• The University of Utah. A perennial hidden gem. Quarterback Cam Rising is legit.
• Florida State University. No team has more motivation to prove its detractors wrong.

Best Players

Since 1935, New York City’s Downtown Athletic Club and its successor, The Heisman Trophy Trust, have annually awarded the Heisman Memorial Trophy to “the most outstanding player in college football.” The award is intended to recognize “outstanding performance which best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity.” Louisiana State University quarterback Jayden Daniels won the 2023 Heisman Trophy.

Mr. Daniels now plays professionally for the National Football League’s Washington Commanders. The 2024 season will be the 49^th consecutive season in which there will not be a repeat Heisman Trophy winner.

The consensus preseason favorites to win the 2024 Heisman Trophy are all quarterbacks:

• Carson Beck, Georgia
• Dillon Gabriel, Oregon
• Quinn Ewers, Texas
• Jalen Milroe, Alabama

I would be remiss if I didn’t identify my annual “best player you’ve probably never heard of” who you should add to this list. This year it’s University of Colorado junior cornerback Travis Hunter.

Mr. Hunter excelled at both the cornerback and wide receiver positions in 2023. He played more snaps from scrimmage than any other NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision player. He was the first player in the last 25 seasons to have more than three interceptions on defense and more than fifty receptions on offense.

The Louisville Sports Commission recognized Mr. Hunter for his rare ability to excel at both an offensive position and a defensive position by selecting him as the recipient of the 2023 Paul Hornung Award. The Hornung Award recognizes “the player adjudged to be the most versatile of all NCAA players.” After earning a perfect 4.0 grade point average during the 2023 Fall Semester, Mr. Hunter also received recognition as a consensus First-Team All-American and First-Team Academic All America.

If a picture of Mr. Hunter accepting the 2024 Heisman Trophy hits your social media feed one Sunday morning this December, remember that you heard of him here first.

New Coaches Succeeding Living Legends

John Adams had to follow George Washington as President of the United States. Dan Rather had to follow Walter Cronkite as the anchor for the CBS Evening News. Ryan Seacrest had to follow Pat Sajak as the host of Wheel of Fortune.

Kalen DeBoer must follow Nick Saban as the Head Football Coach at Alabama.

On January 10, Coach Saban unexpectedly announced his retirement. In Coach Saban’s 17 seasons as Alabama’s Head Coach, Alabama won 87 percent of its games, with nine SEC championships and six national championships. Two of the national championship seasons ended with Alabama undefeated. Four of Coach Saban’s players won the Heisman Trophy. 44 of them were selected in the first round of the National Football League (NFL) draft. Like Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and NFL quarterback Tom Brady, Coach Saban is an undisputed G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time.)

Coach DeBoer brings his own record of uncommon success to Alabama. In the 2023 season, Coach DeBoer led the University of Washington to the College Football Playoff Championship game. In his first college head coach job, Coach DeBoer won three National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) national championships in five seasons at the University of Sioux Falls (South Dakota.)

There is an anecdote in sports: nobody wants to be the guy to follow “the guy.” Coach DeBoer won’t be the only new head coach to follow “the guy” in the 2024 season.

Coach DeBoer’s transition to Alabama created a situation in which someone must follow him as “the guy” at Washington. Jedd Fisch, who was a finalist for the Eddie Robinson National Coach of the Year award in 2023 as the head coach at the University of Arizona, will succeed Coach DeBoer in Seattle.

Two weeks after Coach Saban retired, Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh resigned to become the head coach of the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers. Coach Harbaugh, who was an All-America quarterback at Michigan, returned to his alma mater as head coach in December of 2015. In 2023, he led Michigan to the College Football Playoff Championship, an undefeated season, and its third consecutive victory over archrival Ohio State. Sherrone Moore, who served as Coach Harbaugh’s Assistant Coach and Offensive Coordinator, will succeed him as Michigan’s Head Coach.

A Source of Unity

American college campuses are riven by conflict arising out of the United States’s foreign policy on the war in Gaza. Can college football games serve as one of a small number of events that genuinely bring together and unite people who are otherwise opposed to each other? Can the games provide everyone with a legitimate three- and one-half hour break from anguish and conflict once per week?

Whether you welcome the conference realignment or grieve the loss of traditional rivalries and schedules, it is best to remember that college football, at its best, creates opportunities. Students who are football athletes, marching band members, and cheerleaders have opportunities to participate. Students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, and the off-campus community have opportunities to observe and, candidly, behave in ways that remind us that “fan” is an abbreviation of the word “fanatic.”

Regardless of how large the conferences become or how “big” the games are, regardless of the transitions of legendary individuals, those opportunities remain.

Let’s avail ourselves of those opportunities.

2024 College Football Preview: Four Talking Points for the Start of the Season

Let’s not just enjoy the 2024 season, let’s savor it.

Vincent Thomas is a community college academic dean, a former practicing attorney, and the older brother of Dandelion Chandelier founder Pamela Thomas-Graham. After earning a B.A. degree in English from the University of Michigan and a J.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin, he settled in a third Big Ten university city, Minneapolis, Minnesota, a place where both of his beloved alma maters are viewed as college football rivals.