College football has changed by leaps and bounds in recent years, from NIL to the transfer portal to Kansas being kind of good. What once seemed a core tenet of the sport is now yesterday's news.
And yet, we remain tethered to an outdated metric when it comes to judging teams. We can put a speaker in a helmet, but we can't find a better system than a Top 25 list.
It's a ridiculous premise, as North Carolina coach Mack Brown astutely pointed out.
"I used to do the coaches' poll, but I quit doing that," Brown said, "because after about the first six or eight, they're all about alike. You can't tell who's next."
He's right. The margin between, say, the ninth- and 10th-best teams can be razor thin, while No. 11 feels light-years behind. And moreover, why 25? When the AP began ranking 25 teams in 1989, there were just 106 FBS teams (though we called it Division I-A back then). With Kennesaw State moving up this season, we now have 134 -- which, proportionally, should mean we rank a Top 32 if we wanted to be fair.
But all of that is beside the point. The bigger issue is rankings are an anachronism, and it's time for something better.
It's time for tiers.
We dug into a host of in-depth metrics -- from the old-fashioned Top 25s to the newfangled analytics such as SP+ and FPI -- and used that data to group similar teams together, then rank those groups.
It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.
So with that, presenting your 2024 preseason tiers.
Jump to:
Top of the pack | Maybe playoff-bound
Good vibes and jangled nerves | Group of 5 potential
QB carousel | Trending up
