Five Group Of Five Teams To Follow

There will be plenty of compelling teams to follow this year in college football ranging from Michigan without Jim Harbaugh to teams like Oregon adjusting to their new conferences as well as schools like Ole Miss and Missouri hoping to make the playoff for the first time. 

However, I think most fans are already aware of who’ll be worth following in the power conferences, but are less likely to know about what makes someone like San Jose State noteworthy entering this year. 

So, let’s highlight an interesting team going into this year for each conference in the Group of Five. 

American Athletic Conference: South Florida Bulls 

After going 1-11 in 2022, South Florida decided it was time for a new head coach and brought in Alex Golesh. He spent 2022 making a name for himself as the offensive coordinator for the 11-2 Tennessee Volunteers, who averaged 46.1 points per game. 

While Golesh didn’t quite go 11-2 in year one at USF, the Bulls still made a major improvement by going 7-6, averaging 31.9 PPG and ending their season with a 45-0 beatdown of Syracuse in their bowl. 

A key part of Golesh’s success in year one was his quarterback, Byrum Brown. He passed for over 3,200 yards and rushed for more than 800 yards last year, giving him the fifth-most total yards of any QB in the country.  

Brown is returning for this season and so is Sean Atkins, who led the team with 1,054 receiving yards in 2023.  

USF was picked to finish fourth in the 14-team AAC’s preseason poll and could perhaps finish even higher if year two of Golesh and Brown gets closer to the level of the production we saw from the 2022 Volunteers. 

Conference USA: Kennesaw State Owls 

This is a pretty safe pick but it’s still the right choice. 2024 will mark Kennesaw State’s first season in FBS and quite remarkably only their tenth season in organized college football. 

KSU began their journey to the highest level of college football when they made their debut in the lower-tier FCS in 2015 and quickly started winning by going 12-2 in 2017 and 11-2 in 2018. 

They never won an FCS title like current FBS schools such as Appalachian State and Georgia Southern, but their level of success in the second tier of college football still makes it reasonable for them to want to take the next step. 

Just last year, Jacksonville State made their FBS debut in spectacular fashion with a 9-4 record and KSU will be hoping to repeat that kind of instant success.   

Mid-American Conference: Toledo Rockets 

The transfer portal has been great for player empowerment, but the stability of Group of Five programs has been one of its main casualties.  

In 2023, Toledo went 11-1 in the regular season thanks to the production of their quarterback, Dequan Finn and their running back, former Terp Peny Boone. 

Finn and Boone’s contributions to an 11-1 regular season earned them plenty of interest from power conference programs and both players left the MAC to join the Big 12. Finn will be playing for Baylor, while Boone will return to power conference football at Central Florida. 

At quarterback, Toledo will look to replace Finn with Tucker Gleason, who has been with the Rockets since 2021 but never saw much playing time. Meanwhile, Boone’s job will go to Jacquez Stuart, who had the second-most carries behind Boone last season. Boone’s 7.2 yards per carry were notably better than Stuart’s 5.2 ypc, so Toledo will be hoping Stuart improves his explosiveness. 

The MAC preseason poll predicts Toledo to finish second in the conference but regardless of how they do, the Rockets will be an excellent case study for how a smaller program survives when the bigger schools come looking for their best players. 

Mountain West Conference: San Jose State Spartans 

The domino effect from Nick Saban’s retirement made it all the way to San Jose State.  

When Alabama hired Washington’s Kalen DeBoer, the Huskies responded by hiring Jedd Fisch from Arizona and Arizona filled their opening with San Jose State’s Brent Brennan, leaving SJSU looking for a new head coach. 

The Spartans opted to hire someone who was a proven winner and spent 2023 without a head coaching job: Ken Niumatalolo.  

Niumatalolo had put together a career record of 109-83 at Navy, but two straight 4-8 seasons in 2021 and 2022 meant the Midshipmen decided it was time to find new leadership. 

Going from Navy to SJSU will certainly be a unique adjustment for Niumatalolo, who will now be able to recruit at a public school in California that accepts 75 percent of their applicants instead of a service academy. 

The location and academic standards won’t be the only things that’ll make Niumatalolo’s SJSU tenure unique from his time in Annapolis. After running the triple option at Navy, Niumatalolo will now be running an offense described as the “spread and shred” under an offensive coordinator who previously worked at pass-happy schools like Hawai’i and Washington State. 

SJSU needing a new coach because of Nick Saban would’ve been a fascinating domino effect by itself, but bringing in Niumatalolo made it perhaps the most unique storyline of any team that changed coaches this offseason. 

Sun Belt Conference: Texas State Bobcats 

Earlier I wrote about Toledo as a G5 team who found the transfer portal a hindrance to their success. Now, let’s introduce a team who has found a shiny new quarterback from it: the Texas State Bobcats. 

In 2023, Jordan McCloud led James Madison to an 11-1 record and won Sun Belt Player of the Year. McCloud’s production helped his head coach, Curt Cignetti, earn a promotion when he took the job at Indiana. However, Cignetti and McCloud split up as Cignetti brought in Ohio’s Kurtis Rourke to be his QB and McCloud decided to stay in the Sun Belt and join Texas State. 

Texas State returns their leading rusher (Ismail Mahdi) and leading receiver (Joey Hobert) from last season’s 8-5 team, giving McCloud a pair of proven weapons to help him settle into a new situation. 

The Sun Belt preseason poll predicts the Bobcats will win their division, placing quite a bit of expectations on a program that’s only had one winning record in conference play since joining FBS in 2012. If they live up to their expectations, McCloud will almost certainly be a big reason why.