2014 College football rankings: Initial S&P+ Projections

The college football clock almost never changes. The season ends a week into January, National Signing Day comes a month later, spring football begins 3-4 weeks after that, Stupid Arrests Season begins in late-May, fall camp starts around the first or second week in August, and the season begins over a long Labor Day weekend. Rinse, repeat.

I've developed some habits of my own in that time. Following National Signing Day, I post the first of what will basically be three rounds of projections for the coming season. The numbers will get further fleshed out and expanded upon in the summer's Football Outsiders Almanac, and there will be one final batch of projections in late-August, taking into account injuries, defections, etc. But in February, we go simple.

Below are the initial projected rankings for the 2014 college football season. They take into account three factors: recent history, returning starters, and recruiting. You'll find three projected numbers below:

1. Projected S&P+ (5-Year Weighted Average). This is exactly what it says -- a five-year weighted S&P+ average, with 2013 getting 5x the weight, 2012 4x, ..., and 2009 1x. It accounts for about 60 percent of the overall projections. In college football, the best predictor of what you will do is what you've done. Things don't change a whole lot from year to year.

2. Projected S&P+ (Returning Starters). This takes last year's S&P+ ratings and adjusts for your number of returning starters. Obviously returning starters is a pretty vague, debatable number, but at this stage in the game, one month removed from the last season, it's what we have to work with. For now, the best starter numbers to work with are probably Phil Steele's. For my projections, I'll replace his numbers with mine (which are more about top contributors than simply who started) as I derive them. For now, Phil's will do just fine. This number accounts for about 30 percent of the overall projections.

3. Projected S&P+ (2-Year Recruiting). As discussed previously, I have become convinced that a five-year recruiting average is redundant; by the time you're 3-4 years removed from a recruiting class's signing, you've replaced potential (which is what the recruiting rankings reflect) with production. Using two years (as approximately 10 percent of the overall projections) attempts to fill in the gaps between the number of players you lose from last year and the quality of players that will be replacing them.

That's pretty much it. 60-30-10(ish). In Phil Steele parlance, I'm using THREE SETS OF POWER RANKINGS. Below are the projections. (NOTE: By the time the FO Almanac rolls around, we'll have come up with rough projections for the FBS newbies -- Georgia Southern, Appalachian State, Old Dominion -- but for now these are just the FBS teams that were also FBS teams last year.)

Some quick reactions:

1. The top two spots are no surprise. Really, the No. 3 spot isn't, either. However, No. 4 caught me off-guard. South Carolina is a projections darling, with a lovely recent history, a healthy number of returning starters, and decent recruiting. The Gamecocks lead an outright MASS of teams projected between 249.0 and 253.0 (the difference between No. 3 and No. 4: 12.3 points; the difference between No. 4 and No. 11: 4.6 points), and a healthy number of returning starters (14 by Steele's count) pushes them over the edge for now. This is interesting because the eight starters they lose are almost the eight starters you could name right offhand. They'll return running back Mike Davis and a potentially awesome offensive line, but what they lose in star power, they make up for in sheer numbers. I'll be curious to see what happens to this projection when I take things like Draft Points (hello, Jadeveon) into account. A little bit of slippage could knock SC all the way out of the top 10. But for now, hello, No. 4.

2. Why yes, the SEC does have the No. 1, No. 4, No. 5, No. 7, No. 8, No. 12, No. 21, No. 26, No. 29, and No. 31 teams. Auburn and Missouri, last year's SEC title game participants, are projected sixth and 10th in the conference ... and are both in the top 31 overall.

3. UCLA is still getting held down by Rick Neuheisel. Even with a five-year history weighted heavily in favor of the last couple of seasons, the Bruins still come in only 43 in that figure. They should finish closer to fourth (the Returning Starters projection) than 43rd. Meanwhile, Boise State is the anti-UCLA, still ranking fourth overall in weighted 5-year history because of the awesomeness of 2009-11.

4. Top three projected teams in each conference:

* AAC: UCF (No. 24), Houston (No. 41), Cincinnati (No. 54)
* ACC: Florida State (No. 2), Clemson (No. 14), Louisville (No. 20)
* Big 12: Oklahoma (No. 9), Oklahoma State (No. 16), Baylor (No. 25)
* Big Ten: Ohio State (No. 10), Michigan State (No. 13), Wisconsin (No. 19)
* Conference USA: Marshall (No. 59), UTSA (No. 75), Rice (No. 88)
* MAC: NIU (No. 51), Toledo (No. 53), Bowling Green (No. 60)
* MWC: Boise State (No. 18), Fresno State (No. 46), Nevada (No. 62)
* Pac-12: Oregon (No. 3), Stanford (No. 6), USC (No. 11)
* SEC: Alabama (No. 1), South Carolina (No. 4), LSU (No. 5)
* Sun Belt: UL-Lafayette (No. 79), Arkansas State (No. 84), South Alabama (No. 92)