Ranking The Top 10 Most Disappointing Power Four Teams In 2024-25

January 30, 2025

Justin ranks the 10 most disappointing power conference teams from the 2024 college football season. Where do teams like Florida State and Michigan rank?

The 2024 college football season saw some fun surprises, like Arizona State making it to the playoffs, but not everything went well across the FBS landscape.

Some teams opened the year with big expectations but then failed to live up to them for one reason or another. From the top 10 preseason teams that faltered to teams that were thought to be on the rise and never go off the ground, there were a number of disappointments in 2024.

Below are the 10 most disappointing power conference teams from the 2024 college football season.

10. Arizona

Arizona lost head coach Jedd Fisch to Washington before the 2024 season, but the team retained quarterback Noah Fifita and wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, so hopes were high that there wouldn't be too much falloff for the Wildcats.

First play of the game is an interception by Noah Fifita.

— Jason Scheer (@jasonscheer) November 23, 2024

Instead, the team went 4-8, and the offense was a nightmare, ranking 114th in the country in points per game at just 21.8. Fifita regressed big time, doubling his interceptions to a Big 12-worst 12 while completing falling apart as far as accuracy went, from a 72.4% completion rate in 2023 to just 60.5% last season.

The defense struggled as well, but it's hard to blame the poor results on anything but the offense's struggles.

9. Auburn

Auburn wasn't expected to compete for an SEC title, but there were plenty who expected a step forward in the second season of the Hugh Freeze era. Instead, the Tigers did exactly what they did in Freeze's first season: lost seven games.

The team managed to win three of its final five games to build some momentum heading into the offseason, but winning five games overall was once unacceptable at Auburn.

Now, though, the Tigers have won exactly either five or six games for five consecutive seasons. Before 2020, it hadn't finished with that few wins since 2012. This whole program is going through a disappointing period. Can it find its way out?

8. Oklahoma

Texas and Oklahoma both joined the SEC this season. Texas made the playoffs, while the Sooners suffered their second losing season in the past three years.

Before 2022, Oklahoma hadn't had a losing campaign since 1998. If 2024 had been the first bad year since then, the Sooners would rank much higher on this list, but a second 6-7 campaign really makes it feel like 2023's 10-3 record was the anomaly, and expectations for the Brent Venables era should be adjusted accordingly.

Still, in the team's final seven games against FBS opponents, Oklahoma managed just one win. To the Sooners' credit, that win was over Alabama, but it doesn't make up for all the losses.

7. Nebraska

This was supposed to be the year that Nebraska built something special. Freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola was expected to change the trajectory of this Huskers program, and to some extent, he did, as a 7-6 record meant Nebraska finished over .500 for the first time since 2016.

Dylan Raiola finished up his Freshman Year:

🌽 2,819 Passing Yards
🌽 13 Touchdowns
🌽 11 Interceptions
🌽 7-6 Record

Rate Raiola’s 1st Year from 1-10 pic.twitter.com/rY4YNlvdAH

— SleeperCFB (@SleeperCFB) December 28, 2024

However, Raiola struggled after a strong start. The Huskers started 3-1, with Raiola throwing eight touchdowns in those four games. He threw just five touchdowns over the entire rest of the 2024 season. The team was 2-5 in its final seven games, turning an exciting start into another disappointing season in Lincoln.

6. NC State

NC State was fourth in the ACC preseason poll, but the team finished a disappointing 6-7 after consistently failing to stop its opponents from scoring, allowing 30.2 points per game, which ranked 103rd in the nation.

Beyond the defensive issues, losing quarterback Grayson McCall after he was forced to retire due to his concussion history, including a brutal one during the team's loss to Wake Forest in October. McCall, a three-time Sun Belt Player of the Year at Coastal Carolina, might have helped this team finish over .500 if he'd been able to stay on the field.

5. Oklahoma State

If you told the world before the 2024 season that a college running back would come close to breaking the all-time single-season yardage record, the first guess from most people would have been Ollie Gordon II, who led the FBS with 1,732 yards in 2023.

But Gordon took a huge step back in 2024, finishing with just 880 yards. His yards per carry dropped from 6.1 in 2023 to 4.6 last season. Combine that with Alan Bowman throwing 12 picks and the defense allowing 35.6 points per game, and you can see how the Cowboys went just 3-9.

4.  Utah

It's hard to rank any Big 12 team too high in these rankings simply because the Big 12 as a conference entered the year viewed as the weakest of the four power conferences. There was also a lot of uncertainty about how teams stacked up. In the preseason media poll, five teams received first-place votes.

But Utah, the preseason No. 1 team in that media poll, goes down as the most disappointing Big 12 team. The Utes were expected to be playoff contenders with Cam Rising back under center, but injuries once again struck Rising, limiting him to three games.

Utah Head Coach Kyle Whittingham announced that QB Cam Rising is no longer on the team

Whittingham said he can’t speak on Rising’s plan, the future of Rising’s career is up in the air right now pic.twitter.com/N3TSQ9YwcW

— SleeperCFB (@SleeperCFB) January 16, 2025

The Utes went 5-7 on the year and just 2-7 in Big 12 play. The defense played well enough to keep the team in most games, but an offense that was 102nd in points per game was too much to overcome.

3. Michigan

Michigan won the national title in 2023, but the team was always going to fall off a bit after that. Running back Blake Corum fueled that title, but with Corum and quarterback J.J. McCarthy off to the NFL, no one expected a repeat.

But they did expect Michigan to be a better team than they proved to be. Ranked No. 9 in the preseason, Michigan started a solid 4-1 with a win over then-ranked USC before things fell apart, with the team dropping four of its next five.

The Wolverines bounced back to end the year, though, beating Ohio State and then taking down Alabama in the ReliaQuest Bowl, leading to hope of a strong 2025 for the program.

2. USC

USC finished 7-6 this season. It's not as bad as many teams on this list, but it's a step back from 2023, which was itself a step back from 2022. Every year under Lincoln Riley gets a little worse for the Trojans.

This year, USC fell outside the top 50 in both scoring offense and scoring defense. Defensively, that was a massive improvement, but without Caleb Williams under center, the offense dropped from 41.8 points per game in 2023 to 30.2 in 2024.

1. Florida State

In 2023, Florida State was 13-0 but was left out of the four-team playoff, as the selection committee determined that the team losing starting quarterback Jordan Travis to injury was enough to justify leaving the Seminoles out.

Since that moment, FSU has been an abject disaster. The team ended the 2023 season with a 63-3 loss to Georgia, then entered 2024 ranked 10th and quickly fell out of the AP Top 25, opening the year with three consecutive losses before finally getting a win over Cal.

That win didn't spark some kind of renaissance for the program, though, as the team went on to lose seven of its final eight games. The only win in that span was against FCS team Charleston Southern.

1-10 Charleston Southern at 1-9 Florida State on "ACC Extra" is the @SickosCommittee Game of the Century. pic.twitter.com/XosdZQ8yZU

— College Sports Only (@CollegeSportsO) November 20, 2024

Going from No. 10 in the preseason to finishing the season with a 2-10 record is why Florida State earns the title of 2024's most disappointing team.

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