Moving the Chains: Takeaways from College Football 2024 – Week One

Welcome to NCAA football, the 2024 edition:

• Four major conferences with 68 teams. The Big Four. A post-season playoff with 12 teams rather than four.

• Conference expansion. The Big Ten with 18 teams and the Big-12 with 16. Sixteen teams in the SEC, and 18 teams in the ACC.

• The state of Texas with teams in the ACC, SEC and the Big-12. (Some of us still remember when they were all in the same conference: Southwest. RIP.)

• NIL. Transfer portal. Two-minute timeouts (don’t even think about calling them warnings … says the NCAA). In-game video on the sidelines. Helmet radios (but only one per team, please)!

• Coast-to-coast conference realignments. Defending national champion Michigan with a brand new head coach. Nick Saban in the studio rather than on the sideline.

Welcome to a brand new season of college football. A lot has changed over the past eight months.

But there are still some things that haven’t changed: the fans being one of them. They’re as rabid as ever to pull for their favorite team to claim one of the berths in the Diamond Dozen (you read it here first!) after the regular season comes to an end.

As for the realignments, where colleges located along the Pacific Ocean (Stanford, Cal) will now compete in a conference aligned along the Atlantic (ACC), teams can expect to log an unusually high number of frequent flyer miles this season. Case in point: UCLA’s 12-game schedule will require 22,048 miles worth of travel this season. (By comparison, the most travel that will be required of an SEC school is LSU with 6,789 miles.) California leads the ACC (20,660) and West Virginia the Big-12 (11,138).

Enough on that. Let’s get to the action, beginning with a game that actually took place last week in Dublin, Ireland. After posting a perfect regular season in 2023, followed by a 60-point loss to Georgia in the Orange Bowl, the Florida State Seminoles opened their 2024 campaign with a three-point loss to a nearly flawless performance by the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, 24-21. My guess is that teams from the Peach State won’t be on FSU’s radar anytime soon. (They don’t play Georgia Tech again until 2027 and can always turn down a bowl game matchup with any of the other teams from the Peach State.)

As for the action over the official opening weekend:

Last November, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said, “If Clemson is a stock, you better buy all you freaking can right now.” Great comment … if his Tigers were playing a team of investment brokers from Wall Street. Unfortunately, they were playing the top-ranked Georgia Bulldogs. The game wasn’t nearly as close as the final score indicates: Georgia — 34, Clemson — 3. Georgia has now won 40 consecutive regular season games, the second-longest streak of all time (Oklahoma has the record with 45). Incidentally, the Bulldogs’ last regular season loss was to Florida … four seasons ago.

Speaking of the Gators, they came into their game against Miami with an SEC best 34 straight victories in home openers. So much for that: Miami — 41, Florida — 17. For the record, when Florida kicks off against Samford next week, it will be 328 days since the Gators’ last win. They’ve now lost six consecutive games dating back to mid-October of last season. In the first quarter, the Gator defense made a great defensive stop of a Miami drive … only a late hit on the quarterback, Cam Ward, kept the drive alive, which led to the first Hurricane touchdown. The rest of the game — missed tackles, poor clock management, failure to convert on third downs (1 for 9) — demonstrated the team may have actually taken a step backward from last season (5-7). Gator coach Billy Napier said the loss was “embarrassing.” Meanwhile, Gator fans say the loss wasn’t anything they haven’t seen in the past two years.

Texas and Oklahoma came on strong in their SEC debuts, collectively outscoring their two opponents 103-3. Impressive, perhaps, until you compare it to Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi and Auburn collectively outscoring their four opponents by 275 points (281-6). (Incidentally, the composite score in those four first halves alone was 191-3. Then again, their opponents were Chattanooga, Furman, Western Kentucky and Alabama A&M, teams talking heads commonly refer to as “cream puffs,” and teams that Florida should have seriously considered opening with if Billy Napier wants to keep his job.)

Tennessee started off with a bang on offense: 490 yards and 45 points. That was just in the first half. Maybe Tennessee is who Dabo Swinney should have recommended for stock, because the Vols were blue chip. For the game, they piled up 717 yards and 36 first downs. Even though they took their foot off the pedal in the second half, the Vols still gained more yardage (227) than Clemson did in its entire game (188).

I’ve been ragging on west coast football — specifically the Pac-12 — for as long as I can remember. Apparently I’m not the only one: 10 of their 12 teams abandoned ship since the end of last season and joined other conferences. The dust is still settling as to what that means, so I’ll just end with a recap of how each of the Big Four have fared thus far (pending the results of the USC-LSU and FSU-Boston College games on Sunday and Monday night):

• Big Ten: 16-1 (Minnesota took the loss)

• Big-12: 14-2 (Houston, West Virginia)

• ACC: 14-4 (FSU, Stanford, Virginia Tech)

• SEC: 13-2 (Florida, Texas A&M)

A quick shoutout to Vanderbilt, which opened its season with an unexpected 34-27 overtime win over Virginia Tech. The game may be insignificant in the long run, but if nothing else, it was an indication that for this season, a season certain to be unlike any other, anything can happen.

Finally, my early Heisman favorite: Miami QB Cam Ward, one of the players who jumped ship from the Pac-2 (his former school, Washington State, is one of the two remaining schools in the former Pac-12; Oregon State is the other). His numbers against Florida: 26 completions in 35 attempts for 385 yards and three TDs with one interception. He’s at the top of my list despite intentionally running out of bounds on QB scrambles a couple of times in the first half. On both occasions he sacrificed three or four additional yards: not because he was being cocky or wanted to avoid getting hit, but rather because he knew he would get the yardage in due time … which he did.)

Also on the radar: Tennessee QB Nico Iamaleava — 22 of 28 for 314 yards and three touchdowns. Again, that was in the first half.

All of this just in the first week. This season should be one of a kind.