History shows that the teams in everyone's preseason top-five don't always end up there.
michiganstate.rivals.com
Information on college football preseason magazines. Reviews, consensus predictions, and comparisons of predictions to season results.
stassen.com
This page ranks the accuracy of the preseason magazines'
conference predictions for 2024, by comparing them to
conference finish.
Lower scores indicate more accurate predictions; the lower the score, the closer the predictions were to the actual results. Magazines are sorted by total score for all conferences, with the best predictions (lowest total scores) at the top. The best prediction for each conference/division is highlighted in the list. For information on the scoring method, see the
notes file.
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Over the past 10 years, a sample of 339 bowl games, the preseason Coaches poll predicted 59.9% of bowl game winners (163-109 with no prediction in 67 games with two unranked teams). The AP poll didn’t do much worse at 58.8% of winners (154-108 with no prediction in 77 games).
To put this in perspective, the team favored by the closing line in the gambling markets won 61.5% of games according to The Prediction Tracker (208-130 with no prediction in one game).