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A lot of projections from this season’s preseason AP Top 25 haven’t worked out. Michigan started the season #9, but now find themselves on the fringe of bowl eligibility. Oklahoma State, at 17, will miss a bowl entirely, and Arizona (at 21) probably will too BYU, who did not a single vote, and who Vegas (and myself) thought would probably win under five games, is currently 9-0 and ranked #7.

But the biggest miss? That’s unquestionably the Florida State Seminoles.

Sure, the Noles had to replace a lot from last season's ACC Champion squad that finished the regular season undefeated. But the team hit the portal hard, returned some important production, recruited well, and had justifiably earned the benefit of the doubt. Florida State opened at #10 in the preseason AP Top 25.

It’s hard to overstate how dramatic the falloff has been. Florida State is currently 1-9. They are dead last in the country in scoring offense (13.3 ppg). While the Seminoles opened the season with a few close losses that might have been chalked up to just plain ol’ bad luck, they now look completely uncompetitive, especially in the second half. Notre Dame just beat them 52-3, in a game where Florida State failed to gain even 90 yards of offense. Sports Reference lists FSU with an SRS (Simple Ratings System) of -3.97, one of the worst in the country among P4 schools.

I don’t think this is quite the worst FSU team in history… Florida State went 0-11 in 1973, and Sports Reference lists a few squads from the late 1950s as worse than this year’s team. But it does appear this is the worst non-COVID Florida State team in anything approaching the modern era.

Which got me thinking…is this the worst season by an “elite program” in college football history?

I don’t want to get too bogged down in the definition of ‘Blueblood’ (which Florida State isn’t, since it was a women’s college without a football team back when Michigan and Notre Dame were winning title)…so let’s just go with teams that can claim a national title since 1980.

The good news for Florida State fans is…other teams have had worse seasons! Alabama went 0-11 in 1955 with an SRS rating of -10.57. Auburn went 0-10 in 1950 (and had their memorable 3-9 campaign in 2012). A few of the early 1970s Clemson squads had inferior SRS rankings to 2024 Florida State, Florida had multiple putrid years before the 1980s, Nebraska in the 1940s, LSU was about this bad in the early 90s, as was Texas in the late 80s. Most elite programs have turned in multiple seasons of inferior SRS rated teams than 2024 Florida State.

But with a few exceptions, most of those bottomed out years were in the middle of a prolonged decline, not following an elite season. Sure, Alabama had already won multiple national titles before 1950, but they were under .500 the year before and three seasons removed from a major bowl. The terrible Florida teams were almost all before Charley Pell got going, the garbage LSU teams were after the decline of the Mark Archer era, and several years before Saban. The bulk of Miami’s worst seasons were when a bad loss was losing to George Washington or Villanova, not Duke.

There have been a few Miami teams in recent memory that started off ranked and finished with SRS ratings in the neighborhood of FSU, like 2022 Miami (who finished 5-7 and with a -2.92 rating), or 2012 Auburn….but it’s very rare.

As best as I can tell, this year’s FSU collapse is really without peer in the modern era. Blame injuries, recruiting misses, the portal, coaching, bad luck…or all of the above. We’ll have to see if crashes this huge become more common in an era with more fluid roster movement.

But hey, cheer up, Florida State! You’re not the only fancy pants program who stinks this year!

The conventional wisdom is that the theme of this college football season is parity. 

Oregon, Indiana, BYU and Army are all still undefeated, but most college football analysts seem to believe the gap between Oregon and a slew of other 1 and 2 loss teams is relatively small, and that the national championship race is more wide open than in year’s past.

That may be true! But I think there are a few maybe less-reported-on reasons for that.

For one, a lot of big-budget, blue-chip recruiting-type programs this year stink.

It isn’t just Florida State. USC and Florida are 4-5. Michigan, Oklahoma and Washington are 5-5. Auburn is 3-6. Forget competing for national titles, most of those teams aren’t even going to make bowl games.

A few of the other teams on the ol’ Blue Chip Ratio list, or schools that sign more four and five-star recruits than three-stars, have also underperformed. LSU, with a 70% BCR, is 6-3 and still has to play desperate Florida and Oklahoma teams. Texas A&M and Clemson both have two losses and could very well finish with a third before the end of the regular season as well.

The bulk of the teams commonly considered to be true playoff contenders are still coming from the list of elite recruiting squads everybody would have expected. Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Oregon and Texas are the top five teams in the 2024 Blue Chip Ratio, and lo and behold, all five are right in the mix for a national title. Other high rated BCR teams, like Miami, Notre Dame and Penn State, are right in the conversation for bids as well.

This is part of why I’m a little resistant to embrace the parity narrative. According to most mock brackets, about ten of the twelve teams in the field are “traditional” powers that recruit (and spend) at an elite level. Only BYU and Indiana are the outliers at the moment. I’m not counting Boise State, since a G5 team basically has to make the field, and none of them recruit at close to a BCR level.

Is that enough to call this a year of parity? Will unbalanced league schedules, where teams will skip several conference opponents each season (Indiana, for example, doesn’t play Oregon, Penn State, Iowa or Minnesota, and has yet to play Ohio State) make it easier for new teams to sneak in the field? Is this, like 2007, just One Of Those Years when weird stuff happens?

I think we probably still need more data. But whether this is an outlier or a harbinger of things to come, I’m certainly enjoying watching it.

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NIL isn’t just about social media posts. Here’s an example of some college athletes starting actual businesses

Now that regulations surrounding college athlete commercial activity have loosened up, the most common ways you hear about athletes cashing in are via social media/promotional type arrangements with their collectives or local brands…or from working regular ol’ jobs.

But a more open rule book also means that entrepreneurship is an option. Two athletes at Cal State Bakersfield have done exactly that…starting a food truck.

Bentley and Kadar Waller both play on the Bakersfield men’s basketball team. While they’re not working 40+ hours a week on the truck during the season (their parents and other family members are helping), they reportedly are hoping to expand and eventually franchise the model.

I think this is awesome. If there’s one thing you have to learn if you’re going to be effective in college athletics, it’s time management. Having a real world laboratory to put into practice some of the stuff you learn in business school, while doing it with your brother and your family, and getting to chase your team playing high level basketball? What’s better than that?

Would they make more money posting about energy drinks on Instagram if they played at USC instead of Bakersfield? Yeah, probably. Will they learn more and develop deeper skills that will help them in whatever they decide to do in life by doing it this way? I think so.

You have to be a special kind of person to want to dedicate that much time (and energy, capital, etc.) into a business while you’re playing high level athletics. I’m glad NCAA rules have changed to make this sort of thing possible…because to me, this is a real part of what the college experience is supposed to be about.

If I ever find myself in Bakersfield, I know where I’m eating.