While Tobacco Road has a rich history of Final Fours and national championships in men’s basketball, the same can’t be said for North Carolina schools at the highest level of college football (FBS/Division I-A).
There are some metrics that retroactively awarded “national championship” distinctions to Duke football teams from 1936 and 1941. Appalachian State swept three NCAA football titles in 2005-07, but those came at the FCS level, or what once was known as Division I-AA.
It is safe to say no FBS school from the Old North State has really come close to contending for a national title on the gridiron in most of our lifetimes, let alone actually winning one. Not in the days when media polls primarily decided champions. Not in the BCS era (1998-2013). And certainly not since the College Football Playoff began in 2014.
But now that the College Football Playoff field will expand to 12 teams for this season, can a team from the Old North State make the field in 2024?
The odds are long for sure, but not nearly as out-of-reach as they have been in recent decades. With the first game of the 2024 college season less than 135 days away, we size up who from North Carolina has the best chances to see their team logo appear when the CFP bracket is revealed this December.
1. Appalachian State Mountaineers
The 12-team format will work like this: the five highest-ranked conference champions will qualify, along with the next seven highest-ranked at-large teams as chosen by the CFB selection committee.
The “5+7” model opens the door for one “Group of Five” conference champion to join the top teams from the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 in the bracket. So, if Appalachian State can win the Sun Belt Conference, which has been one of the strongest and deepest Group of Five leagues in recent years, the Mountaineers stand to grab a spot.
ASU (9-5 in 2023) played in the Sun Belt title game last December, falling to Troy. The Mountaineers also knocked off a previously unbeaten James Madison team, handing the Dukes their only regular season defeat. App State has won the Sun Belt four times since joining in 2014 and have played in two other title games.
Coach Shawn Clark returns ace quarterback Joey Aguilar and other weapons. Both Troy and James Madison lost head coaches to bigger programs and have had significant roster churn following those departures.
Liberty from Conference USA could be the biggest obstacle to a Mountaineers playoff appearance even if App State reclaims the Sun Belt crown. The Flames finished 13-1 last season and earned the Group of Five berth into a New Year’s Six bowl. Liberty retained coach Jamey Chadwell and looks to have its star quarterback, Kaidon Salter, in the lineup for the season ahead.
App State could settle issues with Liberty on the field. The Mountaineers host the Flames on Saturday, Sept. 28 in what could be an early, early playoff elimination contest for Group of Five aspirants.
“The Mountaineers looked strong down the stretch of the (’23) season, and they play Clemson and Liberty in the non-conference,” Bennett Conlin from Hero Sports wrote back in January. “Their game with JMU in 2024 will take place at home. If the Mountaineers go 2-1 against Clemson, Liberty and JMU, they’ll have the potential for a playoff resume.”
2. NC State Wolfpack
So far, 2024 is shaping up to be the year of the Wolfpack in our state. NCSU won its first ACC men’s basketball championship since 1987. Both Pack hoops teams made the Final Four. Wrestling, gymnastics and swimming have been dominant, and the baseball team should again contend for an ACC crown and a trip to Omaha.
With popular Triangle sports podcasters Joe Ovies and Joe Giglio proclaiming that “NC State “Sh** is dead!” why not consider Dave Doeren’s football team a legit playoff contender?
NC State went hard in the transfer portal, loading up on offense, especially. The Pack has a proven quarterback in Grayson McCall (Coastal Carolina transfer) and several new weapons (running back Jordan Waters, receivers Noah Rogers and Wesley Grimes) to place around freshman All-American wideout KC Concepion.
FanDuel put NC State as the only team from North Carolina in its list of odds to make the College Football Playoff (+590).
The Pack has the best odds of any North Carolina team to win a national championship (+15000) — steep, for sure, but significantly better than UNC (+30000) or the other five FBS teams (App State, ECU, Duke, Wake, Charlotte), who all have odds of +1000000).
NCSU will play a manageable schedule which lends itself to an “all-in” run this season. Doeren’s team plays Tennessee in Charlotte on Sept. 7 and will travel to Death Valley to face Clemson two weeks later. Tough tests for sure, but not impossible.
Western Carolina, Louisiana Tech and Northern Illinois stand as the other non-conference games — certainly winnable all. The Pack avoids Florida State, Miami, Louisville, Virginia Tech and Pitt in ACC play. The lineup of Wake Forest, Syracuse, Cal, Stanford, Duke, Georgia Tech and UNC isn’t, collectively, very menacing.
With divisional play gone, so too are a lot of the obstacles that kept the Wolfpack out of past ACC title games. How sweet would it be for this fan base to put another long dry spell — the school’s last ACC football title came in 1980 — to rest?
The Wolfpack finished 18th in the final College Football Playoff rankings a year ago, certainly on the committee’s radar.
3. UNC?? Duke?? ECU?? Charlotte?? Wake??
From our vantage point, there is a wide gap between Appalachian State, NC State and the rest of the state’s FBS teams in terms of playoff opportunity.
If we had to rank the rest, we’d put UNC at No. 3 (but a distant No. 3), followed by Duke, East Carolina, Charlotte and then Wake Forest.
North Carolina seems to do best when expectations are low, and that is certainly the case heading into 2024. Virtually no one is talking about the Tar Heels, other than to ponder how high in the NFL Draft quarterback Drake Maye will go.
UNC ducks Clemson, Miami and Louisville in ACC regular-season play but must contend with Florida State and its other Big Four rivals. Georgia Tech and Virginia have been thorns for Mack Brown teams in recent years, too. FanDuel has the Heels’ win total probability at 7.5, certainly not playoff material.
Duke will begin the Manny Diaz coaching era with a lot of positive momentum. But the conference schedule could be nasty — Florida State, Miami, NC State, UNC, SMU, Virginia Tech are among the foes.
ECU and Charlotte both look poised to move up the American Athletic standings after good recruiting seasons, but would even a surprise conference championship run from either squad be enough to make the 12-team playoff? The Pirates do play App State and Liberty (and a solid UTSA program). Head-to-head wins coupled with a conference title would make for nice resume builders.
Charlotte has a trickier conference schedule (Memphis, Tulane, FAU, South Florida) and must play both UNC and Indiana in the non-conference.
FanDuel has Wake Forest’s win totals set at 4.5 for the upcoming season. The Deacs experienced one of their worst campaigns in the Dave Clawson era in 2023. Was that an aberration or signs of a new normal for Wake in the NIL/transfer portal era? Time will tell, but getting back above .500 is the likely ceiling for the 2024 Deacs, not making the playoff
The Bottom Line
A lot of stars will have to align for a North Carolina school to make the first 12-team College Football Playoff field in 2024. But not nearly as many as in past seasons, where it was mostly a pipe dream to consider the Wolfpack, Tar Heels, Blue Devils, Demon Deacons, Mountaineers, etc. as legit national contenders.
At this point, we’d say our state has about a 30-40 percent chance of getting a team in the bracket. We like App State and NC State’s chances the best among our seven schools, but it will be tough even for them. There is virtually no room for error or missteps.
But stranger things have happened and can happen again. To quote a popular mantra during the Wolfpack’s run to the Final Four: “Why Not Us?”
