College Football Preseason Rankings 2016: Can Alabama Repeat?

College Football Preseason Rankings 2016: Can Alabama Repeat?

August 25, 2016 – by David Hess

Here are the official 2016 TeamRankings college football preseason rankings, including the TR Preseason Top 25.

A Quick Primer On Our College Football Preseason Rankings

Our preseason rankings are almost entirely data-driven. We’ve used team data from past seasons to find which descriptive statistics have correlated strongly with high end-of-season power ratings. We then used those stats to create a model that predicts a team’s power rating.

Some examples of data points used in the model include:

“Percentage of prior season performance returning” statsPrior season final turnover marginEnd of season team power rating from the last few years

We assign each input factor a weight based on its demonstrated level of predictive power.

The output is a power rating that represents how many points above or below average we think a team is, with 0.0 representing a “perfectly average” team.

Gut-Checking The Initial Preseason Ratings

Once we generate initial ratings, we we then check them against the betting markets and the human polls.

If our ranking for a team seems severely out of whack with those other sources, we’ll investigate. We check to see if there’s some factor that’s not taken into account by our model, that human voters and the betting market are picking up on. In some cases, we’ll manually adjust our rating to be a bit closer to the consensus. Though only rarely will we adjust it all the way to match the consensus.

Once we’ve got our final ratings, we simply sort to get our college football preseason rankings.

It’s worth noting that these preseason ratings also drive our college football season projections — at least before the season begins. As the 2016 season progresses, the impact of these preseason ratings will gradually fade, and actual game results will play a larger role in determining our team power ratings (which continue to drive the season projections).

College Football 2016 Preseason Rankings Highlights

High five. In our past two preseason rankings there’s been a trio of teams at the top that was several points clear of the rest of the field. That’s not the case this year. Instead the biggest gap at the top of the rankings is between #5 LSU and #6 Ohio State. But that gap (2.2 points) is still smaller than the gaps between #3 and #4 the last two seasons. Those years featured gaps of 3 and 6 points. The implication here is that this year is more wide open, and there’s not a clear elite tier that stands out about the rest.In our Top 25 but not the AP’s. Two teams in the TR Preseason Top 25 did not rank in the AP’s version: Texas A&M (#23 TR, #27 AP) and Nebraska (#25 TR, #37 AP).We like ’em better than the AP does. Other teams we ranked higher than the AP voters include Baylor (#13 TR, #23 AP), Georgia (#14 TR, #18 AP), Oregon (#15 TR, #24 AP), and North Carolina (#17 TR, #22 AP). Some years this list of “TR likes” is tilted towards a particular conference. This year, however, there doesn’t seem to be a clear trend. The closest thing to a pattern seems to be that most of these teams either lost several starters, or lost a starting QB. Our model is implying that human voters are penalizing these teams too much for those losses, given their solid recent program history.In the AP Top 25 but not ours. Two teams in the AP Preseason Top 25 didn’t make our list: Florida (#29 TR, #25 AP) and Houston (#31 TR, #15 AP). The Florida rank difference is minor; both TR and the AP voters agree that the Gators are right around the cutoff point for the top 25. The Houston difference is more significant. It mainly results from Houston being rated higher by the AP voters last season. The Cougars were ranked #8 in the final AP poll, but #28 in the final TR team rankings. Both the AP voters and our model thinks Houston will be a bit worse this year. We’re just working from a different starting point.The AP likes ’em better than we do. Other teams we ranked lower than the AP voters did include Michigan (#10 TR, #7 AP), TCU (#19 TR, #13 AP), UCLA (#21 TR, #16 AP), Michigan State (#22 TR, #12 AP), and Iowa (#24 TR, #17 AP). Sorry Big Ten fans, but our model seems to think the conference might be a touch overrated.

An Open Letter To Crazy Hardcore Fan Of Team X

Dear Hardcore Fan Of Team X,

Before you make an enraged comment about where we’ve ranked your beloved alma mater and call us a bunch of mouth-breathing Harambe haters who eat their mac and cheese with a spoon, please keep two things in mind:

We use a systematic approach to rank all 128 teams. Our approach has done very well over the years when measured by the most important yardstick: the overall accuracy of projecting team performance levels in the upcoming season across the entire system of 128 teams. It’s also going to get plenty of individual teams wrong, and some very wrong, for all sorts of reasons.Look at ratings, not just rankings. For example, only about a point separates the #6 team (Ohio State) from the #11 team (Washington). Those six teams are all very close to being equals. Often times, the distinction between two closely ranked teams is essentially negligible, so it’s not even worth debating.

