In recent years, the College Football S&P rankings created by Bill Connolly have become wildly popular in terms of trying to determine how good teams really are. Many teams navigate good luck and an easier schedule to an inflated win total compared to how well they actually played.
The rankings are then updated using recruiting and returning production to attempt to project the rankings for the 2016 season. This generally means that teams that over perform compared to recent recruiting rankings or have one big season in the year prior tend to, rightly or wrongly, get ranked further down than they would be by human pollsters. Here are some of the teams that stick out in the rankings:
Analyzing the College Football S&P Rankings
LSU Tigers
Les Miles is on the hot seat in 2016 after being one loss away from being fired at the end of the 2015 regular season.LSU are always well ranked by S&P+ because they are so good at recruiting. But recent years have shown that LSU is immensely talented on paper but has fallen short. The major shortcoming being at quarterback and it’s meant they’ve never truly challenged for the SEC West since winning it in 2011.
This year, S&P+ likes them even more compared to last year as they ranked eighth pre-season and only finished at 22. The depth chart is more talented and more experienced but for me there is no guarantee they challenge for the SEC title this year for them to be ranked second in the nation.
