Jon Joseph Moderator No. 1 Share Posted February 18 Here are College Football News, Pete Fiutak, 15 best Over/Under Win Total Bets (Odds by DraftKings) for 2024. https://collegefootballnews.com/news/15-best-college-football-win-total-predictions-best-bets-pre-spring-2024 A few comments on these recommendations. Almost Certain Wins = ACW; Almost Certain Losses = ACL. 15. UCLA - 5.5 - OVER ACW - Fresno State (with SC finishing up with Notre Dame, Fresno is the Bruins's 12th game in 2024,) at Hawaii, Indiana ACL - at LSU, OREGON, at Penn State, at UW. 50/50 - Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, at Rutgers, USC Wild Card? How much will extensive travel affect UCLA in 2024? Will UCLA under Foster be able to play better than its roster ranking? ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 12. USC - 7.5 - OVER ACW - Nebraska, Rutgers, Utah State. ACL - None 50/50 - At Maryland, at Michigan, at Minnesota, LSU (LV), Notre Dame, Penn State, at UCLA, at UW, Wisconsin. OK, paint me with The Sucker Brush. Especially with the schedule, ranked No. 2 in strength-of-schedule by SP+, the Trojans will play in 2024. Not easy in the B1G, then add on LSU and Notre Dame. However, I was impressed by the USC team that showed up to play Louisville in the Holiday Bowl. Louisville ran well against SC but the guys on D made open field tackles. And the defense and the offense for that matter, played more like a team than a bunch of guys free-lancing. I think the free-lancing started with Caleb Williams on down. And Grinch put one of the most undisciplined Ds on the field than even the Pac-12 has ever witnessed. I think the light bulb may have come on for Lincoln Riley. He knows he has to put a better D on the field to compete at a championship level and thus the poaching of DC Lynn from UCLA and an almost entire turnover of the assistant coaches on the D side of the ball. QB Miller Moss played a great game. One thing that stood out was SC's team speed, especially at the WR position, compared to No. 15 in the country Louisville. This same speed advantage will carry over against most of the opponents in the B1G. And, Riley has not forgotten how to coach an offense. Not in the Ducks league but with 11 transfer portal additions, the same number as No. 3 ranked Oregon added, SC ranks No. 12 to date in portal pickups. And, USC in the 2024 regular season misses both B1G frontrunners: Oregon and Ohio State. If USC can come out of the box with a win over LSU in Las Vegas, well ... LSU also lost a Heisman winner at QB. The LSU D was crummy in 2023 and LSU poached the Mizzou DC in an attempt to fix the D side of the ball. The comparisons with SC are very interesting. USC has only six home games but plays both Penn State and Notre Dame in LA. The Trojans do have a tough stretch of seven games in a row without a break from 9/21 at Michigan through 11/2 at UW; four of the six games will be road games. Ouch! Like Newbie Oregon, potential B1G contender SC received no scheduling breaks from B1G HQ. ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... I think Fiutak does a good job of summarizing the B12 in 2024: "Pretty much every decent-to-good team in the B12 can lose just about any or every game." I agree. I find preseason polls with both Utah and Arizona highly ranked to be off the mark. Utah has lost 4 or more games in the last 5 seasons. Will Rising coming off a severe injury be all that? When last seen in the bowl game in Las Vegas, Utah was getting punched in the mouth by, wait for it, Northwestern. Jon Wilner has the Utes preseason ranked at 5. ESPN has Utah at 10 and Arizona at 11; I don't see it. (As for another B12 team on the list, Texas Tech 8.5? The Red Raiders last won 9 games in 2008 and last won 10 games in 1976.) I think the B12 champion will be the 2024/25 Playoff 4 seed with 3 or more losses. A reason why the playoff format will change come 2026/27. ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 1. Ohio State - 10.5 - OVER. CFN predicts that the Buckeyes will go 12-0. All games ACW except for 50/50 at Oregon, and Penn State, and Michigan in Columbus. The Ohio State schedule is B1G Lite. I'm waiting to see whether 2nd Team All B12 QB Will Howard is that much of an improvement over Kyle McCord. One reason Howard entered the portal? He would have been the backup at K State in 2024 to Avery Johnson. I think Dillon Gabriel is much more of a 'sure thing' than Howard. Lots of on-paper talent behind Howard at QB but it is rookie talent. And OREGON comes into the 2024 season with a better OL and more certainty at OC than Ohio State. Ohio State, compared to OREGON, USC, Penn State, and Michigan, has an easier schedule. 8 home games is nice. 3 cupcakes OOC in Columbus to break in a new QB and OC is nice. Per CFN - 'In 2024 this Ohio State team is so loaded it had better hit at least 11 wins (with one of the wins over Michigan.)' Buckle Up! It's going to be B1G! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solar No. 2 Share Posted February 18 (edited) I think the order of the top few teams in the B1G is: OSU UO USC Penn State Michigan That does not take into account strength of schedule though which is what hurts USC and to a lesser extent UO. But Michigan is a rebuild on the coaching side and with the loss of 17 starters to the draft at combine level ability. USC will be much improved, but are still a great OL and DL away from being a team nobody wants to play. Penn State always seems to lack the baller mentality and don't have the talent to overcome that against really good teams. I do see the B12 taking the baton from the PAC12 as the conference of parity going forward. Any given Saturday half the teams can beat the other half. Edited February 18 by Solar 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Joseph Author Moderator No. 3 Share Posted February 19 Micro, great take. FWIW, I plan to take a look at a few too-early top 25's, through the team a pollster has ranked No. 12 to see if the ranking 'fits' with a given team's schedule and the strength of the schedule as best as can be determined in the preseason. If a prognosticator is not predicting through the Playoff Committee's final ranking and the final AP Poll after that, why other than for 'clicks' bother? 13 SEC teams finished in the 2024 top 25 recruiting classes. As the season progresses, 13 SEC teams will not battle it out for a bid to the playoff. With the size of conferences today, with a Power 2, the wide variances in out-of-conference scheduling, and with the playing of only 8 and 9 conference games, prognostications that have multiple teams from the same conference in the top 12 are not per se illogical. But factor in the intra-conference games the highly ranked teams play against one another and many of the forecasts do not seem like they will 'pencil out' at season's end. (If you are betting OVER/UNDER Win Totals, you probably should take a long look at a team's schedule, no?) The games will be played so in that respect, none of this really matters. But it is a long off-season and forecasting the coming season, at least for some of us (get a life?) helps to shorten the off-season. I like your B1G ranking. The four Pac teams coming on board, and divisions going away so B1G West teams will not always play six 'below average' opponents, will make it more difficult for Nebraska to come back and for Iowa to win ten games every season. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JabbaNoBargain No. 4 Share Posted February 19 Fun stuff! UCLA - Over - That seems very low. They actually played very solid D last year and would be surprised if they didn’t have a decent spring portal USC - Over - Ditto on being low, if the D was exactly the same as last year that’s a good number, don’t think it will be tOSU - exactly right. I think they’ll go 10-2, but wouldn’t bet money on that number, total coin flip at 10.5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
