Auburn University's mascot, Aubie, will compete throughout the football season with 15 other college mascots as part of the Capital One All-America Mascot Team. | Auburn Alumni Association - Wikimedia Commons

We all had that one kid in class growing up. You know the one. The kid who couldn’t shut up. Didn’t have good manners. And was just a pain in the butt to be around.

Well, class clowns aren’t just reserved for grade schools anymore. Instead, I took a look at three teams that embodied that class clown energy in 2024.

After two mediocre seasons on The Plains, Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze is officially on the hot seat.

Under Freeze, the Tigers have limped to an 11-14 overall record and have mustered a measly 5-11 record in SEC play. That is simply not good enough for a program that competes in a Power 2 conference and has national title aspirations.

What’s gone so wrong for Auburn?

Football is a simple game. If you can’t block or tackle well, you usually won’t win games. Under Freeeze, the defenses have largely been…fine? Not great. Not spectacular, but good enough. The offense, Freeze’s calling card, has been terrible.

In 2023, Auburn averaged just over 26 points per game, good for 74th in the country. Things improved slightly last season, but the Tigers still ranked in the 70s at just shy of 28 points per game.

The biggest problem with Auburn's offenses the past two seasons has been the subpar quarterback play. Before the 2023 season, Freeze took former Michigan State quarterback Payton Thorne through the transfer portal, and it just never worked out. Thorne struggled mightily, and it probably says a lot about the depth in the quarterback room that he was never replaced as the full-time starter.

Looking ahead, Freeze is taking another swing on a transfer portal quarterback for the 2025 season with former OU signal-caller Jackson Arnold. Arnold, a former prized recruit, struggled behind an awfully bad offensive line in Norman last season and lost his job midway through the season. Freeze and the Tigers are banking that last season was more about bad circumstances than it was about Arnold not being a good quarterback.

I’m somewhat bullish on Arnold, but it probably says a lot about this year’s transfer portable quarterback class that Arnold was one of the top options available. Good quarterbacks don’t enter the transfer portal very often, so if your team is in the unfortunate position to need one, well, you sometimes just have to take what you can get.

Speaking of good players, Auburn has an exceptionally dynamic offensive weapon in wide receiver Cam Coleman. In his freshman campaign, Coleman had just shy of 600 yards and eight touchdowns in an awful offense. Coleman has some real deep-threat and red zone target abilities and is a real get-out-of-jail-free card for quarterbacks. If Arnold is an improvement on Thorne, I expect Coleman to pop off in 2025.

Just how good was Coleman in 2024?

Source: Hudl IQ

Using Hudl IQ Player Radar Data, we can see that compared to average SEC receivers, Cam Coleman jumps off the page when it comes to Yards/Target, Success%, Air Yards/Rec and Explosive%.

Translation? He is a big play magnet and has a knack for making shit pop off.

If you’re looking for faults, you’d love to see him rack up a little better YAC numbers. But even at his current rate, he’s a bona fide star. Even with a small upgrade in quarterback play in 2025, Coleman is likely to take another significant leap.

Put it this way…if Arnold hits, Coleman instantly vaults into the upper echelon of best wide receivers in college football (non-Jeramiah Smith division).

The one thing Coleman needs, outside of better quarterback play, is some help. The Tigers dipped their toes into the transfer portal this offseason in search of some helping hands and came back with former Georgia Tech wide receiver Eric Singleton Jr.

ESJ is a beast. He and Coleman will cause plenty of headaches for SEC secondaries. The Tigers also took a lot of 3-star players from lower-level schools, which should help round out the backend of this defense and roster as a whole.

With expectations mounting, Freeze and Auburn have no time to waste. Looking ahead to the schedule, the Tigers have a monster opening week matchup against the Baylor Bears. Baylor has a dynamite quarterback in Sawyer Robertson, and that’ll be a tough test for what was a good Auburn defense last season.

After a pair of cupcake games, the Tigers then have back-to-back road games against Oklahoma and Texas A&M. Those feel like season-defining games. Win and you’re in the hunt. Lose, and the fanbase might turn on Freeze and this team. Other interesting games include home games against Georgia, Missouri and the Iron Bowl versus Alabama.

