The 2020 college football season might have been the oddest we've ever seen, but that doesn't mean my offseason calendar has to change! Last week, I shared my returning production rankings for 2021, and now that the 2020-21 recruiting cycle is (mostly) complete, it's time to share my annual SP+ projections.
As a reminder, I base these projections based on three primary factors, weighted by their predictiveness:
1. Returning production. As I wrote last week, I have updated rosters as much as possible to account for transfers, graduation, and the announced return of many 2020 seniors. The combination of last year's SP+ ratings and adjustments based on returning production now make up more than two-thirds of the projections formula.
2. Recent recruiting. Returning production aims to tell us what kind of talent and experience a team is returning. Recruiting rankings inform us of the caliber of the team's potential replacements (and/or new stars) in the lineup. They make up about one-quarter of the projections formula. This piece is determined not only by the most recent recruiting class but also, in diminishing fashion, the last three classes as well.
3. Recent history. Last year's ratings are a huge piece of the puzzle, but using a sliver of information from previous seasons (two to four years ago) gives us a good way of measuring overall program health. It stands to reason that a team that has played well for one year is less likely to duplicate that effort than a team that has been good for years on end (and vice versa), right? This is a minor piece of the puzzle, but the projections are better with it than without.
A reminder on SP+: It's a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. I created the system at Football Outsiders in 2008, and as my experience with both college football and its stats has grown, I have made quite a few tweaks to the system.
SP+ is intended to be predictive and forward-facing. That is important to remember. It is not a résumé ranking that gives credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling -- no good predictive system is. It is simply a measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.
