College Football Predictions: Our Model’s Picks for Week 10

With the help of our trusty supercomputer, we’re providing college football predictions for every game each week.

As always, our projection model is spitting out its data-backed predictions for all college football games throughout the 2024 season.

In a relatively wide-open landscape this year, traditional SEC powerhouses Alabama and Georgia are among the favorites to win the national championship. Tennessee and Ole Miss are also contenders, with SEC newcomer Texas showing it’s also a legitimate threat.

Big Ten teams Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State all expect to be vying for a place in the newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. Iowa State, BYU and Kansas State have emerged in the unpredictable Big 12, while Boise State, Notre Dame, and SMU hope to make the playoff from outside the power conferences.

Now, all of that is a little far in the future to be given much consideration yet, but our TRACR-powered supercomputer is continuing to make predictions for every game this season.

TRACR (Team Rating Adjusted for Conference and Roster) is a net efficiency stat that measures how a team should play against a standardized level of competition. The model is based on an EPA (expected points added) calculation weighed by opponent strength.

A team with a TRACR of 0.0 is considered an average team in the FBS. So if a team with a 7.5 TRACR faced a team with a minus-3.0 TRACR on a neutral site, the better team would be expected to win by about 10.5 points if both teams ran the same number of plays, according to the model.

Each week throughout the NCAA football season, our model will have something to say about every game. No matter if it’s a headliner like Ohio State-Michigan in another chapter of a legendary rivalry, or a game we may all be a bit less excited about, it unsentimentally beeps its way through its college football picks, boldly dropping predictions for each.

Several key matchups take place across the Saturday slate, with No. 4 Ohio State visiting No. 3 Penn State in a key Big 10 matchup and No. 10 Texas A&M plays at South Carolina. Pittsburgh (No. 18) and SMU (No. 20) will play Saturday night in another game that could have College Football Playoff implications.

For those matchups and everything between, we’ve taken plenty of data, pumped it through our predictive model and come up with its Week 10 predictions. 

Note: The ranking below represents where the team sits in TRACR, while the percentage indicates win probability for the given matchup.

Saturday

No. 3 Ohio State 77.9% at No. 15 Penn State 22.1%

Penn State has lost seven straight games against Ohio State dating back to 2017. That’s its longest active losing streak against any conference opponent (last win came at home in 2016). The Buckeyes’ average margin of victory over this win streak is 8.0 points (largest win was 13 points in 2020, 2022).

No. 60 Duke 7.8% at No. 13 Miami (FL) 92.2%

Miami has scored in all 32 quarters it has played in this season and 35 straight dating back to last season. That is the longest streak by the Hurricanes this century and the second longest by an ACC team over that same time frame behind Clemson (37 in 2020-21).

No. 7 Ole Miss 64.0% at No. 16 Arkansas 36.0%

Arkansas has won eight of its last 10 home games against Ole Miss, including the last two. The Razorbacks have scored at least 20 points in 12 straight home games against the Rebels, their longest streak against any opponent over the past 40 seasons.

No. 18 Virginia Tech 92.4% at No. 73 Syracuse 7.6%

Virginia Tech had dropped four of five in this series before rolling to a 38-10 home win over Syracuse on Oct. 26, 2023. The Hokies, however, have lost six of the last seven meetings at Syracuse dating back to September 1988.

No. 128 Air Force 0.3% at No. 10 Army West Point 99.7%

Army has gone 5-2 in its last seven matchups with the Air Force after going 3-25 over the previous 28 games in the series. The Black Knights held the Falcons to three points in last season’s game, their second fewest in the series over the last 40 seasons (zero in 2017).

No. 35 Vanderbilt 37.7% at No. 20 Auburn 62.3%

Auburn has won 13 of the past 15 meetings, including a 31-15 win at Vanderbilt on Nov. 4, 2023. The Tigers have also won nine straight at home in the series.

No. 12 Oregon 79.9% at No. 39 Michigan 20.1%

Oregon is 8-0 for the first time since 2013 following a 38-9 win over No. 20 Illinois. The Ducks look to allow fewer than 10 points in three consecutive games for the first time since a five-game run in 2019. Prior to that, they had not done so since October 1968.

No. 14 Florida 24.8% vs. No. 4 Georgia 75.2% (in Jacksonville)

Georgia has won six of the last seven meetings with Florida and leads the all-time series 55-44-2, including 49-41-1 in Jacksonville. The Bulldogs have outscored the Gators 119-47 over the last three meetings, and look to win four straight in the series for the first time since winning six straight from 1978-83.

No. 71 Texas Tech 6.3% at No. 21 Iowa State 93.7%

Texas Tech leads Iowa State 13-8 in the all-time series, and has won each of the last two meetings by a combined seven points. This will mark the second time in the last 10 seasons that either team is ranked. Iowa State was ranked 24th in a 31-15 win in 2020.

No. 6 Indiana 93.8% at No. 51 Michigan State 6.2%

Michigan State leads the all-time series with Indiana 50-18-2, but the teams have alternated wins over the last five seasons with the road team winning each of the last four. Each of the last three meetings have been decided by one score.

No. 22 Kansas State 87.4% at No. 62 Houston 12.6%

Kansas State won the first meeting with Houston 41-0 in Manhattan last season, one of two 40-point shutouts for the Wildcats last season. Houston is 1-13 against AP Top 25 teams since the start of the 2019 season, with the lone win coming against No. 19 SMU.

Saturday Night

No. 11 Texas A&M 71.4% at No. 23 South Carolina 28.6%

The Aggies are 9-1 (.900) against the Gamecocks since their first conference matchup in 2014 – their second-best record against any conference opponent (min. five games) since joining the SEC in 2012 (Arkansas, .923).

No. 25 Louisville 22.4% at No. 8 Clemson 77.6%

Clemson has won all eight of its games against Louisville since the Cardinals joined the ACC in 2014. Louisville’s eight losses without a win against the Tigers are its most against any single ACC opponent since becoming a member in 2014.

No. 27 Wisconsin 45.1% at No. 24 Iowa 54.9%

After dropping eight of the previous 10 meetings, Iowa has won the last two in 2022 (24-10) and 2023 (15-6). The Hawkeyes have also won the last two at home following a five-game skid there versus the Badgers.

No. 19 USC 67.3% at No. 30 Washington 32.7%

USC has lost the last two meetings and five of the last eight. The Trojans had won five of six at Washington before a 28-14 loss in September 2019, which was the last meeting there.

No. 32 Kentucky 6.8% at No. 1 Tennessee 93.2%

Since 1980, Tennessee, the top-ranked team in TRACR, is 39-5 against Kentucky – their best win percentage (min. five games) against any SEC team over this span. The Wildcats’ last win against the Volunteers came in 2020 (34-7 road victory).

AP Top 25 teams not ranked in the TRACR top 25 rankings: No. 9 BYU (idle), No. 15 Boise State (vs. San Diego State on Friday night), No. 22 Washington State (idle), No. 23 Colorado (idle), No. 24 Illinois (vs. Minnesota), No. 25 Missouri (vs. Oklahoma). Alabama (No. 2 in TRACR), Texas (No. 5), Notre Dame (No. 9) and LSU (17th) have bye weeks.

Stats and facts provided by Stats Perform’s data insights team. Be sure to check out our MLB, NBA, NFL and college football coverage. And follow us on X and Instagram for more!