As anyone who has happened to follow this series since the beginning of last season will tell you (as well as several of my friends), I am famously not very good at predicting college football game outcomes. Despite usually finishing fairly high in our NFL pick-em group, the inherent randomness and chaos of the college game seems to throw off both my gut instinct and deductive reasoning, as evidenced by my rather woeful 25-28 record in picks ATS last season. As someone who watches a rather large amount of college football, it is a bit disheartening that I could have picked all of those games randomly and likely would have ended up with an equal or better record. So in the spirit of owning up to my poor prognostic skills (and also because I’m bored and don’t want to watch baseball), let’s take a look at how my overall predictions from last season turned out.

2024 Predictions vs Actual

Power 4 Conference Championships

ACC

• Prediction: Florida State over Clemson
• Actual: Clemson over SMU

Big Ten

• Prediction: Ohio State over Oregon
• Actual: Oregon over Penn State

Big 12

• Prediction: Utah over Oklahoma State
• Actual: Arizona State over Iowa State

SEC

• Prediction: Georgia over Texas
• Actual: Georgia over Texas

Participants: 4/8, Champions 1/4 – In my defense, Arizona State was picked to finished dead last in the Big 12 so it’s not like many people got that one right. The rest at least had a single participant correct.

College Football Playoff:

Prediction:

1. Georgia
2. Ohio State
3. Florida State
4. Utah
5. Oregon
6. Texas
7. Ole Miss
8. Clemson
9. Alabama
10. Penn State
11. Notre Dame
12. Boise State

Actual:

1. Oregon
2. Georgia
3. Boise State
4. Arizona State
5. Texas
6. Penn State
7. Notre Dame
8. Ohio State
9. Tennessee
10. Indiana
11. SMU
12. Clemson

8/12. Not great, not terrible. I blame Florida State for regressing to a massive degree, Alabama missing Nick Saban way more than I thought, and Ole Miss blowing it at the worst possible time. Congrats to Indiana; way to surprise me and the rest of the country.

Heisman Top 5:

Prediction:

1. Quinn Ewers (QB, Texas)
2. Dillon Gabriel (QB, Oregon)
3. Carson Beck (QB, Georgia)
4. Jalen Milroe (QB, Alabama)
5. Jaxson Dart (QB, Ole Miss)

Actual:

1. Travis Hunter (CB/WR, Colorado)
2. Ashton Jeanty (RB, Boise State)
3. Dillon Gabriel (QB, Oregon)
4. Cameron Ward (QB, Miami)
5. Cameron Skattebo (RB, Arizona State)

1/5 – Somehow it gets worse! For the record, I had Hunter as a dark horse candidate. I guess defensive players can win the Heisman – they just also have to play almost every offensive snap as well.

See you all in a just a few days for my 2025 college football preview!