The College Football Teams Who Are Overachieving — Or Falling Short — In 2024
Let's compare each FBS program to their recent standard of performance.
Even as college football’s scrambled 2024 playoff picture continues to work on sorting itself out, there’s no question that this season has seen a lot of fun surprises — unexpected teams like Indiana, BYU and Army in the mix alongside blue bloods like Oregon, Ohio State, Texas and Alabama.
So this week, I wanted to look at the best breakout teams of 2024 — or at least the most surprising standouts — based on a comparison between their Simple Rating System (SRS) score this season and an average of the preceding five seasons. We’ll start with the top overall improvements, a group that features the Hoosiers near — but not quite at — the top.
(Note: Thanks to a great catch by reader
, I’ve updated the following charts to exclude 2020 from the 5-year averages for UConn and Old Dominion, neither of whom played any games that season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)Amazingly, there is one more team with an even better breakout this season than Indiana: UNLV, a program that averaged a -9.3 SRS over the previous five seasons and whose original starting quarterback left the team 3 games into the schedule over an NIL dispute. Despite all of that, the Rebels haven’t missed a beat with new QB Hajj-Malik Williams, and they’ve exceeded their prior SRS track record by more than two touchdowns and a field goal per game.
Of course, the Hoosiers aren’t far behind at all. Coming off three seasons with a combined 9-27 record and -3.4 SRS, who could honestly say they foresaw Indiana going undefeated at this point in 2024? IU is the exemplar for a rather large crop of teams this season who have a double-digit SRS and improved their SRS by double digits year-over-year. That group also includes South Carolina, Colorado, Miami — who may well still make the playoff despite their undefeated season being ruined by my Yellow Jackets 😉 — Virginia Tech, SMU, Army and Ole Miss.
(Shoutout to Vanderbilt, Bowling Green, Texas State and UConn as well — teams who have risen by 10+ SRS points after not having posted a single season above average in the previous five years.)
We won’t dwell too much on the teams at the other end of the spectrum, but you can re-sort the table above to find the likes of Air Force, Tulsa and Oklahoma State among the biggest disappointments, with post-Jim Harbaugh Michigan and FSU’s season from hell not too far down the list, either.
Next, let’s look at which teams have improved the most on each side of the football:
Many of our overall leaders also rank highly on the offensive side, with Cam Ward and the Hurricanes leading the pack, followed closely by Vandy, UNLV, and Bowling Green. (And while he’s slipped a bit in my QB rankings recently, it’s still great to see our pal Blake Horvath and the Middies among the most improved offenses of 2024.) Other teams, like Devon Dampier’s New Mexico squad, have made massive strides offensively but were let down by defenses that took a step back. Meanwhile, the most improved defense list includes even more playoff contenders, such as Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, and Army.
In Year 1 of the new 12-team playoff format, 2024 has plenty of the usual suspects atop the CFP rankings. But it has also been a season defined by its surprise contenders — teams like the ones in our lists above, who’ve managed to rise above their recent histories and keep college football fans guessing.
Filed under: College Football, Football Bytes
This is a cool article, but 1 nitpick: I don’t think you should be including the 0.0 for teams that cancelled the 2020 season in your 5-year average. For example, UConn averaged -12.4 in the seasons they actually played a game, meaning they’re +12.6 this season. By including the 0.0 as their SRS in Y4 you artificially improve their 5Y average to 9.9 and drag their improvement down to “only” +10.2.