Preseason College Football Rankings 2014: Three Teams Stand Tall

August 25, 2014 - by Tom Federico

We’ve refined our college football preseason ratings algorithm with the benefit of an extra year’s worth of results, and fed all of the requisite 2014 input data into the model. After a few turns of the hand crank, the results are in.

Here are the official 2014 TeamRankings preseason college football team rankings and ratings, including the TR Preseason Top 25.

(Quick announcement though: Our picks for college football office pools and confidence pools, which gave our users up to a 10x edge over their opponents last year, are now available.)

2014 College Football Rankings Highlights

A Trifecta At The Top. There’s a clear triumvirate at the top of our ratings this year, with Florida State (#1), Oregon (#2), and Alabama (#3) all projecting at least six points better than the rest of the FBS.

In The TR Top 25, not the AP. Three teams in the TR Preseason Top 25 did not rank in the AP version: Oklahoma State (#23 TR, #33 AP), Florida (#24 TR, #27 AP) and BYU (#25 TR, #44 AP). It looks like BYU gets the nod as our biggest sleeper pick of the preseason among top 50 teams.
In The AP Top 25, not the TR. That means three teams in the AP Preseason Top 25 also didn’t make our list: North Carolina (#34 TR, #23 AP), Notre Dame (#36 TR, #17 AP), and Nebraska (#39 TR, #22 AP). There are some pretty big disagreements there, so we’re excited to see how it plays out.
More Love Than The AP. Other teams we ranked higher than the AP voters include Baylor (#4 TR, #10 AP), Wisconsin (#7 TR, #14 AP), Texas A&M (#16 TR, #21 AP), and Washington (#19 TR, #25 AP). It will be interesting to see if the humans are overreacting to the A&M’s loss of Johnny Football.
Less Love Than The AP. Other teams we ranked lower than the AP voters include Ohio State (#18 TR, #5 AP), South Carolina (#13 TR, #9 AP), Michigan State (#14 TR, #8 AP), and Clemson (#20 TR, #16 AP). It’s worth noting that the AP rank for Ohio State came out before its QB suffered an injury, and we made an adjustment for that.

Two Things To Keep In Mind

Dear Hardcore Fan Of Team X, before you make a comment about where we’ve ranked your favorite team and call us a bunch of no good bleepety-bleeps, please keep a couple things in mind:

We’re using a systematic approach to rank 128 teams. It has done very well over the years. It’s also going to get plenty of individual teams wrong, for all sorts of reasons. The goal here is OVERALL accuracy across the entire system of 128 teams. In other words, no, we did not intentionally program our computers to hate your team.
Look at ratings, not just rankings. For example, less than one point separates the #11 team (USC) from the #15 team (Arizona State). Those five 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 (a positive rating) or worse (a negative rating) than the average team in the FBS, when playing on a neutral field
A 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 AP
If you’re curious about how we come up with these numbers, you can check out a 2012 post that covered college football rankings components

