Tag: missouri tigers football

New win projections for every SEC team for the 2024 college football season

SEC win projections for the 2024 College Football Season.

2024 will mark a new era of the ever-evolving landscape of college football. The Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns make the move to the SEC and face new challenges.

Though if you hear former Texas tight end Ja’Tavion Sanders talk about it, the SEC won’t be much of a challenge.

After a 2023 season that didn’t see an SEC team in the national championship game, there might be something to it. Georgia didn’t make the playoff and lost to an Alabama team that wasn’t necessarily the best of the Nick Saban era.

At the same time, the Georgia Bulldogs have earned the right to be the favorites in 2024. However, if you look at ESPN data analyst Jake Wimberly’s latest win projections for the inaugural season of the new-look 16-team conference, the Dawgs aren’t the favorite. It’s one of the newcomers.

Here’s a look at the projected win totals for the SEC in 2024.

SEC quarterback rankings ahead of 2024 spring football

Where does Jackson Arnold rank among SEC quarterbacks heading into spring ball?

As the SEC expands to 16 teams in 2024, the conference is stacked at the quarterback position. From former five-star prospects to 2024 Heisman contenders to intriguing transfer additions, there will be some fantastic quarterback play on display this fall in the SEC.

Seven of the last nine Heisman winners have come from Oklahoma and the SEC. Two of those seven were non-quarterbacks, DeVonta Smith and Derrick Henry.

Much of what will determine which teams emerge as SEC title and College Football Playoff contenders will be on the shoulders of the quarterbacks who will lead their team in 2024.

There are some quarterback competitions that need to take place, but here’s our pre-spring ball SEC quarterback rankings.

 

College Football Playoff Committee announces format for 12-team playoff: How could it look?

The College Football Playoff Committee announced the format for the expanded 12-team playoff. How would it have looked based on the final 2023 CFP rankings?

The College Football Playoff is expanding to 12 teams in 2024. However, it hadn’t yet been settled how the 12 teams would be selected.

On Tuesday, the College Football Playoff Committee announced a 5+7 model for selecting the 12 teams that will vie for the national championship through the expanded playoff. This is a change from the originally agreed upon 6+6 model that included the six highest-ranked conference champions. This comes after the Pac-12 was reduced to just Oregon State and Washington State after the latest round of realignment.

The assumption is the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC will receive four of those five automatic bids and the other could come from the Pac-12 or a Group of Five conference.

The five highest-ranked conference champions will receive automatic bids. The four highest-ranked conference champions will receive a first-round bye, with seeds 5-12 facing each other at the home venues of seeds 5-8.

According to a release from the College Football Playoff Committee, the quarterfinals and semifinal games will be played at the sites of the New Year’s Six bowl venues. The national title game will continue to be played at a neutral site.

Though there will be automatic qualifiers, no conference is guaranteed a spot in the playoff and there are no limitations on the number of teams each conference can send to the playoff. Why does this caveat matter? Well, the Pac-12 is now the Pac-2, with only Oregon State and Washington State remaining. Their schedule may not warrant consideration for an automatic bid in the playoff if they aren’t one of the top five conference champions.

Conversely, the SEC, which is arguably the most competitive conference, had four teams ranked in the top 12 of the final College Football Playoff rankings for 2023. Throw Oklahoma and Texas into the mix and that’s six programs that will play football in 2024 from the SEC in the top 12 with LSU at No. 13. What will make up the Big Ten in 2024 had five teams inside the top 12.

So what would the 2023 [autotag]College Football Playoff[/autotag] field look like if it had been a 12-team playoff?

How do the Oklahoma Sooners compare to SEC teams in ESPN’s SP+ rating?

The Oklahoma Sooners are heading into a new era in the SEC and come in at No. 8 in the preseason SP+ rankings.

The Oklahoma Sooners had a really good season in 2023 as they bounced back from their 6-7 season in 2022 to win 10 games last year. Now, they prepare for a new era of Oklahoma football with the move to the [autotag]SEC[/autotag].

But they aren’t the only change coming to college football in 2024. The landscape as a whole has changed. The [autotag]Pac 12[/autotag] is essentially no more as everyone but Washington State and Oregon State left for the [autotag]Big 10[/autotag] or the [autotag]Big 12[/autotag].

With the new changes and the 2024 recruiting cycle coming to a close, it’s time to look at where Oklahoma ranks in ESPN data analyst Bill Connelly’s SP+ preseason rankings (subscription required).

For those that don’t know, Connelly releases a preseason SP+ ranking every February where he bases his projections on three primary factors weighted by their predictiveness. Those would be returning production, recent recruiting, and recent history.

So, let’s take a look at how Oklahoma stacks up against the rest of the SEC.

10 SEC teams featured in updated College Football Power Rankings from ESPN

The SEC was prominently featured in ESPN’s updated power rankings for 2024.

Winter workouts are happening across the country. Spring ball is right around the corner. Though the 2024 college football season is still more than six months away, the SEC is shaping up to be a lot of fun in the new era of college football.

Realignment has consolidated power in the SEC and the Big Ten, and it’ll be on full display this fall, especially as the College Football Playoff expands to 12 teams this season.

As the Oklahoma Sooners get set for their first season in their new conference, the schedule provides a number of challenges. But having marquee matchups throughout the schedule is what the Sooners were looking for. In ESPN’s most recent power rankings update ahead of spring ball, 10 SEC schools were featured. Here’s who made the cut.

Oklahoma Sooners in the top 5 of Josh Pate’s SEC Power Ratings

The Oklahoma Sooners are considered a top five program in the SEC according to Josh Pate.

The Oklahoma Sooners are heading into a new era of college football. Now, there are two mega conferences in college football with the additions the [autotag]SEC[/autotag] and Big 10 are making in 2024.

