2024 12-team College Football Playoff rankings prediction after week two
Coming into week two, there were a lot of college football fans who looked at the slate and identified one or two games that looked like they may be good. For the most part, it was a lot of games that were either mildly intriguing, or projected to be blowouts.
Of course, as so often happens in college football, those are the weeks that end up being unexpectedly huge. No one saw Notre Dame going down to unranked Northern Illinois; the barn-burner that was UVA-Wake Forest; or the four-quarter battle that USF brought to Tuscaloosa.
Because of certain of those unexpected results, these predictions have been updated from what we had after week one. Of course, these are projections for the end of the season, not how things should stand at this moment, so there's still some guesswork here.
After looking at what these teams have brought to the table so far, and seeing what's coming down the pike, here's how we project the rankings to look come December.
Rank | Team | Why they are here | Previous rank |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | Georgia | SEC Champ | 1 |
2 | Ohio State | Big 10 Champ | 2 |
3 | Miami (FL) | ACC Champ | 3 |
4 | Utah | Big 12 Champ | 4 |
5 | Ole Miss | At-large | 7 |
6 | Penn State | At-large | 6 |
7 | Tennessee | At-large | NR |
8 | USC | At-large | NR |
9 | Kansas State | At-large | NR |
10 | Clemson | At-large | 11 |
11 | Alabama | At-large | 5 |
12 | Northern Illinois | MAC champ | NR |
Ole Miss has shown me enough to move up a couple of spots. Especially after what we saw from Alabama, I'm feeling more confident that the SEC championship could be a repeat of their regular-season matchup with the Georgia Bulldogs.
Tennessee is a notable newcomer here. Nico Iamaleava looks like he's the real deal, and the defense for the Vols isn't showing many holes.
After what Northern Illinois did this week, too, you have to give them their flowers on this one. They could end up being the highest-ranked G5 champ, too, if you consider the fact that they—presuming that they are able to see this season through—will be likely the only one with a top-5 win.
feed