Three full weeks of the 2024 college football season are in the books, meaning every team has reached the quarter mark of their schedule. Bowl projections are just picking up, the Heisman Trophy race is wide open and the college football rankings feel more fluid than ever before, which is a credit to voters not sitting on status quo and actually reacting to results.
However: While much is still up in the air about this season, we can safely identify a few teams as disappointing underachievers. Sure, there’s time for a few of these programs to get back on track, but the vibes are not good.
Florida State (0-3)
Preseason AP rank: No. 10
No program has underachieved more this season than Florida State, the easy choice for college football’s biggest disappointment. A year removed from a 13-1 record, the Seminoles look broken with no obvious answer on how to fix themselves. It’s easy to wonder if the College Football Playoff snub had a greater than expected impact on this team’s psyche. The downgrade at the quarterback position has had an obvious impact, but it goes so far beyond that when you watch a listless FSU team just going through the motions.
Something is seriously amiss about Mike Norvell’s team and it’s not solely a talent issue when you’re losing to teams like Boston College, Georgia Tech and Memphis. Florida State became the first team in college football history to start the season top 10 and lose its first three games to unranked opponents. Florida State is hurtling toward an 0-4 start with Cal up next, and looks likely to miss a bowl game at this rate.
Florida (1-2)
When every national college football columnist is racing to declare your head coaching tenure over, you know things aren’t going too well. It’s not that Florida struggling was unexpected, but the Gators still make this list for how utterly atrocious they’ve looked doing it. Billy Napier’s time in Gainesville is running on fumes as it is painfully clear to everyone he doesn’t have the requisite skills to turn things around.
That we know that only three games into Year 3 speaks to the incompetence that runs rampant through the Florida program these days. The most recent indignity came Saturday when Texas A&M, without its starting quarterback, still bullied Florida in a 33-20 win that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score suggested. Florida should never look as bad as it has this year under Napier, and for that reason alone, he’ll soon be out of a job.
Kansas (1-2)
Preseason AP rank: 22
A preseason Top 25 team, Kansas still hasn’t lost a conference game but its dreams of winning the Big 12 look increasingly unlikely after its 1-2 start to the season. Back-to-back losses to Illinois and UNLV put a damper on the Jayhawks’ 2024 season that arrived with the most hype and promise Lawrence has seen in decades. Star quarterback Jalon Daniels has twice as many interceptions (six) as passing touchdowns (three) as Kansas’ offense has looked disjointed without Andy Kotelnicki, who is now at Penn State, and still far too reliant on the quarterback.
“I don’t know if Jalon Daniels can read a defense,” CBS Sports analyst Bud Elliott said on the Cover 3 Podcast.
The Jayhawks could badly use a win his week against a 1-2 West Virginia team also desperate for one.
Mississippi State (1-2)
It’s not that the expectations were sky high under first-year head coach Jeff Lebby, but the schedule set up well to be 3-0 headed into a home game against Florida. Instead, the Bulldogs look like the SEC’s worst team after Toledo got paid $1.2 million to come to Starkville and crush them 41-17. There are always growing pains Year 1 for a new head coach as he tries to establish a culture, but no one involved expected it to be this bad, this early. Lebby”s “Showtime” offense wasn’t able to keep up with Arizona State or Toledo the last two weeks, and currently ranks 82nd in total offense. Adding insult to injury is in-state rival Ole Miss‘ high-flying offense that ranks No. 1 in the country and has the Rebels undefeated and looking like a real SEC contender. Meanwhile, Mississippi State looks like a 2-10 team right now when the season goal was to at least sneak into a bowl game.
North Carolina State (2-1)
Preseason AP rank: No. 24
The wobbly Wolfpack looked shaky against FCS opponent Western Carolina in Week 1, even finding themselves down in the fourth quarter before pulling away for a win. The wheels came off the following week when Tennessee throttled NC State on a national stage, 51-10, showing the Wolfpack was nowhere near the sport’s elite level. Even before getting injured against Louisiana Tech, quarterback Grayson McCall didn’t look like the guy who was supposed to be an obvious upgrade and elevate the Wolfpacks’ offense. NC State can work its way off this list if it can win its next two games — at No. 21 Clemson, No. 23 Northern Illinois — but right now it looks more like a middle-of-the-pack ACC team than one that can truly win what feels like a wide-open ACC.
Dishonorable mention: Auburn, LSU, Notre Dame, Arizona, Virginia Tech and West Virginia