The Sooners elected to join the SEC, which sort of started this new wave of conference realignment. Much has been made about whether Oklahoma is “SEC ready”? Even after a 10-3 season, that question still looms over the program.

The program is heading in the right direction. They may not be ready to compete for an SEC championship in 2024, but you can tell with how they are recruiting, especially on the defensive side of the ball, they have a vision of what it’ll take to make this team ready for the week in, week out grind of the SEC.

While Oklahoma will be competitive in their inaugural season in 2024, 2025 is the year they’ll be serious title contenders. They’re still a young team and by 2025 a lot of this young talent will be seasoned.

But what about next season? How well can the Sooners do in Year 1? CBSSports’ and the Late Kick Show’s Josh Pate shared his SEC Power Ratings heading into the 2024 season Sunday night. In it, he values a rolling three-year snapshot of on-field performance, talent acquisition, and stability resource pool. Given all of that, he feels the Sooners are the fifth-best SEC program heading into 2024.

That means Oklahoma is probably around an 8-4 or 9-3 team in 2024, which is what I would have them at. And with the 12-team playoff incoming, there’s a possibility that puts them in the College Football Playoff in 2024.

I do think the LSU Tigers are a little overvalued because last year they were so bad defensively and were carried by their offense. Well, gone is Heisman winner Jayden Daniels and their star receiver Malik Nabors. Both are first round picks in 2024.

Here’s a look at how the SEC stacks up, according to Josh Pate.

Ranking opponent winning percentage for every SEC team

Based on records last season, Texas has the third easiest SEC schedule in 2024.

Schedules have long been set for the 2024 SEC football season. Texas has one of the most manageable schedules in the league. Continue reading “Ranking opponent winning percentage for every SEC team”

2025 5-star OL Michael Fasusi cancels Oregon trip, visited Texas A&M on Jan. 13

Following national early signing day in December, Mike Elko and his staff have pivoted to focus on recruiting members of the Class of 2025.

Following national early signing day in December, Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko and his staff have pivoted to focus on recruiting members of the Class of 2025.

One of the prominent members of that group is 5-star offensive lineman Michael Fasusi, who has 42 total offers. He visited Bryan-College Station on Jan. 13 for junior day.

Fasusi announced on Wednesday morning that he has canceled his upcoming trip to Eugene and will not be visiting the Oregon Ducks program after all.

Fasusi visited another SEC school, Mizzou, on Jan. 20.

“It was amazing, one of the best visits I’ve ever been on,” Fasusi told Sam Spiegelman of On3 Sports. “I don’t think 100 out of 10 would even be enough.”

Fasusi is 6-foot-4, 285 pounds and is a future graduate of Lewisville High School in Texas.

“Same size as Boban, bigger than I ever been,” Fasusi wrote in an Instagram post following his Texas A&M trip.

Aggies co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach, Holmon Wiggins, has an established relationship with Fasusi as Alabama‘s former primary recruiter of the talented junior.

Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes and opinions. Follow Shaun on Twitter: @Shaun_Holkko.

Reacting to Yahoo Sports’ SEC football stadium rankings

Yahoo was very judicious with its choice of who to leave out. Two teams hail from the SEC East and two from the West.

Yahoo Sports recently ranked all the Southeastern Conference football stadiums from one to 10, excluding the bottom four.

The rankings were chosen based on the SEC as presently constructed, so apologies to fans of the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma, you all will have to wait until August to be included.

Yahoo was very judicious with its choice of who to leave out. Two teams hail from the SEC East and two from the West. Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt were left on the outside looking in.

Therefore, if you’re a fan of Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium, Kroger Field, Davis Wade Stadium or FirstBank Stadium, you likely have an axe to grind with Yahoo Sports, not us. For what it’s worth though, they weren’t necessarily wrong.

In descending order, let’s find out where Texas A&M‘s Kyle Field in Aggieland ranks among the best conference in college football.

Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes and opinions. Follow Shaun on Twitter: @Shaun_Holkko.

Sooners with the second most difficult 2024 schedule per 247Sports

According to 247Sports Brad Crawford, the Oklahoma Sooners have the second most difficult schedule for 2024.

The 2024 season will forever change the landscape of college football. At least until the next round of realignment. The Sooners will venture to the SEC with Red River rival Texas, creating a 16-team league, adding to the already strong stable of programs in the Southeastern Conference.

Heading into their first season in the SEC, the schedule makers did Oklahoma no favors. According to Brad Crawford of 247Sports, the Sooners have the second most difficult schedule in all of college football.

The Sooners only leave Norman once in September, but that’s when the difficult stretch begins if Oklahoma’s able to get past Tennessee in the SEC opener for a potential 4-0 start. What follows is a trip to Auburn, then five games against top-25 teams over the final seven to close it out. Few teams nationally face the late-November gauntlet that Oklahoma must endure with trips to Missouri and LSU with a home bout against the defending SEC champion in the middle. – Crawford, 247Sports

More: Way too early schedule prediction for the 2024 season

That home date against Alabama looks a lot different with the departure of Nick Saban. Yes, it’s Alabama. They’ll be a good team and one you can’t overlook, but they’ve taken on water due to transfer portal departures. Kalen DeBoer and his staff may have some depth issues when they arrive in Norman.

More: 5 takeaways from the Sooners 2024 SEC schedule.

Oklahoma’s road record will make or break their College Football Playoff hopes. They’ll go on the road to face Auburn, Ole Miss, Missouri, and LSU. There’s not a lot of margin for error.

Joining the SEC, the Sooners are under no misconception about the challenges they’ll face week-to-week. However, they’re used to being the hunted. Now the SEC has to contend with another blue blood program each year. Despite the turnover, the Sooners will be a threat in the SEC.

Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow John on Twitter @john9williams.