I’m a man of integrity.

If I make a bad call, I should own it. I make plenty of those, so I like to be accountable instead of pretending I’m right about everything. If that were the case, you wouldn’t be reading this column. I’d be on a beach eating seafood until I couldn’t see straight.

But I can see that I made some Playoff predictions in the preseason that might’ve missed the mark by a little … or a lot. I didn’t bat 1.000.

I had more hits than misses in the first year of the 12-team Playoff. I’m not sure if that’s saying that much, so I’ll let you decide. I wanted to get 9 or 10 correct. I did not. At most, I’ll get 7 correct.

Let’s start with the whiffs:

My biggest whiffs

  • No. 3 Florida State
  • No. 4 Oklahoma State
  • No. 10 Iowa
  • No. 11 Utah

Woof. I had Florida State going — wait for it — 12-1 and winning the ACC to earn a first-round bye. To be fair, I got the “1” right. It was just in the wrong column. Why did I have so much faith in Mike Norvell when we knew there was going to be massive turnover on that roster? Nine of his 10 players he had drafted in 2024 were former portal guys. I trusted that Norvell and his staff would again nail the portal and continue to build FSU into the top-tier ACC program.

Have I said “woof” yet?

Thank goodness Atlantic Coast-adjacent Cal joined the ACC and gave FSU a conference win this year. Still, it’s the single-worst preseason team prediction I’ve ever had.

Oklahoma State isn’t that far behind. You could argue that the Cowboys failing to win a conference game (so far) makes it an even worse pick than FSU. It’s a baffling development for a team that returned Doak Walker Award winner Ollie Gordon II and was No. 3 in FBS in percentage of returning production after reaching the Big 12 Championship. With Oklahoma and Texas off to the SEC, I made the natural assumption that Oklahoma State would thrive with its 2 rivals gone.

Triple woof.

Speaking of dumb preseason assumptions about Big 12 contenders, I assumed that Utah would have a healthy Cam Rising. Or rather, I assumed Rising would at least be healthy until some sort of catastrophic bowl game injury (I wasn’t actually predicting that but it’s hard to ignore that when it happens twice). Wrong again. Utah is 4-6 overall and 1-6 in Big 12 play. How fitting it is that BYU, Arizona State and Colorado were predicted to finish 11th or worse in the Big 12, yet all 3 are battling it out for a conference title. The only accurate Big 12 prediction I had was that the conference would be totally unpredictable.

Iowa has been much more predictable. What I bought into with the Hawkeyes was the addition-by-subtraction move of hiring outside the Ferentz family for an offensive coordinator, as well as a healthy Cade McNamara leading an Iowa team that was No. 9 in FBS in percentage of returning production after a 10-win season. The Hawkeyes haven’t been a disaster like those 3 other teams — the offense improved by 2 touchdowns per game (!) — but a 6-4 season with a 1-3 road record never sniffed the Playoff conversation. Perhaps I should’ve compensated more for the loss of generational punter Tory Taylor.

Either way, it’s a tough look that 4 of my 12 Playoff picks weren’t anywhere near CFP Top 25 consideration.

I missed the Group of 5 pick, but I don’t feel bad about it

I had Memphis. As in, 9-2 Memphis. The Tigers won’t sniff the late-season Playoff conversation because they lost 2 conference games and are on the outside looking in at the AAC Championship. Go figure that the Tigers won the 1 game I penciled in as a loss — the Norvell reunion showdown with Florida State.

The combined record of teams that Memphis beat in 2024 is 28-64. In the 2 losses, Memphis surrendered a combined 100 points to Navy and UTSA. The nation’s No. 102 pass defense might’ve had something to do with that.

But even if Memphis was sitting at 11-0, it might still be looking up at 1-loss Boise State. It’s not just that Ashton Jeanty has been a sensation. It’s a 1-loss team that played No. 1 Oregon down to the wire in Eugene. Boise State currently has more CFP Top 25 wins than Texas and Indiana, which is why if the season ended today, it would get a first-round bye as one of the 4 highest-ranked conference champs.

Boise State was the most popular preseason pick for the Group of 5 and with good reason.

My biggest hits

  • No. 1 Ohio State
  • No. 2 Georgia
  • No. 5 Texas
  • No. 6 Oregon
  • No. 7 Notre Dame
  • No. 8 Alabama
  • No. 9 Ole Miss

Nobody wants to see me pat myself on the back for (likely) correctly predicting that a bunch of preseason top-10 teams would make the Playoff.

Let’s keep it moving.

My lessons learned in the first year of predicting the CFP Top 12

Like, besides don’t have blind faith in Mike Norvell and instead put that all in Curt Cignetti? One of the things I realized while filling out a Playoff bracket in the preseason was how limited the at-large berths would be. Once you realize that 5 conference champs would be taking a spot, along with likely the loser of the Big Ten and SEC Championships, with potentially Notre Dame, that’s really only 4 other available spots.

For all the fear about 9-3 teams making the field and ruining the regular season, this first season has been a reminder that you still have to be an elite team to warrant this type of conversation. I banged the drum in August that 10 wins was going to be the number for Power Conference teams to hit. Anything less and you’d likely need a conference title path. Anything more and you’d probably be safe.

The other lesson to be learned is that rosters turn over much quicker now than they did before. FSU and Indiana are great examples of that, albeit for different reasons. That’ll make it tougher to predict the Playoff every year.

Perhaps I defaulted slightly too much to percentage of returning production. That’s been a reliable metric to forecast progression vs. regression year over year. I certainly defaulted too much to that with Oklahoma State (No. 3) and Iowa (No. 9), and I guess I ignored it with FSU (No. 89).

But at the same time, look at where the current CFP Top 12 ranked in that stat in the preseason:

  1. Oregon, No. 25
  2. Ohio State, No. 56
  3. Texas, No. 36
  4. Penn State, No. 37
  5. Indiana, No. 58
  6. Notre Dame, No. 99
  7. Alabama, No. 100
  8. Miami, No. 29
  9. Ole Miss, No. 22
  10. Georgia, No. 28
  11. Tennessee, No. 108
  12. Boise State, No. 35

Of those 12 teams, 9 ranked in the top half in FBS in percentage of returning production, including all of the current CFP top 5. If you do the entire current CFP Top 25, the only teams in the bottom half were No. 6 Notre Dame (99th), No. 7 Alabama (100th), No. 11 Tennessee (108th), No. 19 Army (111th), No. 20 Tulane (96th) and No. 25 Illinois (75th). That’s 76% of the current CFP Top 25 that was in the top half of that metric entering the season.

The lesson might be that if you’re predicting 8 of 12 teams to make the Playoff when they didn’t crack the top 100 in percentage of returning production, you’re likely setting yourself up for failure. If you’re ignoring an entire side of the ball — Oklahoma State’s lackluster defense — you’re in trouble. If you’re assuming greatness is imminent because of a 13-0 start the previous year … you get it.

Woof.