The 10 Worst College Football Teams According To The Numbers

In just a matter of days, 136 FBS teams will begin the 2025 college football season. And while most of the talk throughout the season will be able those at the top of the heap vying for a national championship, today we’re taking a look at the other end.

While the Ohio States and Alabamas of the world have their eyes on the prize, several others are fighting for survival in an increasingly changing landscape. Whether it’s programs making the move up from the FCS level, or those who have hit hard times recently after solid FBS runs, a number of teams are just trying to keep their heads above water.

The 10 Worst College Football Teams According To FPI

ESPN’s Football Power Index, a predictive ranking system that combines a number of metrics to determine which teams would perform best on a neutral field, is notoriously hated. In fact, SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee went so far as to call out the model as part of a “rigged” College Football Playoff system.

But for the purposes of objectively ranking how strong a team can be at its best, it’s a handy tool. Which is exactly why we’re using it to determine not the best, but the 10 worst FBS college football teams heading into the 2025 season.

10) Akron Zips (-13.3 FPI)

The state of Ohio has eight FBS college football programs. Sadly, the state of Ohio does not produce enough talent each year to have eight competitive FBS college football programs, and thus, we have the Akron Zips.

The Zips have not had a winning season since going 8-5 under Terry Bowden in 2015. In fact, they haven’t come close since going 7-7 in 2018.

In the last seven seasons, Akron has won a combined 11 games. That’s 1.57 games per year. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like things are going to be any better in the fourth year under head coach Joe Moorhead. The only upside for the Zips is that they couldn’t make a bowl game even if they magically played well enough to do so in 2025.

9) UAB Blazers (-13.4 FPI)

Ah yes, the Fightin’ Trent Dilfers.

Since Dilfer took over for coach Bryant Vincent in 2023, the UAB Blazers have gone in the wrong direction. The Blazers went 7-6 in 2022, only to go 4-8 a year later and 3-9 this past season.

Dilfer seemingly has no confidence in himself or the future of the program, and the numbers back that up. UAB ranks 128th in ESPN FPI and is projected to have a 4.1-7.9 record.

Hey, that’s an improvement on the 2024 season! But even that feels more hopeful than anything else for a program that made five bowls in six years from 2017-2022.

8) Ball State Cardinals (-13.6 FPI)

In 2008, Brady Hoke led the Ball State Cardinals to a 12-2 record and a program-high 12th-place ranking in the AP Poll. Hoke left for San Diego State after that season, and the Cardinals haven’t come close to those heights since.

The team reached a high point under head coach Mike Neu in the 2020 COVID-affected season when it went 7-1 and won the Arizona Bowl to finish in the AP Top 25 for the first time ever. But its win total has shrunk each year since, leading to Neu’s firing following the 2024 season.

Now, first-year head coach Mike Uremovich takes over a program badly in need to a spark in the increasingly struggling MAC.

7) Temple Owls (-13.8 FPI)

There was a time, not all that long ago, that the Temple Owls were one of the better-run non-Power 4 programs in the country.

Temple hired Al Golden in 2006 and he quickly went from one win in his first season to 17 over his last two seasons before leaving for Miami. Steve Addazio then came in and won nine games in his first season, and Matt Rhule had the team won 10 games in two separate seasons before leaving for Baylor, something the program had never done before.

Even Geoff Collins made back-to-back bowl games before leaving for Georgia Tech. But then the program prioritized stability over winning, hiring Rod Carey in 2019. Carey went 8-5 his first season, but then 1-6 and 3-9 in the two years after the program still hasn’t recovered.

Stan Drayton won just nine games combined in three years before being fired last season. There is good news, however.

Temple recently hired K.C. Keeler, a Pennsylvania native with a history of winning at every stop he’s made in his coaching career. Hopefully for the Owls, Keeler can get them back on track.

6) Kennesaw State Owls (-14.6 FPI)

Kennesaw State made the jump from the FCS level to FBS football in 2024 and then immediately fired highly successful head coach Brian Bohannon.

Surprisingly, that didn’t go well for the Owls, who went just 2-10 in Conference USA this past season. The transition up a level was always going to be tough for the small-town Georgia team, but it sure seems as if the administration is dead set on playing the game on “hard” mode.

This year, Kennesaw turns to new head coach Jerry Mack in hopes that he can turn things around. Mack went 31-15 in four years as a head coach in the MEAC with North Carolina Central before making stops with Rice, Tennessee, and the Jacksonville Jaguars as an assistant.