This is a pressure-cooker season for the Tigers, no doubt about it. Can Auburn rise to the occasion and win enough games for Freeze to take his job? Or will the Tigers have to go back to the drawing board after three lackluster seasons?

Simply put, Arizona had a disastrous 2024 campaign. In head coach Brett Brennan’s first year, Arizona finished 4-8 overall and 2-7 in Big 12 play.

The Wildcats ranked 120th in the country in stopping the run. They ranked 108th overall in total defense. And the Wildcats were so overly reliant on first-round NFL draft pick Tetairoa McMillan that it reached comical levels of force-feeding him the ball despite double and triple coverage.

Just how inexplicably bad was the defense?

Here are a few key advanced stats, courtesy of Hudl IQ Team Radar Data.

The Wildcats had a mind-numbingly bad EPA/Drive rate of 0.59, almost 10x the league average! The defense also posted an atrocious 13.4% Chunk%, meaning this unit was bleeding big plays at an alarming rate. Nothing that the defense did was good enough. Arizona found itself in sizeable holes to start games frequently, which led to the offense abandoning the run and praying McMillan could bail them out.

Looking ahead to 2025, Brennan has attempted to flip the roster with 25 transfer portal additions, good for the 51st spot in the 247 Sports 2025 Transfer Portal Team Rankings. Bringing in 25 fresh faces sounds like a great idea in theory, but I seriously question how many of these guys can make an immediate impact. This class didn’t include a single 5 or 4-star player, meaning Brennan is banking on a lot of lower-level talent to make big dividends this season.

Quarterback Noah Fafita is back for 2025, and everyone associated with the program will hope he can put last season behind him. Fafita was bad last season. He showed some real promise under Jed Fisch in 2023, but he did very little to contribute to winning football in 2024.

Label me as a Fafita skeptic heading into 2025. I just don’t see how he’s going to improve with McMillan now catching passes in the NFL.

Playing the schedule game, Arizona gets a pair of winnable nonconference games against Hawaii and Weber State before things heat up in Big 12 play. The Wildcats’ first four Big 12 games include matchups against Kansas State, Iowa State, Oklahoma State and BYU. Arizona could easily lose all four of those games. Things don’t let up down the stretch either, as they close with games against Baylor and Big 12 defending champs Arizona State.

I don’t currently hold any Arizona stock, but if I did, I’d sell it all. I have little confidence that the 2025 Arizona Wildcats will look demonstrably different in Year 2 under Brennan.

Cincinnati closed the 2024 campaign with some serious bad vibes.

The Bearcats dropped their last five conference games, failing to score 24 or more points in four of them. Despite that figure, the offense wasn’t the problem. Quarterback Brendan Sorsby was pretty good, and the offense as a whole finished ranked 37th nationally.

The defense was a different story, however. Cincinnati struggled to stop the run, giving up over 160 yards per game. The pass defense wasn’t much better, ranking 73rd nationally.

Looking ahead to 2025, I have some serious questions about the direction of this program. Since joining from Louisville two years ago, head coach Scott Satterfield has been a flat-out flop. Three wins in 2023 and five wins in 2024 are just not acceptable, especially considering the level this team reached under former coach Luke Fickell.

I was always a Satterfield skeptic, and his two seasons in the Big 12 have not dissuaded me.

Looking ahead to 2025, Cincinnati brought in 15 players via the transfer portal, good for the 47th spot in the 247 Sports 2025 Transfer Portal Team Rankings. That group includes one four-star player and 14 three-stars.

I have no clue where the current iteration of Cincinnati is supposed to sit in the Big 12 hierarchy. In theory, the Bearcats should be able to compete in the top half of the league, and on a given year, punch above their weight class. But this program’s trajectory is not trending upwards. I don’t see the hype with Satterfield. And frankly, I think he should be close to an exit if this team underperforms for a third straight season.

Playing the schedule game, Cincinnati gets a real test in Week 1 with a neutral-site clash against Nebraska. In Big 12 play, notable home games include matchups against Iowa State, Baylor and BYU. Notable road trips include games against KU, Oklahoma State, Utah and TCU.

Pencil me in as OUT on Cincinnati as long as Satterfield is in charge.

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