When the College Football Playoff expanded to 12 teams, the key words generating the most excitement heading into the 2024 season were “opportunity” and “access.” By allowing for five conference champions and seven at-large selections to compete for the national championship, the CFP opened doors to programs that had been left out of a four-team format that regularly featured the same familiar names. 

But when the field was announced in December 2024 and the first-ever 12-team bracket was set, the collection of teams that were the first to seize this opportunity of increased access included some of the programs that were expected to be in the mix as well as a few wild cards no one saw coming. 

Penn State had been one of the most successful programs of the CFP era without a playoff appearance, logging multiple New Year Six bowl bids and high rankings at the end of the year. The expansion from four teams to 12 teams was projected to benefit a program with top-10 consistency like Penn State, and so their inclusion came as no surprise. The same could be said, though not to same extent, for Tennessee making the field two years after a top-10 finish and Orange Bowl win or Boise State finishing as one of the highest ranked conference champions. No one was shocked to see these teams in the mix for the new-look CFP. 

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Cody Nagel

What we could not see coming was how conference realignment, the transfer portal and NIL fall in line with College Football Playoff expansion to create a couple of the great surprise stories in 2024. 

The preseason expectations for Arizona State, Indiana and SMU did not include the College Football Playoff, and for at least the Sun Devils and the Hoosiers even making the postseason would have been seen as a success before the season started. But, instead, three coaches who combined had just three years at their current job going into the year led unlikely playoff runs that changed the trajectory and outlook for their programs moving forward. 

Now, one year later from the moment when no one saw these playoff runs coming, we’re checking in on Arizona State, Indiana and SMU to see what’s in store for their CFP encore.

A rapid rebuild in Tempe 

Kenny Dillingham inherited a mess when he agreed to become Arizona State’s coach. But for the ASU alum, the opportunity to build the program back and even push its ceiling had him ready for the challenge. At 32 years old when he was hired in late 2022, Dillingham was the youngest power conference coach at the time. He brought incredible passion and enthusiasm to the job, but in Year 1 the lingering effects of an NCAA investigation and massive transfer portal losses made it difficult to convert the effort and energy into wins. The Sun Devils beat Southern Utah by just three points in the opener, didn’t log an FBS win until Oct. 28 and finished the 2023 season with a 3-9 record.

The rebuild in Tempe, it seemed, was going to take some time. And continuity was going to be difficult, not just for the roster which continued to see exits and new arrivals for the portal. The entire school was moving from the Pac-12 to the Big 12 for the 2024 season, bringing a whole new set of teams, coaches and stadiums to learn along the way. The Big 12 media, as it was well-documented, looked at this 3-9 team from the Pac-12 and figured they would follow a familiar path from recent conference realignment history. Arizona State, they figured, would struggle with the conference change and finish at the bottom of the league in 2024. They were projected 16th, in last place, in that ill-fated media poll, which became such a talking point that the league suspended its preseason media poll this offseason. 

There is a version of Arizona State’s magical run to the College Football Playoff that has our chip-on-the-shoulder heroes flying below the radar because of this preseason disrespect for the opening weeks of the season. But in reality the Sun Devils didn’t look like their final version at the beginning of the year. The team that dominated Iowa State in the Big 12 title game and pushed Texas to double overtime in the CFP quarterfinals was not the same group that squeaked out of San Marcos with a three-point win against Texas State or struggled offensively in losses at Texas Tech and Cincinnati. But once quarterback Sam Leavitt was fully recovered from a midseason rib injury, the team stacked wins against other Big 12 title contenders to earn a spot into the conference championship game, then leveled up with an impressive showing in the postseason. 

So what now? 

Well, it seems as though complacency is one of the biggest threats to Arizona State repeating its run to the College Football Playoff. Dillingham made it abundantly clear to reporters late last week the passion he saw from the team was falling short of his standard, or more specifically the standard required to put together another double-digit win season. 

“It was a bad day,” Dillingham said last Thursday. “It all stems from the passion we play with. It’s okay to not make a play. If you accept it, then accept it that’s who you are going to be. Don’t be mad going 5-7, that’s okay, don’t be mad going 6-6. Don’t be mad going 3-9, because someone has to go those records. Why not us?”

The message was received, and when he circled back with reporters after the team’s work on Friday and Saturday he was pleased with the competitive edge he saw from the team. But the fact that Dillingham is so aware of the extra juice needed to achieve their ultimate goals shows he’s very much acclimated to life in the Big 12. Even in Year 2, Arizona State understands that the path to the College Football Playoff means turning up on the right side of a lot of coin-flip games against teams with comparable talent. The Sun Devils will have a better preseason ranking than most of the teams in the conference, but the actual margins for competition are going to be slim. 

