We're less than six months from the start of the 2025 college football season. While the rhythm of the offseason has changed significantly in recent years and we know rosters won't be set until after the spring transfer window has closed, it's almost never too early to preview and projecting the coming season as best we can.
We've completed the first step in that process: the posting of the initial returning production rankings. Now it's time for Step 2. Based on current rosters, it's time to post the initial SP+ ratings for the 2025 season.
I base SP+ projections on three primary factors, weighted by their predictiveness:
1. Returning production. The returning production numbers are based on rosters I have updated as much as possible to account for transfers and attrition. Combine last year's SP+ ratings and adjustments based on current returning production numbers, and you're pretty far down the projections road. In fact, this factor accounts for more than 60% of the overall projection at this point.
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 both the past few years of recruiting rankings and the quality of incoming transfers, and it accounts for about 14% of the current projection.
3. Recent history. Using a chunk of information from previous seasons gives us a good measure of 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 factor accounts for a little more than 20% of the projection, and it focuses only on what happened within the past three seasons. I used to use a weighted history stretching back five years, but that's a less effective approach now with the changes in the sport.
I will update these numbers in May and August after there have been further transfers and roster changes, and my annual preview series will begin after the May numbers are posted. But for now, let's establish the 2025 hierarchy.
A reminder on SP+: It's 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. Along those same 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.
In addition to the rankings of every FBS team (overall, offense, defense and special teams), we'll look at conference breakdowns and how SP+ matches up with the eyeball test in terms of which teams seem to be overrated and which could be underrated at this early stage.
Jump to a section:
SP+ rankings
Breakdown by conference
Teams to buy, sell
Initial 2025 SP+ rankings
Here are the full rankings, now featuring 136 teams with the addition of Delaware and Missouri State.