Updated SP+ rankings for every FBS team, plus an early look at CFP contenders
In 93 days, it all starts again. From Week 0's Irish Farmageddon (Iowa State vs. Kansas State in Dublin) in mid-August to the national title game in late January, the 2025 college football season looms. And with transfer portal movement finally slowing down -- including spring moves, FBS teams have averaged more than 19 transfers this offseason, up more than 40% from last season -- we can finally take a semi-confident look at what's in store this fall. That means updating our numbers.
Below are updated SP+ projections for the coming season. A quick reminder: Preseason projections are based on three factors.
1. Returning production. The returning production numbers are based on rosters I have updated as much as humanly possible to account for transfers and attrition. The combination of last year's SP+ ratings and adjustments based on returning production makes up about two-thirds of the projections formula.
2. Recent recruiting. This piece informs us of the caliber of a team's potential replacements (and/or new stars) in the lineup. It is determined by the past few years of recruiting rankings in diminishing order (meaning the most recent class carries the most weight). This is also impacted by the recruiting rankings of incoming transfers, an acknowledgment that the art of roster management is now heavily dictated by the transfer portal.
3. Recent history. Using a sliver of information from the previous four seasons or so gives us a good measure of overall program health.
(One other reminder: SP+ is a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and along those lines, these projections aren't intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the season. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date.)
Here are the full, updated rankings:
This time around, I am also experimenting with what you might call a fourth projection factor: coaching changes. Using data discussed in this March column, I have incorporated some adjustments based on who changed head coaches and/or offensive or defensive coordinators and how those teams performed against historic norms last year. Translation: For teams or units that underachieved significantly against their 20-year averages and changed coaches or coordinators (example: Oklahoma's offense, Purdue's entire team), that means a slight bump upward. For teams or units that overachieved and lost their coaches or coordinators (example: UNLV as a team or Louisiana Tech's defense), that means a bump down.
The adjustments aren't enormous, but when you see that Oklahoma's projected rating has risen since February, that explains it.
Minimal changes near the topThirteen teams moved up or down at least 10 spots compared to February's rankings, due to either transfer portal addition/attrition, the coaching adjustments mentioned above, or simply me getting a much better read on returning production after official roster releases. At the very top, however, not a ton changed. The top four teams from February continue to occupy the same spots, though Texas hopped Notre Dame and Oregon into the No. 5 hole. Clemson and Michigan rose a bit, Tennessee dropped five spots after Nico Iamaleava's transfer, and Oklahoma indeed eased into the top 15. (With their ridiculous schedule, however, the Sooners' projected win total still isn't great.)
The overall conference hierarchy hasn't changed much either, though with the Sun Belt getting hit particularly hard by spring transfer attrition, the AAC moves into the top spot among Group of Five conferences.
Average SP+ rating by conference
1. SEC (15.3 overall, 33.1 offense, 17.8 defense, 60.7% average returning production)
Top three teams: No. 2 Alabama, No. 4 Georgia, No. 5 Texas
2. Big Ten (9.5 overall, 29.1 offense, 19.6 defense, 56.7% average returning production)
Top three teams: No. 1 Ohio State, No. 3 Penn State, No. 7 Oregon
Both the SEC and Big Ten boast three of the projected top seven teams, but if we measure conferences by average ratings, the SEC still has a commanding lead due, as always, to the lack of dead weight. Only two of 16 SEC teams are projected lower than 43rd overall, while the Big Ten has six such teams, including three ranked 70th or worse. That helps explain why, despite playing only eight-game conference schedules, SEC teams occupy 13 of the top 15 spots in the strength of schedule rankings.
3. Big 12 (6.3 overall, 31.0 offense, 24.7 defense, 61.8% average returning production)
Top three teams: No. 18 Kansas State, No. 22 Arizona State, No. 26 Texas Tech
4. ACC (5.0 overall, 30.8 offense, 25.8 defense, 59.2% average returning production)
Top three teams: No. 8 Clemson, No. 12 Miami, No. 20 SMU
We see a similar dynamic with the Big 12 and ACC - in terms of the quality of its top teams, the ACC (three top-20 teams) seems to have an advantage over the Big 12 (one top-20 team). But the Big 12 has eight top-35 teams compared to the ACC's four, and while no Big 12 team is projected lower than 66th, the ACC's average is dragged down by three teams ranking 79th or lower.
5. AAC (-7.8 overall, 26.0 offense, 33.8 defense, 49.4% average returning production)
Top three teams: No. 48 Tulane, No. 53 Memphis, No. 63 UTSA
6. Sun Belt (-8.1 overall, 24.9 offense, 33.0 defense, 46.3% average returning production)
Top three teams: No. 49 James Madison, No. 74 Louisiana, No. 76 South Alabama
7. Mountain West (-8.6 overall, 23.5 offense, 32.1 defense, 46.5% average returning production)
Top three teams: No. 33 Boise State, No. 75 UNLV, No. 83 San Jose State
Three G5 teams are within one point of each other on average, though again, the distribution varies significantly by conference. The MWC is propped up significantly by Boise State, the best projected G5 team, but its average is dragged down by three teams ranking 119th or worse. The Sun Belt has only one such team. The AAC, meanwhile, has a solid five teams in the top 70 ... and four teams projected 120th or worse.
