Culture
College Football Playoff sleepers: 13 unranked teams to watch
College football’s postseason enters a new era in 2024 with the arrival of the 12-team College Football Playoff, featuring automatic bids for the five top-ranked conference champions plus seven at-large selections. The bracket intrigue will only build throughout the fall, but one thing’s for sure: More teams will have a realistic shot to play for a national title than ever before.
But how many more? It’s assumed many of the nation’s elite programs will play their way into the top 12 most years, but the expanded field leaves room for a number of surprises, especially in the first year of a new system. Below, The Athletic’s college football writers make their picks for this season’s most enticing sleeper College Football Playoff teams. Programs ranked in the preseason Coaches Poll and voted atop their league’s preseason media poll were excluded from consideration.
This might be the Hokies’ best team since Frank Beamer retired. Tech found something in quarterback Kyron Drones and won five of its last seven games, including a bowl, to close out 2023. Drones threw for 17 touchdowns with just three picks and ran for 818 yards last season, igniting a long-dormant offense. Defensive lineman Antwaun Powell-Ryland (14.5 tackles for loss, 9.5 sacks) and a loaded secondary return on the unit in which head coach Brent Pry specializes. The Hokies rank top-five nationally in returning roster production, per ESPN’s Bill Connelly. Maybe there’s room for a slow-cooked sleeper to sneak into the 12-team field. — Kyle Tucker
The Cyclones return nine starters on both offense and defense, including breakout quarterback Rocco Becht, his top four receivers, the defense’s top five tacklers and leading rusher Abu Sama. Iowa State beat Oklahoma State and Kansas State last year and wraps up this season with a trip to Utah and at home against K-State. — Scott Dochterman
Jeff Brohm led the Cardinals to a 10-win season and an ACC championship game appearance in his first year at the helm, and he has some key pieces in place for what should be a sound defense, including end Ashton Gillotte. Can Texas Tech transfer quarterback Tyler Shough thrive in Brohm’s system? There will be ample opportunity to rise up the rankings with games against Notre Dame, Clemson and Miami. — Jesse Temple
Believe in the second-year leap. Louisville returns 15 players with at least five starts in 2023 and bolstered that group with a robust transfer portal class. The schedule is also favorable: Louisville only plays two of the top eight teams in the ACC preseason poll (Clemson and Miami), and the road trip to South Bend is a prime opportunity to beef up the playoff resume. —Kennington Smith III
Are we not talking and writing enough about the Mountaineers? Quarterback Garrett Greene has a shot to contend for the Heisman. Neal Brown’s team has a chance to upset Penn State and make an immediate statement in Week 1. West Virginia has seven home games, which could help tip the scales with plenty of showcase opportunities as Penn State, Kansas, Iowa State, Kansas State, Baylor and UCF all travel to Morgantown. — Audrey Snyder
The Bobcats came in atop the West Division in the Sun Belt preseason poll but still finished behind East-leading Appalachian State in the overall vote, qualifying them as a G5 sleeper. G.J. Kinne’s first team went 8-5, including a season-opening road win over Baylor, and Kinne dipped into the transfer portal this offseason for quarterback Jordan McCloud, the reigning Sun Belt Player of the Year for James Madison. The schedule sets up favorably, too: The Bobcats have winnable yet respectable nonconference games at home against Arizona State and UTSA, plus a Sun Belt slate that avoids the East Division’s top five teams based on the preseason poll. — Justin Williams
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UCF
The Knights were the only Big 12 newcomer last season to reach a bowl game, and head coach Gus Malzahn drastically upgraded his roster through the transfer portal, adding 27 new players with 327 college starts between them. Quarterback K.J. Jefferson comes over from Arkansas to lead the offense, which features two 1,400-yard rushers from a year ago in RJ Harvey and Peny Boone (Toledo transfer). They’ll score plenty. — Manny Navarro
UNLV