5) UTEP Miners (-14.7 FPI)

Historically speaking, the UTEP Miners haven’t exactly been the cream of the crop in Conference USA. Since joining in 2005, the Miners have made just four bowl games, three of which were the New Mexico Bowl.

Things bottomed out in 2017 when UTEP went 0-12 under Sean Kugler and Mike Price. Dana Dimel then came in and went 1-11 in each of his first two seasons. By 2021, Dimel had the program back in a bowl at 7-6, but that was a high point, and he was fired after going 3-9 in 2023.

New head coach Scotty Walden did the same in his first season a year ago, and things don’t look much better this time around. Walden will be hoping that new quarterback Malachi Nelson, a former five-star recruit who went from USC to Boise State to the Miners, can help turn things around this season.

Nelson was named UTEP’s starting quarterback ahead of its Week 1 game with Utah State.

4) Tulsa Golden Hurricanes (-15.2 FPI)

Much like Temple, Tulsa had a strong run from the late 2000s through the early 2010s. Head coach Todd Graham led the Golden Hurricane to double-digit wins three times between 2007-2010 before Bill Blankenship took over and did the same in 2012.

Blankenship didn’t last long, however, and was fired after going 2-10 in 2014. New head coach Phillip Montgomery then brought Tulsa back to the top with a 10-3 season in 2016, but things have been rough since.

Montgomery was fired in 2021, and in two seasons in charge, Kevin Wilson won just seven games combined.

Now the Golden Hurricane turns to 35-year-old whiz kid Tre Lamb in hopes of getting back on track. Lamb is a former AFCA 35 under 35 selection who got his first head coaching job at 30 years old and has had three consecutive over-.500 seasons with Gardner-Webb and Eastern Tennessee State.

He faces an uphill battle at Tulsa. But at least Golden Hurricane fans have an exciting offensive mind to look forward to.

3) Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders (-15.9 FPI)

After a nearly 20-year run under head coach Rick Stockstill, the Blue Raiders’ administration decided it was time to try something different in 2024.

Unfortunately, Middle Tennessee State quickly learned that the grass is not always greener on the other side. The Blue Raiders went 3-9 in their first season under former Vanderbilt head coach Derek Mason. By comparison, Stockstill made a bowl game in 10 of his 18 seasons and only won three or fewer games one time over the course of a full season (MTSU went 3-6 in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.

To the Blue Raiders’ credit, they’re getting creative in looking for ways to turn things around in the NIL Era. The program’s general manager recently stated that they’re getting rid of jerseys and helmets in order to raise money to pay players.

2) New Mexico State Aggies (16.7 FPI)

In 2023, veteran head coach Jerry Kill and a little-known quarterback named Diego Pavia led New Mexico State to a 10-5 record and a spot in the New Mexico Bowl. In fact, Kill went 17-11 his two seasons in Las Cruces.

But then Kill left for Vanderbilt, as did Pavia, and things fell apart. The Aggies went 3-9 under first-year head coach Tony Sanchez in 2024, which is a return to the norm for the program.

In fact, prior to Kill, New Mexico State had only made one bowl game dating all the way back to 1960. Which is to say, Sanchez had a big task ahead of him if he’s hoping to turn around one of the most historically difficult programs to win at.

1) Kent State (-19.9 FPI)

It’s not just the fact that the Kent State Golden Flashes, but rather how bad they are, that is so shocking. The Golden Flashes are a full three points worse than the next-worst team on this list, according to FPI.

From 2018-22, head coach Sean Lewis, who is now in the same role at San Diego State after a brief stint with Colorado as Deion Sanders’s offensive coordinator, had Kent State on the right track. Yes, Lewis went just 24-31, but he made a pair of bowl games and even won the Frisco Bowl in 2019!

Then, the program hired Kenni Burns after Lewis’s departure, and the results could not have been worse. Not only did Burns go a combined 1-23, but he also got fired after an investigation into his mysterious financial debts.

Kent State wasn’t just getting beaten in games under Burns; it was also getting battered to the point where you worried about players’ health.

In March, Kent State announced that offensive coordinator Mark Carney (no, not the Canadian politician) would assume the role of interim head coach. Five months later, and Carney still has that job, and still maintains the interim title. He’s now tasked with saving a ship that is almost assuredly sinking, and it would be an all-time great coaching job if he could keep the Golden Flashes from a seemingly inevitable drop to the FCS level.