With the help of our trusty supercomputer, we’re providing college football predictions for every game each week.
As always, our projection model is spitting out its data-backed predictions for all college football games throughout the 2024 season.
In a relatively wide-open landscape, traditional SEC powerhouses Alabama and Georgia remain among the favorites to win the national championship. Tennessee and Ole Miss are also contenders, with SEC newcomer Texas showing it’s also a legitimate threat.
Big Ten teams Indiana, Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State all expect to be vying for a place in the newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. Iowa State, BYU and Kansas State have emerged in the unpredictable Big 12, while Boise State, Notre Dame, Army and SMU hope to make the playoff from outside the power conferences.
Now, all of that is a little far in the future to be given much consideration yet, but our TRACR-powered supercomputer is continuing to make predictions for every game this season.
TRACR (Team Rating Adjusted for Conference and Roster) is a net efficiency stat that measures how a team should play against a standardized level of competition. The model is based on an EPA (expected points added) calculation weighed by opponent strength.
A team with a TRACR of 0.0 is considered an average team. So if a team with a 7.5 TRACR faced a team with a minus-3.0 TRACR on a neutral site, the better team would be expected to win by about 10.5 points if both teams ran the same number of plays, according to the model.
Each week throughout the NCAA football season, our model will have something to say about every game. No matter if it’s a headliner like Ohio State-Michigan in another chapter of a legendary rivalry, or a game we may all be a bit less excited about, it unsentimentally beeps its way through its college football picks, boldly dropping predictions for each.
Several key matchups take place across the Week 12 college football slate, with AP No. 21 LSU visiting Florida, No. 24 Missouri traveling to face No. 23 South Carolina and No. 6 Tennessee heading to No. 11 Georgia later in the evening.
For those matchups and everything between, we’ve taken plenty of data, pumped it through our predictive model and come up with its win probabilities.
Keep in mind that these percentages move throughout the week as player news shake things up (the following win probabilities were as of Thursday). You can always find the win percentages – pregame or live – on our season-long predictions page.
Note: The ranking below represents where the team sits in TRACR, while the percentage indicates win probability for the given matchup. The home team is in bold.
Saturday’s Games
No. 1 Ohio State 98.1%, No. 67 Northwestern 1.9%
Ohio State has won 10 straight games against Northwestern, averaging 40.9 points per game against the Wildcats over that span. Northwestern has averaged 12.8 points per game against the Buckeyes over the losing streak.
No. 2 Texas 87.5%, No. 19 Arkansas 12.5%
All five of Quinn Ewers’ passing touchdowns against Florida on Saturday went for at least 20 yards. Ewers only had three 20-yard pass TDs this season entering the game. It was the most pass TDs of 20 yards in a single game by any Longhorns’ QB this century.
No. 4 Alabama 99.9%, FCS No. 7 Mercer 0.1%
Alabama has five wins by 25+ points, tied for the second most in the FBS this season (Ohio State – six). Two of those wins came in the Tide’s last two outings, both versus ranked foes.
No. 5 Tennessee 53.2%, No. 7 Georgia 46.8%
Georgia has won its last seven meetings against Tennessee, all by at least 14 points. That is the longest active such streak by any current SEC team against a current conference foe.
No. 8 Notre Dame 93.8%, No. 61 Virginia 6.2%
This is the first time Notre Dame has scored 50+ points in consecutive games since November 1996. The Irish could join Miami (FL), New Mexico and Tennessee as the only FBS teams to do this in three straight games this season.
No. 9 Texas A&M 99.8%, No. 132 New Mexico State 0.3%
The Aggies are one of three FBS teams this season to have one player with at least 10 rushing TDs (Le’Veon Moss) and two others with at least five TD runs (Amari Daniels, Marcel Reid). The other teams are Alabama and Tulane.
No. 10 Oregon 78.7%, No. 35 Wisconsin 21.3%
Oregon has won 11 straight games against Big Ten opponents, a streak that includes a 28-27 win over Wisconsin in the 2020 Rose Bowl. The all-time series between Wisconsin and Oregon is deadlocked with three wins apiece.
No. 11 South Carolina 72.5%, No. 31 Missouri 27.5%
Missouri has won five straight games against South Carolina, holding the Gamecocks to 14 or fewer points in four of those victories. This is the first time since 2013 that both teams are ranked in the AP Poll entering their matchup.
No. 12 LSU 55.1%, No. 15 Florida 44.9%
LSU’s five-game win streak against Florida is its longest in the series history. The Tigers are the third team this century to win five straight games against the Gators. Alabama has an active eight-game streak and Florida State won five straight from 2013-17.
No. 13 Penn State 96.3%, No. 83 Purdue 3.7%
Purdue has lost 10 straight games against Penn State, last winning in 2004. In the last 40 years, the Boilermakers have had only two longer losing streaks against a single opponent – a current 18-game skid against Wisconsin and an 11-game slide against Notre Dame that ended in 1996.
No. 14 Clemson 82.1%, No. 48 Pittsburgh 17.9%
Cade Klubnik has thrown three or more touchdowns in six games this season, tied with Chandler Morris for the second-most such games in the FBS (Cam Ward, eight). It is the most games by a Clemson QB in a single season since 2019 (Trevor Lawrence, nine).
No. 17 Louisville 94.5%, No. 80 Stanford 5.5%
Louisville has won four straight road conference games, dating back to last season. That is the longest streak for the Cardinals since a five-game run between 2012 and 2013.
No. 18 SMU 82.7%, No. 54 Boston College 17.3%
SMU owns a 15-game winning streak against conference opponents, the longest active streak in the FBS by six games (Boise State is second at nine). Since 1980, this is the third time SMU has started conference play 5-0 along with last season (9-0) and 1982 (7-0).
No. 20 USC 68.3%, No. 36 Nebraska 31.7%
This game could be decided on the ground. USC ranks sixth in the country in rushing TRACR, while Nebraska is 33rd in defensive TRACR against the run.
No. 24 Kansas State 66.2%, No. 40 Arizona State 33.8%
There are nine teams with 7+ wins who have yet to be ranked in a single AP or CFP Poll this season. Two from that group are from power conferences – Arizona State and Duke.
TRACR No. 3 Ole Miss, No. 6 Indiana, No. 16 Miami (FL), No. 21 Virginia Tech, No. 22 Army, No. 23 Oklahoma and No. 25 Iowa are on byes.
AP Top 25 teams not ranked in the TRACR top 25: No. 7 BYU, No. 13 Boise State, No. 18 Colorado, No. 19 Washington State, No. 24 Missouri and No. 25 Tulane.
Stats and facts provided by Stats Perform’s data insights team. Be sure to check out our MLB and NBA coverage, as well as all our college football and NFL picks. Follow us on X, Threads, Facebook and Instagram for more!
