FARGO — Bill Connelly writes for ESPN and uses a predictive analytics system to rank college football teams. The system is called SP+. In his words, SP+ is “a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency …. SP+ is intended to be predictive and forward-facing. It is not a résumé ranking, so it does not automatically give credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling — no good predictive system does. It’s simply a measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football. If you’re lucky or unimpressive in a win, your rating will probably fall. If you’re strong and unlucky in a loss, it will probably rise.”
In other words, mumbo-jumbo mixed with witchcraft for those of us who for three decades have watched a college football game and used what we call the “eyeball test.” We’d eyeball the game, the players, the coaching decisions, the scoreboard and the statistics and say, “That team ain’t bad.”
Or, conversely, “That team is (expletive deleted) terrible.”
Connelly arrives at those conclusions using analytics, which is a more scientific approach than the eyeball test but often bears similar fruit. For example, Connelly’s SP+ rankings through 2025 had North Dakota State as the best team in the Football Championship Subdivision and usual suspects like Montana State, Montana and Tarleton State near the top. Nearer the bottom were a couple of squads — Tennessee State and Murray State — that Bison fans know to be less than good.
(Connelly’s computer was wildly wrong once the FCS playoffs began and he basically handed the national championship to the Bison. He had Illinois State as a minor bump on the way to Nashville and an 11th title. Whoops.)
NDSU has since moved to the Mountain West Conference, which means more attention from national outlets like ESPN that cover the Football Bowl Subdivision. That includes Connelly,
who dropped his Mountain West preview this week using his SP+ rankings
to predict an order of finish.
He has the Bison finishing third in their maiden voyage in the conference, behind UNLV and New Mexico.
“UNLV and a suddenly exciting New Mexico will lead the way out of the gate, but the addition of NDSU adds all sorts of intrigue,” Connelly wrote. “(It only took former FCS power James Madison four years to reach the CFP. Can the Bison do it in three??)”
Connelly’s predicted order of finish:
UNLVNew MexicoNDSUAir ForceHawaiiWyomingNevadaSan Jose StateNorthern IllinoisUTEP
Connelly’s numbers predict UNLV, New Mexico, NDSU, Air Force and Hawaii to be very close.
The Bison have to travel to all of those locations this season. They’ll host Wyoming, Nevada, Northern Illinois and UTEP while playing a game deemed as nonconference at San Jose State.
“It’s going to be difficult to contain expectations,” Connelly wrote of the Bison. “I do have to wonder, though, if it would have been better for them to jump last season. The Bison had dynamite quarterback Cole Payton, one of their best receivers ever in Bryce Lance (brother of Trey) and, on paper, their best team in years. They outscored opponents 42.2 to 11.7 before a stunning upset loss in the playoffs. But their first FBS team will have a new starting quarterback, a mostly new skill corps and a mostly new secondary.”
Ah, realism. This would be
Yeah, no.
We’ve said multiple times that 8-4 would be an excellent virgin season in FBS. A brutal conference road schedule, unfamiliar and odd travel, a short transition time, new starting quarterback, loss of top-level production on both sides of the ball, potential lack of depth with an FCS roster. It’ll be a bigger challenge than most think.
Connelly has NDSU at 8.4 wins overall and 5.1 wins in the conference.
He has the Bison’s chances at winning six or more games — and being bowl eligible if the NCAA agrees to eliminate the current two-year waiting period — at 98.1%.
It’s late May. Not the usual time to be talking about college football, but one of the benefits of the move to FBS and the Mountain West is more eyeballs at more times of the year.
The conference’s media days are scheduled for mid-July in Las Vegas and that’s when the chatter and preseason predictions will ramp up. The belief here is that many of the prognostications will look a lot like Connelly’s, even if they use the eyeball test instead of the mumbo-jumbo.
Mike McFeely is a columnist for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. He began working for The Forum in the 1980s while he was a student studying journalism at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He’s been with The Forum full time since 1990, minus a six-year hiatus when he hosted a local radio talk-show.