The 2024 college football season has been pretty awesome.
There were plenty of surprise teams, both good and bad. Conference realignment led to some pretty cool matchups that we don’t often see like Texas vs. Georgia or Ohio State vs. Oregon. There were no super-dominant teams, either. Only the Oregon Ducks finished the season undefeated among FBS schools. Oregon, Army, Indiana, Notre Dame and Boise State were the only teams with fewer than two losses.
It’s been an exciting year, and the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff hasn’t even started yet.
The amount of parity we saw throughout the sport helped make it a memorable four-plus months of regular season and conference championship action.
On the latest episode of NBC Sports Boston’s Patriots Talk Podcast, host Tom E. Curran asked Boston College head coach Bill O’Brien about what surprised him in his return to college football from the NFL.
“I would say the biggest thing is the parity,” O’Brien said. “I mean, there’s a lot of parity in college football, for obvious reasons. There’s a lot of different factors that go into that. But when you look at our conference, the ACC, you look at Syracuse has nine wins. Duke had nine wins. SMU and Clemson, they’re in the playoff. There’s a lot of good football around.
“You look at the SEC, who’d have thought that Alabama would have three losses? There’s teams that were 3-9 the previous year, Arizona State and Indiana, that now are in the playoff. So there’s a chance for everybody. If you do it the right way and you bring in the right people, you got a shot.
“We’re trying to build something here. But I was — I don’t know if I was surprised, but that’s definitely something that was eye opening was the parity in college football.”
Boston College went 7-5 (4-4 in ACC play) in O’Brien’s first season leading the program, which was a one-win improvement from the Eagles’ 6-6 regular season record in 2023. BC can earn another victory on Dec. 28 when it plays Nebraska in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium.
One of the reasons for the increased parity in college football is the revamped transfer portal. Players can switch schools pretty easily these days, and all of this player movement has allowed these teams to overhaul their rosters in just one offseason.
Which team will be this year’s Indiana or Arizona State and make a surprising leap to playoff contention? Could it be North Carolina, who will now be coached by Bill Belichick? You never know. If Belichick is able to land some good players in the transfer portal, the Tar Heels could be a tough team to beat next season, and their 2025 schedule is pretty soft.
But as O’Brien alluded to above, the ACC has plenty of parity. There aren’t many bad teams in that 16-team conference. So it’ll be fascinating to see how Belichick’s UNC squad fares next season, and whether he can make enough improvements to the program to make it more competitive in Year 1.
Also in this episode:
