College football FPI release: Top teams, new playoff trends - ESPN

The 2024 college football season will be all about big changes.

Familiar programs are going to be in very different places. The Big Ten, for example, is welcoming Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA, ending the Pac-12 as we knew it; it's one of several realignments taking place this season. In addition, the sport will have to continue evolving the way players are compensated. And perhaps the most significant new wrinkle of them all comes on the game's highest-profile stage: The College Football Playoff expands its field from four to 12 teams this season, giving more schools a chance to win their way to the national title.

To help make sense of everything, ESPN is releasing our 2024 Football Power Index (FPI) ratings and projections, which include forecasts for every team's record, its chances of winning a conference title, and of course, its probability to make the playoff and win the championship.

From the table below, many of the usual suspects are among the favorite programs to take home the national title, but there is also plenty of uncertainty:

Before we dive into more of the forecast, let's briefly talk about how all of this works. First things first: The FPI is a power rating that tracks each team's strength relative to an average FBS squad. Teams are rated on offense, defense and special teams, with the values representing points per game. (So that means Georgia is rated as nearly 27 points per game better than the average team, which is pretty good!)

Those numbers are then used to simulate the season schedule 20,000 times, including the conference championships and the CFP bracket, simulating the selection process using an algorithm that mimics the way the committee typically picks teams. Finally, once we have