Josh Pate Reflects on His Worst College Football Predictions

Almost five months separate the beginning of April from the opening weekend of the 2026 college football season.

The offseason is a time for college football media to project on what they believe will happen in the upcoming college football season. It is also a time to look back on their predictions that came true, and in some cases, the predictions they got wrong.

College football media personality Josh Pate reflected on the latter during a mailbag edition of his show on Sunday. Pate revisited his four worst takes from the previous four college football seasons, one from each season.

DJ Lagway was the best SEC quarterback heading into 2025

DJ Lagway during Florida's 2025 game against Florida State. — Florida Gators quarterback DJ Lagway (2) gestures before the snap against the Florida State Seminoles | Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images

Like many across the college football landscape, Pate was intrigued by the end of Florida's 2024 season. The Gators won five of their last seven games with DJ Lagway as their starter, a run that included ranked wins over LSU and Ole Miss.

Florida fell apart in 2025, posting a 4-8 overall record and firing head coach Billy Napier seven games into the season. Lagway threw for 2,264 yards, 16 touchdowns and 14 interceptions, the second-most interceptions thrown by a quarterback in FBS last season. He transferred to Baylor at the beginning of the offseason.

"This was all tied to my belief that Florida was going to have a good year last year," Pate said. "I believed Billy Napier was going to quiet his critics because I believed Florida was a fringe playoff contender. Because of that, I believed in DJ Lagway."

The chaos of the spring transfer portal window

For a brief period, the NCAA had two windows for college football players to enter the transfer portal: a window at the end of the regular season and another window at the end of spring practice.

After the 2025 spring cycle, the NCAA closed the second window to prevent players from hopping to one place in the winter and to another in the spring. Pate believed this window was going to bring a new level of chaos to the sport while it still existed.

"I had listened to some of the wrong people in the winter, and those wrong people had told me this post-spring transfer portal window is going to blow up, it's going to explode, it's going to be nothing like the sport's ever seen before," Pate said. "These people were idiots, but I was an idiot for listening to them."

2024 national championship prediction

Michigan celebrates after the 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship game. — Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Michigan emerged victorious in the 2024 College Football Playoff, outlasting Alabama in the Rose Bowl and blowing out Washington in the national championship to finish the year at 15-0. Washington won its 14 previous games ahead of the national championship, including a survival against Texas in the Sugar Bowl. Pate did not think the Wolverines or Huskies would reach the national championship.

"Yours truly went a combined 0-7 picking against (Michigan and Washington) in regular-season games," Pate said. "As it turned out, they meet each other in the national championship game, and then it's up to me to pick the winner."

Brian Kelly would succeed at LSU

Pate forecasted a quick turnaround for LSU under Brian Kelly ahead of the 2022 season. The Tigers won 10 games in each of Kelly's first two seasons in Baton Rouge, but a three-game SEC losing streak in 2024, coupled with a disastrous October in 2025, saw Kelly lose the job in just under four years.

"I assumed too much about Brian Kelly. I assumed that he'd walk in and readily embrace all that is Louisiana, all that is LSU, and it turns out he wasn't really interested in that," Pate said. "Had someone told me that at the beginning, I would've tempered my expectations."