B/R Experts' October Bold Predictions for 2024 CFB Season

One month down, two more to play.

The journey toward the 2024 College Football Playoff is slowly starting to take shape.

How will the season ultimately play out? You're about to have all of the answers, thanks to Bleacher Report's expert crew.

Mediocre humor aside, our CFB writers are continually reacting to the latest news around the sport.

Preseason expectations have steadily been replaced with actual games, and those results have reshapedor perhaps emboldenedsome of our opinions of what's to come.

And it's time to get a little bold.

B/R's panel includes David Kenyon, Adam Kramer, Morgan Moriarty, Joel Reuter and Brad Shepard.

When the SEC brought in Oklahoma and Texas, the sport's conference superpower only added to its strength.

And that excellence is about to become unmistakable.

Especially given the preseason AP Top 25, it shouldn't be surprising the SEC is positioned to have several CFP representatives.

Georgia, Texas, Alabama and Ole Miss all entered the year as top contenders, while Missouri, LSU, Tennessee and Oklahoma each garnered plenty of offseason respect.

Believing the eight-team group would produce four CFP qualifiers was not difficult, and that hasn't changed.

The challenge, however, is head-to-head matchups are a catalyst for movement in the polls.

It's nice to believe that every game is treated equally, but the reality is that the timing of a result matters, too.

Fortunately for the SEC, most of the biggest showdowns are packed into October.

Georgia is the lone school with back-to-back games against (currently ranked) foes in November.

That separation will allow a deep group of contenders to prevent a major drop in the rankings, especially since the CFP selection committee likely won't harshly penalize an SEC team for losing a competitive, marquee game.

Only the conference champion will receive a bye to the quarterfinals, but three more SEC programs will be ranked between fifth and eighth in the final Top 25 on Selection Day.

As a result, three of the four inaugural opening-round games will be played on an SEC campus.

We spent many months deciding whether it would be Utah, Kansas State or Oklahoma State to emerge from the Big 12 and make the College Football Playoff.

As we enter the bulk of the season, however, Iowa State is best positioned to steal this spot.

The Cyclones have the nation's No.

4 ranked scoring defense along with an incredibly favorable schedule until the final two games.

A balanced team with a talented young QB in Rocco Becht, Iowa State has the ingredients to give teams like Utah and Kansas State issues down the stretch.

Also, the team has only three road games left.

While there will be sexier playoff picks, Iowa State has emerged as a force.

As such, it could reasonably make the Big 12 Championship Game with only one or two losses, win the conference and make its way into the expanded postseason in the very first year.

It's not the outcome we foresaw in the new-look Big 12's maiden voyage, but it's the one we're likely to get.

Iowa State gets it done.

With the new 12-team playoff starting this season, there have already been numerous talking points surrounding the expanded system.

The regular season doesn't matter, the SEC or Big Ten might have too many teams earn bids, etc.

But what I am most curious to see is which program ends up getting the Group of Five's automatic berth.

The fifth-highest-ranked conference champion will likely be a G5 team and seeded 12th in the CFP bracket.

As things stand, several teams would be worthy of earning bids.

Boise State and undefeated UNLV in the Mountain West look great early.

While the Sun Belt's James Madison is unbeaten with a signature win after hanging 70 points on North Carolina, Liberty is unblemished in Conference USA.

Army and Navy are both 4-0 for the first time since 1945.

I truly believe whatever team earns that 12th spot will be one of the most controversial and difficult decisions the CFP selection committee has to make.

Plus, since a potential 14-team system would likely have just one spot for a Group of Five team, whatever the committee does will start to set a precedent for years to come.

A lot has been made about the SEC's early dominance atop the 2024 college football landscape, and it's not hard to see why when a quick glance at the latest AP poll shows nine SEC teams, including four of the nation's top five contenders.

Alabama, Texas, Tennessee and one-loss Georgia are the cream of the crop.

Missouri is still undefeated, while Ole Miss, LSU and Oklahoma all remain relevant in the playoff picture even after early setbacks.

Meanwhile, the Big Ten has seven teams in the latest AP poll, featuring Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, Michigan and USC ranked among the nation's top 12 teams.

Yet the conference is rarely mentioned in the same breath as the SEC in terms of conference supremacy.

Beyond that group, upstarts Indiana, Illinois and Nebraska are lurking on the national periphery and can't be ignored.

Iowa's early loss to Iowa State is looking more acceptable with each passing week, too.

The ACC and Big 12 are both shaping up to potentially be one-bid leagues, while the Group of Five contingent will also occupy one spot.

Would anyone be surprised if the SEC and Big Ten take up the remaining nine slots in the playoff field? The majority opinion right now seems to be more SEC teams than any other conference, so here's predicting that it will instead be the Big Ten that leads the way with the most representatives among the 12-team contingent vying for a national championship.

Everybody is talking about the reanimated corpse of Miami in Mario Cristobal's third year with the injection of quarterback Cam Ward.

But the best team in the ACC is Clemson.

That's difficult to believe if you wrote them off after watching the Tigers get annihilated 34-3 by Georgia in Week 1.

Since then, the Tigers aren't even the same team.

Behind a (dare-we-say) juggernaut offense and quarterback Cade Klubnik, they've since dispatched Appalachian State 66-20, North Carolina State 59-35 and Stanford 40-14.

The Tigers don't play the Hurricanes in the regular season, and a smooth-sailing schedule features small tests at Florida State (Oct.

5), home to Louisville (Nov.

2), at Virginia Tech (Nov.

9) and home to South Carolina (Nov.

30).

This isn't just a good team right now, though; it's the league's best.

They'll continue to hone their confidence and then crush the 'Canes in the title game before winning at least one playoff game.

Seems the rumors of Swinney's demise were greatly exaggerated.

From a health-of-the-program perspective, the Tigers still need to adapt and fill gaps through the portal, something they stubbornly won't do.

But Swinney tabbing offensive coordinator Garrett Riley from TCU is proving to be a good choice, as things are finally clicking for Klubnik.

All the young playmakers they've surrounded him with through recruiting are playing well, and the defense is predictably strong, too.

This is a dangerous team that should be on everyone's CFP radar..

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