Official 2014 Preseason College Rankings

TR Rank	AP Rank	TR Delta	Team	Rating
1	1	0	Florida State Seminoles	27.7
2	3	+1	Oregon Ducks	26.2
3	2	-1	Alabama Crimson Tide	25.4
4	10	+6	Baylor Bears	19.2
5	4	-1	Oklahoma Sooners	18.5
6	6	0	Auburn Tigers	18.5
7	14	+7	Wisconsin Badgers	18.0
8	11	+3	Stanford Cardinal	17.5
9	7	-2	UCLA Bruins	16.7
10	13	+3	Louisiana State Tigers	16.4
11	15	+4	Southern California Trojans	15.9
12	12	0	Georgia Bulldogs	15.9
13	9	-4	South Carolina Gamecocks	15.5
14	8	-6	Michigan State Spartans	15.5
15	19	+4	Arizona State Sun Devils	15.0
16	21	+5	Texas A&M Aggies	14.6
17	20	+3	Kansas State Wildcats	14.3
18	5	-13	Ohio State Buckeyes	14.0
19	25	+6	Washington Huskies	12.9
20	16	-4	Clemson Tigers	12.5
21	18	-3	Mississippi Rebels	12.4
22	24	+2	Missouri Tigers	12.4
23	33	+10	Oklahoma State Cowboys	12.3
24	27	+3	Florida Gators	11.9
25	44	+19	Brigham Young Cougars	11.5
26			Utah Utes	11.2
27			Texas Christian Horned Frogs	11.0
28			Arizona Wildcats	11.0
29			Mississippi State Bulldogs	10.6
30			Iowa Hawkeyes	10.4
31			Oregon State Beavers	10.3
32			Michigan Wolverines	10.3
33			Texas Longhorns	10.2
34	23	-11	North Carolina Tar Heels	9.9
35			Boise State Broncos	9.6
36	17	-19	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	9.2
37			Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	8.6
38			Central Florida Knights	6.6
39	22	-17	Nebraska Cornhuskers	6.5
40			Texas Tech Red Raiders	6.2
41			Arkansas Razorbacks	5.9
42			Houston Cougars	5.8
43			Penn State Nittany Lions	5.5
44			Louisville Cardinals	4.9
45			Washington State Cougars	4.9
46			Northwestern Wildcats	4.8
47			Miami Hurricanes	4.2
48			Navy Midshipmen	4.0
49			Virginia Tech Hokies	3.8
50			West Virginia Mountaineers	3.7
51			Iowa State Cyclones	3.5
52			Tennessee Volunteers	3.2
53			Utah State Aggies	3.1
54			Northern Illinois Huskies	2.9
55			Maryland Terrapins	2.9
56			Pittsburgh Panthers	2.3
57			Cincinnati Bearcats	1.8
58			Indiana Hoosiers	1.7
59			Vanderbilt Commodores	1.5
60			Duke Blue Devils	1.5
61			Toledo Rockets	1.5
62			Syracuse Orange	1.4
63			Bowling Green Falcons	0.8
64			Marshall Thundering Herd	0.6
65			Fresno State Bulldogs	-0.2
66			Minnesota Golden Gophers	-0.2
67			UL Lafayette Ragin' Cajuns	-0.8
68			Nevada Wolf Pack	-1.1
69			Rutgers Scarlet Knights	-1.4
70			San Diego State Aztecs	-2.0
71			Boston College Eagles	-2.5
72			California Golden Bears	-2.6
73			East Carolina Pirates	-2.6
74			Illinois Fighting Illini	-2.7
75			Kentucky Wildcats	-3.4
76			North Carolina State Wolfpack	-3.5
77			Temple Owls	-4.1
78			Colorado State Rams	-4.2
79			Western Kentucky Hilltoppers	-4.4
80			Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners	-4.7
81			Tulsa Golden Hurricane	-4.7
82			Virginia Cavaliers	-5.0
83			Southern Methodist Mustangs	-5.3
84			Connecticut Huskies	-5.3
85			South Florida Bulls	-5.5
86			Colorado Buffaloes	-5.6
87			San Jose State Spartans	-6.1
88			Kent State Golden Flashes	-6.5
89			Memphis Tigers	-6.6
90			Rice Owls	-6.6
91			Wake Forest Demon Deacons	-6.6
92			North Texas Mean Green	-6.7
93			Florida Atlantic Owls	-6.7
94			Old Dominion Monarchs	-7.4
95			Ball State Cardinals	-7.4
96			Arkansas State Red Wolves	-7.7
97			Buffalo Bulls	-8.7
98			Central Michigan Chippewas	-9.1
99			Tulane Green Wave	-9.3
100			Kansas Jayhawks	-9.9
101			Georgia Southern Eagles	-10.4
102			South Alabama Jaguars	-10.6
103			Hawaii Rainbow Warriors	-11.3
104			UNLV Rebels	-11.5
105			Ohio Bobcats	-11.8
106			Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders	-12.0
107			UL Monroe Warhawks	-12.1
108			Purdue Boilermakers	-12.1
109			Air Force Falcons	-12.2
110			Louisiana Tech Bulldogs	-12.3
111			Army Black Knights	-12.6
112			Wyoming Cowboys	-12.7
113			Troy Trojans	-13.9
114			New Mexico Lobos	-14.3
115			Akron Zips	-14.3
116			Appalachian State Mountaineers	-14.4
117			Western Michigan Broncos	-16.9
118			Texas El Paso Miners	-17.5
119			Texas State Bobcats	-17.8
120			Idaho Vandals	-18.2
121			Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles	-18.8
122			Alabama-Birmingham Blazers	-21.6
123			Miami (Ohio) Redhawks	-21.8
124			Florida International Golden Panthers	-22.7
125			Massachusetts Minutemen	-22.9
126			Eastern Michigan Eagles	-24.4
127			Georgia State Panthers	-24.8
128			New Mexico State Aggies	-25.1