I'm guessing it's based on recruiting rankings. Not actual production at the college level.
It's actually much better than I expected. Gives me a little more hope.
Correct. They also reevaluate transfers. It's definitely not perfect, but historically, these rankings correlate with on-field success.
For reference, Arizona State was 30th in these rankings last season, so being 33rd the next season isn't a big drop-off.
Their QB got MUCH better as the season went on. And they're bringing in a 1,000 rusher from Army in the transfer portal. A lot of y'all are seriously underestimating Arizona St., just like we all did last year.
I predict we beat USM by 6 in a somewhat high-scoring game. The defense will look poor, but the offense will overshadow it. State fans and media will tell you the defense will need to gel, and we will be fine. They'll also mention how good an offensive coach Huff is and downplay how soft we look on the DL. Then Az State will double donkey punch us again while rushing for 200 yards...again. Hope I'm wrong.
I hope you're wrong too. If we don't beat USM by 20, we're staring 3-9 in the face, with a real chance of 2-10.
I would point out that it's easy to rank the top 5 rosters in terms of talent. Everyone knows those teams are loaded. Ranking #11-#40 is much harder.
I am not underestimating them at all. They got a really good WR coming back. Skattebo numbers will be hard to replace.
If we lose to ASU (we'll probably be 6.5 dogs), we don't need to throw in the towel. As long as we play them well. I think we can ding Ark and/or Misery. 4 wins needs to be floor, 5 or more shows we're on the right track.
4 wins definitely is not the floor. I mean, we're likely to be underdogs in 9 of 12 games.
And we were 34 last year according to the rankings. At least on paper, we have significantly more talent than a year ago. We'll see what we can do with it.
Well we should have three automatic wins, just need one upset out of those 9.
I bet the game last night with us -6.5 at half and -13 final.
If he loses any of the three automatic games, he needs to be fired the next day and we should bring in our designated interim, Greg, for the rest of the season.
I'd love for someone to compare last years defensive ratings to this years defensive ratings.
Good point.
| 2024 | 2025 | movement (+/-) | |
| Mississippi State | 34 | 24 | 10 |
| Auburn | 18 | 12 | 6 |
| South Carolina | 21 | 18 | 3 |
| Arkansas | 26 | 23 | 3 |
| LSU | 8 | 6 | 2 |
| Texas A&M | 10 | 8 | 2 |
| Tennessee | 17 | 16 | 1 |
| Alabama | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Georgia | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Texas | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Florida | 12 | 13 | -1 |
| Ole Miss | 20 | 21 | -1 |
| Missouri | 19 | 22 | -3 |
| Kentucky | 24 | 27 | -3 |
| Vanderbilt | 50 | 55 | -5 |
| Oklahoma | 7 | 14 | -7 |
It will be close at the half, possibly tied, then State pulls ahead by 10-14 by the end of the game.
IF this is the scenario, we have problems.
The problem is that you can’t really re-evaluate a transfer that is a bust and never sees the field, then goes somewhere else….because there’s nothing on film. And those are the ones that need to be re-evaluated the most. So the original ranking stands by default.
That's not particularly impressive. I put in the national champion and their preseason ranking. Nobody would have had any of those teams particularly far down the line. When there was a major difference between preseason expectations and talent rankings, the talent rankings proved to not be predictive.
I was just making the point that the team talent composite generally correlates to the teams that win on the field. The easiest thing to demonstrate in a couple of minutes of research was that the national champion comes from the teams with the most talent, according to these types of evaluations.
They downgrade highly recruited players who don't see the field and then transfer to a less talented team. Many four-star high school prospects transfer as three-star transfer prospects.