What in the name of Randall Cunningham? (Or Stacey Augmon?) Actually, it’s in the name of Barry Odom, who was a very good defensive coordinator at Missouri and less of a good head coach there but has found his level out west. UNLV was picked second in the Mountain West, and the only big question is how it will replace quarterback Jayden Maiava, who transferred to USC (after first committing to Georgia). That matter does need to be resolved quickly because three early nonconference games will be pivotal to any CFP hopes: at Houston, at Kansas, home against Syracuse. It’ll be tough, but UNLV making the first expanded CFP would be a great story. — Seth Emerson
If the Rebels can figure out how to replace Maiava, they are going to be dangerous. The Rebels reached the Mountain West championship game in Odom’s first season, and his team has a ton of talent surrounding the quarterback. But we all know how important quarterbacks are in college football. — Daniel Shirley
Call me crazy, but I believe in the Scarlet Knights this year. Greg Schiano has done a great job recruiting in the program’s backyard and returns a ton of talent from a team that actually led Ohio State at halftime last season. They’ll have a new quarterback in Minnesota transfer Athan Kaliakmanis, and running back Kyle Monangai is one of the best running backs the country doesn’t talk enough about. The schedule breaks right for contention, too: The Scarlet Knights don’t play Penn State, Oregon, Ohio State, Iowa or Michigan this year. — Cameron Teague Robinson
You want to get nuts? Let’s get nuts. The parameters for this exercise basically require a team to be in a high-leverage situation where one or two unexpected twists and turns upends all assumptions. I give you the Badgers, who get Alabama at home in mid-September — the first time since 1971 that an SEC team will play at Camp Randall Stadium. The place will be bonkers, and the Crimson Tide will be coached by someone other than Nick Saban. Then there’s USC on the road two weeks later. Not insurmountable! And finally, Oregon, at home, in mid-November, when the climate could be very unfriendly to those unfamiliar with late fall in the Midwest. Even if the Badgers lose one or two of these games, that’s no longer fatal in a 12-team playoff. And Tyler Van Dyke at quarterback is, himself, a high-leverage wild card. — Brian Hamilton
The Bulls took a huge leap forward in Alex Golesh’s first season as head coach, going from 1-11 to 7-6 with a 45-0 bowl win against Syracuse. With star quarterback Byrum Brown back and a defense that can only get better, keep an eye on Tampa. The nonconference schedule is tough with Alabama and Miami, but the conference schedule could be favorable, with USF set to play four of the bottom five teams in the AAC preseason poll, plus conference frontrunner Memphis at home. If the Bulls can get through the first five games at 3-2, watch out for a late run. — Chris Vannini
SMU
The ACC race feels like a bit of a wild card, so why not pick the conference newcomer to make waves in Year 1? Last year’s Mustangs ranked No. 8 in the FBS in scoring offense en route to an 11-3 record and an AAC championship. Quarterback Preston Stone returns after throwing for 3,197 yards (26th in the FBS) and 28 touchdowns (11th) with a 161.3 passing efficiency rating (13th) as a redshirt sophomore. Of course, the Mustangs were beat out by undefeated Liberty for last year’s G5 New Year’s Six bid, so there’s an added chip on their shoulders against the committee. — Jayna Bardahl
I’m a big believer in new coach Jon Sumrall after his time at Troy, where he inherited a program that won a combined 15 games in the previous three seasons and went 23-4 in his two years there with back-to-back Sun Belt titles. Sumrall brought both of his coordinators with him to Tulane and did a solid job of adding portal talent to an already athletic Green Wave roster. The schedule offers opportunities to impress the committee with a home game against Kansas State and a road trip to Oklahoma. And Memphis, the AAC preseason favorite, must travel to New Orleans in the regular season finale. — Sam Khan Jr.
The Sun Belt contenders could cannibalize themselves as Playoff hopefuls, and Liberty’s strength of schedule likely won’t be all that impressive. That leaves room for someone else to break through and earn the G5’s guaranteed spot in the 12-team playoff. After a reset year that featured nine wins (two over Power 5 schools), the Bulldogs bring back quarterback Mikey Keene and have the schedule that could set up for a nice run even with the retirement of head coach Jeff Tedford this summer. — Antonio Morales
(Top illustration photos: Chris Jones, Vincent Carchietta / USA Today)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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