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2019 Early S&P+ Release: Nebraska Could Go 8-4, Maybe?

Can Nebraska go from 4-8 to 8-4? I used the S&P+ numbers for an early guess.

With recruiting “done and dusted”, we’ve officially entered the desert of college football. And with the men’s basketball failing to, once again, capture and hold the imagination of the collective fan base, we’re all desperate for content.

Thankfully, here at SB Nation, we have Bill Connelly. For those who don’t know, in addition to writing previews for all 130 FBS teams (Bowling Green and Kent State yesterday!), Bill Connelly is the mind behind the S&P+ rating system for comparing college football teams. The system uses advance analytics and a huge dataset (thousands of games) to estimate the quality of FBS football teams. I’ll let Bill tell you about the numbers, but essentially, S&P+ compares all of the teams to a mythical “average” team. The S&P+ values therefore indicate that for any given team X, their score means they are so many points above or below that average team.

For 2019, Nebraska’s overall S&P+ score is 6.6 (good enough for #45 in the country, 7th in Big Ten), making it barely a touchdown better than the average FBS team. Considering Nebraska is coming off two 4-8 seasons in a row, I’d argue that’s not bad! (It also suggests the top 25 votes coming in early preseason polling MAY be premature, but then again, coaching changes can make things difficult track, especially early in a coaching staff’s tenure at his new school.)

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