8. Conference USA (-13.0 overall, 20.4 offense, 33.4 defense, 50.7% average returning production)
Top three teams: No. 69 Liberty, No. 85 Western Kentucky, No. 104 Jacksonville State
9. MAC (-13.7 overall, 19.8 offense, 33.5 defense, 41.1% average returning production)
Top three teams: No. 72 Toledo, No. 80 Ohio, No. 91 Buffalo
No conference was hit harder by the portal than the MAC, which has only three teams ranked higher than 94th in the returning production rankings below. That's going to wreck your averages, though Toledo and Buffalo both escaped too much damage in this regard.
An approximate CFP contenders listMy SP+ strength of schedule ratings are based on a simple question: How would the average top-five team fare against your schedule? Oklahoma's schedule currently features five of the projected top 11 teams and nine of the top 25, while Notre Dame's features only two teams projected higher than 30th; SP+ SOS says a top-five team would average a 0.757 win percentage against OU's schedule (equivalent to 9.1 wins in 12 games) and a 0.894 win percentage against Notre Dame's (10.7 wins). That's a pretty big difference.
Schedule strengths obviously vary quite a bit within conferences -- not every SEC schedule is Oklahoma's -- but it's worth acknowledging that when it comes to potential College Football Playoff-worthy resumes, the bar can be set in a different spot based on a team's conference.
Average strength-of-schedule rating per conference
SEC 0.799 (9.6 wins for a typical top-five team)
Big Ten 0.846 (10.2)
ACC 0.891 (10.7)
Big 12 0.902 (10.8)
AAC 0.956 (11.5)
Sun Belt 0.958 (11.5)
MWC 0.959 (11.5)
CUSA 0.964 (11.6)
MAC 0.965 (11.6)
When it comes to how a top-five team would fare, the average SEC schedule is about one win harder than the average ACC or Big 12 schedule. The Big Ten, with its dead-weight teams, is about a half-win harder than those leagues but is still more likely to get lumped in with the SEC than the others in the Power Four.
Long story short: We can confidently say that any 10-2 or better team in the SEC or Big Ten would be a likely playoff contender, just as any 11-1 or better team in the ACC or Big 12 would be. We can therefore create a loose list of likely CFP contenders by looking at the teams most likely to hit those marks.
Odds of an SEC team going 10-2 or better: Alabama 65% (SOS rank: 11th), Texas 61% (12th), Georgia 61% (13th), Ole Miss 38% (23rd), Tennessee 33% (24th), LSU 30% (ninth), Florida 18% (second), Auburn 13% (15th), Oklahoma 9% (first), Missouri 5% (25th)
Odds of a Big Ten team going 10-2 or better: Penn State 82% (SOS rank: 29th), Ohio State 77% (21st), Oregon 73% (32nd), Michigan 62% (38th), Illinois 29% (40th), Nebraska 13% (35th), USC 10% (20th), Indiana 9% (31st)
With a particularly weak nonconference schedule -- and a particularly good team, Penn State might be in the driver's seat in terms of playoff qualification, while Ohio State, Oregon, Alabama, Michigan and Georgia are all over 60% likely to finish the regular season with two or fewer losses.
Odds of a Big 12 or ACC team (or Notre Dame) going 11-1 or better: Notre Dame 52% (SOS rank: 44th), Clemson 37% (34th), Miami 23% (36th), Kansas State 17% (57th), BYU 7% (64th), Texas Tech 7% (62nd), SMU 6% (45th), Arizona State 5% (61st)
Odds of a Group of 5 team going 11-1 or better: Boise State 37% (SOS rank: 84th), Liberty 17% (136th), Toledo 11% (133rd), Memphis 8% (121st), James Madison 7% (104th)
Notre Dame starts the season with games against Miami and Texas A&M, and while the rest of the schedule features plenty of solid opponents (five are projected between 30th and 47th), if the Irish are 2-0 out of the gates, they're staring a second straight CFP appearance in the face.
Updated returning production rankingsWith updated SP+ projections come updated returning production figures. A reminder: While returning production doesn't correlate with pure quality, it does correlate well with improvement and regression, particularly at the extremes.
(Note: The production of incoming transfers is mashed into both the numerator and denominator of the returning production formula -- so if you lose your starting quarterback but bring in someone else's from the portal, your returning yardage is probably somewhere around 50%. The production of transfers from schools below the FBS level get half-credit.)
As was the case in February, Clemson leads the way here. And with the way that talent trickles upward in the transfer portal era, it's probably not a surprise that nine of the top 10 teams in returning production (and 22 of the top 26) are power-conference teams. The P4 boasts 59.6% returning production overall, while the G5 is at 46.8%. That's a pretty massive gap, one that isn't likely to shrink anytime soon.
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