An entire year of LSU athletics came and went in a blink of an eye, and all of a sudden, we're back in the offseason.

The summer months are one of the best and worst times to be a college football fan. You have such high expectations that your team can make it to the national championship, but you're also still months away from week one kickoff.

During this time, we like to look ahead at the upcoming football season and make predictions on what their upcoming campaign will look like. Well today, we're taking a back seat and letting ESPN's Football Power Index take a shot at predicting the Tigers 2024 season.

The Football Power Index (FPI) is "a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team's performance going forward for the rest of the season. FPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. Projected results are based on 20,000 simulations of the rest of the season using FPI, results to date, and the remaining schedule."

So, let's see what they think the Tigers will do this year.

With the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams this year, it makes it a lot easier for teams to make the CFP than in years passed. In the 5-7 playoff model, the five highest-ranked conference champions will receive an automatic bid along with seven at large teams, meaning if LSU doesn't win the SEC, they need to be one of the seven highest ranked non-champion teams to get in.

Currently, the FPI gives the Tigers a 25.3% chance of making the CFP this year, which is the seventh best in the SEC. This means, out of 20,000 simulations, they have the Tigers making it roughly 5,000 times.

The SEC teams with the highest chance of making the CFP according to the FPI are Georgia (79.1%), Texas (67.8%) and Alabama (57.2%).

While they give the Tigers a 25% chance of making the CFP, they only give them a 4.4% chance of winning the SEC, which is again the seventh best in the conference.

Georgia (32.8%), Texas (24.2%) and Alabama (14.4%) are the runaway favorites to win the conference with Oklahoma, Tennessee, Missouri and LSU all between 4.4% and 5.9%. The one that shocked me the most was Ole Miss having the ninth best odds at 2.3%.

The FPI seems pretty confident that UGA, Texas or Bama will take home the SEC crown this season.

If you want to know how tough the SEC is, just look at this. The FPI gives the Tigers nearly the same odds at making the national championship as winning the SEC.

As you can imagine, the FPI once again has UGA (31.6%), Texas (20.6%) and Bama (15.3%) as the three SEC teams most like to make the National Championship. The Crimson Tide actually have a better shot at making the national championship than winning the SEC.

As for the next tier, Oklahoma and Tennessee are both given a 6% chance to make the National Championship and Missouri is given a 5.4% chance. You then drop down to LSU at 3.4%, Texas A&M at 2.5% and Ole Miss at 2.2%.

Finally, the FPI gives the Tigers just a 1.3% chance to win the National Championship, which is the 14th best in the country and seventh best in the SEC.

Here are the odds for the top-15 teams in the country to win the National Championship according to the FPI:

The ones that stand out to me the most are Oregon, Penn State, Missouri and Clemson. I get that Oregon was a game away from the CFP last year, but they lost a ton of talent to the NFL this offseason. Penn State is always a good team, but James Franklin can't win the big game. Missouri was a good team that returns a lot of pieces, but are they really national championship material? And what has Clemson done the passed couple seasons to make them believe they're a top-15 contender for the National Championship?

At the end of the day, this is a computer taking into account a lot of different factors. It gives you a good idea of where the teams stand heading into next season, but don't put too much stock into this as we start looking towards football season.

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