Glossary

Team ratings are expressed as points better (positive rating) or worse (negative rating) than the average FBS team, when playing on a neutral fieldA positive “TR Delta” means we gave a team a better ranking than the AP; a negative TR Delta means we gave it a worse ranking than the APIf you’re still curious to learn more about our college football preseason rankings in general, check out our 2012 post covering college football rankings components

Official 2016 College Football Preseason Rankings

TR Rank	AP Rank	TR Delta	Team	Rating
1	1		Alabama Crimson Tide	21.6
2	2		Clemson Tigers	21.2
3	3		Oklahoma Sooners	20.9
4	4		Florida State Seminoles	19.9
5	5		Louisiana State Tigers	19.1
6	6		Ohio State Buckeyes	16.9
7	9	+2	Tennessee Volunteers	16.3
8	8		Stanford Cardinal	16.3
9	10	+1	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	16.2
10	7	-3	Michigan Wolverines	16.2
11	11		Mississippi Rebels	15.8
12	14	+2	Washington Huskies	14.8
13	23	+10	Baylor Bears	13.8
14	18	+4	Georgia Bulldogs	12.6
15	24	+9	Oregon Ducks	11.9
16	19	+3	Louisville Cardinals	11.9
17	22	+5	North Carolina Tar Heels	11.8
18	21	+3	Oklahoma State Cowboys	11.3
19	13	-6	Texas Christian Horned Frogs	11.2
20	20		Southern California Trojans	11.1
21	16	-5	UCLA Bruins	10.8
22	12	-10	Michigan State Spartans	10.6
23	27	+4	Texas A&M Aggies	10.0
24	17	-7	Iowa Hawkeyes	9.5
25	37	+12	Nebraska Cornhuskers	9.1
26			Wisconsin Badgers	9.1
27			Mississippi State Bulldogs	8.8
28			West Virginia Mountaineers	8.7
29	25	-4	Florida Gators	8.7
30			Auburn Tigers	8.4
31	15	-16	Houston Cougars	8.2
32			Arkansas Razorbacks	8.0
33			Brigham Young Cougars	7.8
34			Virginia Tech Hokies	7.7
35			Miami Hurricanes	7.5
36			Utah Utes	7.4
37			Pittsburgh Panthers	7.3
38			Boise State Broncos	7.1
39			Texas Longhorns	6.9
40			Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	6.7
41			Washington State Cougars	6.4
42			Arizona Wildcats	6.1
43			Texas Tech Red Raiders	5.2
44			Georgia Southern Eagles	5.0
45			Navy Midshipmen	4.8
46			Kansas State Wildcats	4.7
47			Missouri Tigers	4.4
48			Arizona State Sun Devils	4.4
49			San Diego State Aztecs	4.2
50			Penn State Nittany Lions	4.2
51			Vanderbilt Commodores	4.0
52			Duke Blue Devils	4.0
53			South Carolina Gamecocks	3.9
54			Boston College Eagles	3.8
55			South Florida Bulls	3.7
56			Cincinnati Bearcats	3.5
57			North Carolina State Wolfpack	3.5
58			Appalachian State Mountaineers	3.4
59			Northwestern Wildcats	3.4
60			Syracuse Orange	3.2
61			California Golden Bears	3.1
62			Memphis Tigers	3.1
63			Northern Illinois Huskies	2.8
64			Toledo Rockets	2.8
65			Western Kentucky Hilltoppers	2.7
66			Temple Owls	2.6
67			Marshall Thundering Herd	2.3
68			Minnesota Golden Gophers	2.1
69			Iowa State Cyclones	1.8
70			Wake Forest Demon Deacons	1.7
71			Utah State Aggies	1.6
72			Virginia Cavaliers	1.0
73			Indiana Hoosiers	0.9
74			Maryland Terrapins	0.6
75			Western Michigan Broncos	0.1
76			Air Force Falcons	-0.4
77			Bowling Green Falcons	-0.9
78			East Carolina Pirates	-1.5
79			Connecticut Huskies	-2.5
80			Rutgers Scarlet Knights	-2.7
81			Oregon State Beavers	-3.2
82			Central Michigan Chippewas	-3.3
83			San Jose State Spartans	-3.4
84			Colorado Buffaloes	-3.4
85			Illinois Fighting Illini	-3.6
86			Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders	-3.7
87			Tulsa Golden Hurricane	-4.5
88			Purdue Boilermakers	-4.5
89			Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles	-4.6
90			Kentucky Wildcats	-4.6
91			Arkansas State Red Wolves	-5.5
92			Troy Trojans	-6.4
93			Nevada Wolf Pack	-7.0
94			Louisiana Tech Bulldogs	-7.2
95			Colorado State Rams	-7.4
96			Southern Methodist Mustangs	-7.6
97			Army Black Knights	-7.8
98			New Mexico Lobos	-8.7
99			Kent State Golden Flashes	-9.4
100			Central Florida Knights	-9.5
101			Ohio Bobcats	-9.9
102			Ball State Cardinals	-10.4
103			Wyoming Cowboys	-11.4
104			UL Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns	-11.4
105			Florida Atlantic Owls	-13.1
106			Fresno State Bulldogs	-13.2
107			Akron Zips	-13.6
108			Georgia State Panthers	-14.2
109			Rice Owls	-14.3
110			Buffalo Bulls	-14.5
111			UNLV Rebels	-14.9
112			Hawaii Rainbow Warriors	-15.5
113			Old Dominion Monarchs	-15.6
114			Florida International Golden Panthers	-15.9
115			Tulane Green Wave	-16.4
116			Kansas Jayhawks	-17.7
117			Texas El Paso Miners	-18.2
118			South Alabama Jaguars	-18.4
119			Miami (Ohio) Redhawks	-18.5
120			Idaho Vandals	-18.5
121			UL Monroe Warhawks	-19.1
122			North Texas Mean Green	-19.4
123			Eastern Michigan Eagles	-20.0
124			Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners	-20.1
125			Texas State Bobcats	-23.1
126			Massachusetts Minutemen	-23.8
127			New Mexico State Aggies	-24.7
128			Charlotte 49ers	-24.8

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