With the passing of the college football spring games many fans are getting ready for another great season. With all the off-season changes, however, many fans are left confused about how this season is going to look.
The biggest change this season is the playoff expansion from four teams to 12 teams. This is a much needed change as there was lots of controversy around last year’s playoff teams, with the undefeated and ACC champion Florida State not making it to the playoffs, but Texas and Alabama, who lost one game each, making it in.
To solve this problem, the twelve team playoff will give an automatic playoff spot to the top five FBS conference champions. The remaining seven playoff teams will be “at large” bids, selected similarly to the teams of playoffs past.
Another big change is the “death” of the Pac-12, with only Oregon State and Washington State remaining. Neither team can make the playoffs as conference champions because the NCAA only recognizes champions of conferences of 6 or more.
A big realignment change in the south is the addition of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC. This makes the SEC bigger and better as they now have two out of the four playoff teams from last year, as well as the 2021 and 2022 national champions, Georgia.
Recruiting in the NCAA has also changed a lot as any player can hop in the transfer portal at any time during the season. This makes coaches and players have a delicate balance of power as the players can just leave whenever they want and the coaches can’t do anything about it.
Speaking of coaches, a big coaching change in the off-season was the retirement of Alabama’s head coach Nick Saban. Saban led Alabama to eight SEC championship wins, as well as six national titles. Their “remedy” to this change is the addition of Kalen DeBoer from Washington. This addition is good because DeBoer led Washington to the national championship last season. It will be interesting to see how the players and the rest of the coaching staff will perform after this move.
As far as North Carolina college football goes, UNC will continue to be on the rise with the addition of new defensive coaches and players including FVHS’ very own Malcolm Ziglar. NC State will most likely stay where they are in the top three of the ACC. Duke ended the season just above UNC and will probably end the season in a similar position.
Michigan looks like they won’t do as well as last season, even though they are definitely playoff contenders. The loss of their head coach and many star players to the NFL will make them work even harder. They will still be playoff contenders due to a couple of key players staying with the team and the Big 10 not being as good as it used to be.
All of these coach, player and team moves will surely make for an interesting season this year. The expansion of the playoffs makes conference games even more important.
The first games of the season will be Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024, including the Florida State and Georgia Tech game at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland.