Arizona State has the benefit of getting Leavitt back to be the team’s leader and a bit of continuity from the battles won in 2024, but this is a team that will need to lean on its defensive experience as well to help slow fellow Big 12 titles hopefuls Texas Tech, Utah and Baylor. A slow start could be costly, because unlike last year the biggest conference games of the season arrive in late September and early October. That’s why we’re likely hearing Dillingham preach the gospel of passion here early in fall camp, because any sense of complacency early in the year could have Arizona State’s biggest goals off the table before Halloween. 

Hoosiers aiming to back up historic highs 

There wasn’t much under the radar about Indiana’s 10-0 start in 2024, which was highlighted by blowout wins and a relentlessness that traces back to head coach Curt Cignetti. When Indiana hired Cignetti it hired a coach who has won at every level, but also one that had a blueprint for what it was going to take to turn things around at Indiana. The school, all the way up to the administration, had to get behind a level of investment when it comes to resources that are critical to program success. If Indiana was going to make the most of having Cignetti as its football coach, it had to make sure that football wasn’t just something that everyone does while you wait for basketball to start. 

It didn’t happen overnight, even in Bloomington. It was a fan base that had to be woken up a little bit, and you could see that even from home with the way the students turned out for the first game of the season to the packed houses the Hoosiers enjoyed for the final home games. Behind the scenes there were facilities that needed improvements and other aspects of the program that had been neglected a bit as college football has modernized in recent years. Cignetti pushed standard with the school behind the scenes, then let his assistant coaches and the team leaders (many of them joining him from James Madison) get things in motion when it came to action on the field.    

The results speak for themselves. The best record in school history at 11-2, the most Big Ten wins in school history with eight, a College Football Playoff appearance for a program that had just five bowl appearances since 2000 and the highest final AP Top 25 ranking (No. 10) since 1967. 

And much like Dillingham at Arizona State, Cignetti is out to squash complacency at every turn and looks forward to getting back into the hunger portion of a college football season. 

“People say you’re going to have a target on your back. Does that mean we can’t hunt too?” Cignetti joked in a conversation with the Cover 3 Podcast last month. 

Not only does Indiana want to continue to hunt aggressively like it did in 11 wins last season, but Cignetti is bothered by some of the things that went wrong in the two losses, which came to Ohio State in the regular season and Notre Dame in the CFP. In both games Indiana was not able to establish the same kind of advantage along the lines of scrimmage on offense, leading to less time for quarterback Kurtis Rourke and less room for the run game. The Hoosiers addressed that in the transfer portal for 2025 bringing in 6-foot-5, 310-pound center Pat Coogan from Notre Dame and 6-foot-6, 319-pound lineman Kahlil Benson from Colorado (a boomerang transfer who actually started his career at Indiana), among other additions. The line got bigger and more experienced, which should benefit new starting quarterback Fernando Mendoza, another big-time transfer portal pick up. 

Cignetti estimates that in terms of resources Indiana is in the top one-third of the Big Ten, and that’s a huge jump up from where the Hoosiers have been for much of the 21st century. The best thing possible for sustained success was being able to deliver last year’s results to a fan base that has not been used to fielding championship contenders in football. If you look at the transfer portal additions for the Hoosiers heading into 2025, there is a quality obvious not just from objective ratings but by the caliber of teams losing the recruiting battles to Indiana. 

The schedule for 2025 is undoubtedly more difficult than it was last year, with road trips to Oregon, Penn State and Iowa and a visit from Illinois in late September. The oddsmakers expectations are for a good season (FanDuel Sportsbook has the win total set at 8.5), but maybe not another year entering November in the Big Ten title race. 

On the outside, the fact that 8.5 wins is a “good-but-not-great” season for Indiana football speaks to how far Cignetti has taken the program in just one year on the job. But inside the building it’s that kind of complacent attitude that the Indiana coach is trying to snuff out. The Hoosiers won’t sneak up on anyone anymore, but another year of being right in the mix with the best teams in the league should be expected given the way they’ve continued to improve the roster off last year’s success. 

How the Mustangs managed the big stack at the poker table

Since the ACC has settled its simultaneous lawsuits across multiple jurisdictions with Florida State and Clemson, it can be easy to forget just how turbulent and potentially tumultuous things got when it comes to the future of the league. The legal challenge to the ACC’s contracts presented the potential of losing two, or more, of the league’s most prestigious football brands. University presidents sought stability during these trying times, and among the actions taken were to extend invitations to two Pac-12 institutions looking for a new home (Cal and Stanford) but also to tap into the potential of a resource-rich program from the American Athletic Conference that was anxious to make a jump up in the conference landscape. 

