Five teams finished below .500 and were a whole lot better than that

A handful of teams in 2024 were flat-out better than their records say. Washington is the clearest case. The Huskies finished 5-7 and stayed home for the holidays, yet once you account for who they played, they were the 11th-best team in the country. That's not a fluke of one bad afternoon. Arkansas, Auburn and Pittsburgh all landed in the same boat: a losing or break-even record stapled to a team that, snap for snap, belonged in the conversation with the good ones.