Our Biggest, Boldest Predictions for the 2024 College Football Season

The 2023 work of the One-Question Mailbag comes to a close with, appropriately, a look ahead at next year. The question is simple: What's your boldest prediction for what the 2024 season of college football will hold? Here are our three answers:

Kari Anderson: Oregon State beats Oregon in the revenge game of our dreams

There’s always something about that moment right after a break-up where you have to prove to your ex that you’re doing just fine — better than fine, you’re doing great. You’re thriving.

As the Pac-12 dissolves, leaving just Oregon State and Washington State behind, the members of the Pac-2 have the opportunity to do the most satisfying thing possible after a messy split: revenge. Both teams will still have a chance to play their rivalry games next season, with WSU playing Washington at least through 2028 and Oregon State and Oregon set to meet up for at least the next two seasons.

Oregon State, who ended the year 8-5, had genuinely one of the best seasons for the school in recent memory; if the team keeps up the momentum, the Beavers have a solid chance to beat Oregon as the Ducks try to waddle away to greener Big 10 pastures. (The Cougars, on the other hand, ended 5-7; I unfortunately don’t trust them to pull out the big win.)

If all goes according to plan, the Beavers will get a chance to defeat Oregon — something OSU has only done nine times in the past 25 years. Please, Oregon State. Please embarrass Oregon silly; it would make my year.

In general, I’m hoping for a massive season for both Oregon State and Washington State, because it’s time to get back at the exes. Flaunt your best stuff, steal their credit card (or in this case, conference revenue) and show ‘em what they’re missing.

Jackson Thompson: Colorado Makes The Expanded Playoff

Last offseason, as a first-year head coach at the Power Five ranks, Deion Sanders executed one of the largest roster turnovers in college football history with a record number of outgoing and incoming transfers for a single year, per ESPN Stats and Information. 

Despite a year full of challenges, both on the field and on the recruiting trail with several decommits, Sanders has a degree of momentum he didn’t have last offseason. He has now shined a bright national spotlight on Colorado as a program, and with that may come enticing NIL opportunities to players who can now transfer more freely after the NCAA’s recent overturning of eligibility penalties for athletes who transfer multiple times. 

Who’s to say those transfer records Sanders broke last year can last another year now? And with 12 spots in the new college football playoff format, the door could open for a surprise program to put good talent in position to win close games and dominate others like we saw the Buffaloes do early last season before collapsing. 

Ryan Nanni: A Newcomer Will Win A Power Five Conference Title

Since Nebraska joined the Big Ten and Colorado and Utah signed up with the Pac-12 in 2011, nine other schools have moved between or to a Power Five conference. Combined, those 12 schools have not seen a ton of success at the top of their new homes – Utah and Pitt are the only schools to win a conference championship, and eight programs have either never made a conference title game or only have one appearance.

First seasons, in particular, haven't yielded major upheavals of the pecking order by new members. The best any new member of a Power Five conference has finished in Year 1 is third in its division. Respectable, but not setting the world on fire.

But with 13 teams (that's right, more than 2011-2023 combined) moving to a new power conference in 2024, the time feels right for one of them to flex immediately by winning a conference title. There's a number of high-quality teams on the move: Playoff participants Texas and Washington, 10-win Arizona, an SMU team that just won an AAC title and a Utah program that's won a ton of games in the Playoff era, to name a few.

With divisions going away, the path to a conference championship game gets a bit more unpredictable...and maybe also easier. Texas, for example, only plays three teams from the former SEC West: Mississippi State, Arkansas, and Texas A&M. Sure, they've gotta host Georgia, but the Longhorns don't have to worry about possibly being the second-best team in the conference stuck in the more competitive division.