Any re-telling of the Pony Express/Pony Excess era highlights the passion for SMU football and the lengths that leaders are willing to take to help this private school in the Dallas area keep up with the larger state schools who set the standard when it comes to football. But now many of those violations that warranted the most severe punishments from the NCAA are legal, and after spending years in the wilderness following the break-up of the Southwest Conference the Mustangs found a level of consistent success under Sonny Dykes and then Rhett Lashlee in the American. 

So when the ACC called, the school was ready to answer and had the resources available to win any negotiation. SMU had a big stack of chips at the poker table of conference realignment, and with its eyes set on making the jump to a power conference they could call any bet. The end result was SMU agreeing to forgo nearly a decade of Tier 1 ACC media rights revenues before being made a full member, with powerful boosters and power brokers willing to bankroll the difference in order to get accepted into the league. SMU being able to buy its way into the ACC didn’t shock the world given the school’s history, but what came next caught many by surprise. 

Rhett Lashlee’s first two years leading the program provided 18 wins and a conference title in 2023, highlighted by an 8-0 record in conference play. Winning the AAC on the way out was a great way to generate buzz heading into the Mustangs ACC debut in 2024 and one of the ways Lashlee applied those resources was by getting better along the lines of scrimmage through the transfer portal. After spending time in power conferences as an assistant, he correctly identified the trenches as the spot where games are won and lost at the next level and thanks to SMU’s investment he could put together a roster he felt was was ready to compete. 

The schedule draw did SMU with a slate that included no regular season games against Clemson or Miami, but preseason expectations mostly aligned with that advantage helping SMU make a bowl game or have a respectable season. 

But going 8-0 in conference play, replicating the same record that SMU had in its final season of the AAC, was a total surprise. 

The defense that had been bolstered up front through the portal became a strength and SMU was able to wear down and run past opponents in conference play. Six of the SMU’s eight ACC wins were by double-digits and the team finished with the No. 2 scoring offense (36.5 points per game) and No. 1 scoring defense (22.1 points per game) in the league. SMU dealt with an early season quarterback change and multiple key injuries yet overcame the adversity in a big way with an 11-1 regular season that got them into the ACC Championship Game and the College Football Playoff. 

Now comes the encore, with SMU no longer flying under the radar in the ACC but considered a standard piece of the conference’s top tier. But one thing Lashlee has in his favor in terms of creating an edge is that his team, and more specifically his quarterback, are being a bit overlooked given the success of last season. 

SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings did not have a good College Football Playoff debut, and that three-interception showing against Penn State on the road in the cold has perhaps shaded our outlook for his 2025. The same Kevin Jennings who threw for more than 3,200 yards and had the highest passing efficiency rating in ACC play (171.5) as a redshirt sophomore doesn’t seem to have the buzz you’d expect when it comes to being among the best quarterbacks in the league. Consider that he did not have all of last offseason entrenched as the established QB1, and there is plenty of room for even last season’s success to be a stepping stone towards something more in 2025. Jennings has a roster around him that rates easily in the top five among ACC schools when it comes to talent, which should be a lesson to the rest of the league. They let SMU buy its way in, so no one should be surprised that a program with this much desire to be successful is also routinely showing up with the most talent in this modern transfer portal era.

The common thread: Avoiding complacency 

The stories of these three programs and their respective success in 2024, making unlikely runs to the College Football Playoff, bring a lot of the sport’s changing nature into focus. The massive conference realignment shift was what allowed Arizona State and SMU to catch their new leagues off guard with immediate conference title contention. The transfer portal and NIL helped Indiana totally flip a roster that was struggling to make bowl games, turning the Hoosiers into a playoff-bound wrecking ball seemingly overnight. Creating more Cinderella stories was one hope of College Football Playoff expansion, but getting that result required the rapidly-changing nature of roster construction. 

Now each of these coaches is dealing with the biggest threat to sustained success: complacency. The fact all three programs came from off the radar includes the acknowledgement that they were being overlooked, and with that can come motivation. Now after the celebration of a College Football Playoff run, which of these programs can use it as a launching point for something more? 

Because for all the historic highs and dramatic success of 2024 for Arizona State, Indiana and SMU, they did go a combined 0-3 in the CFP. They shocked the world by getting there, but their ultimate result in the playoff was in line with expectations. 

So while they are no longer off the radar, there is still a chance for all three teams to go and take that next step, and shock the world again.