There are a lot of ways in which you can judge how good a college football team is. The most conventional way of doing so is based on success on the field, usually determined by wins and losses. Others look at specific offensive and defensive statistics, parsing through analytics to see which squad has an edge of another.
This may be the most effective way of finding out who has the best team, but when you are in early September and don’t yet have any game results to go off of, another way needs to be available.
Thanks to 247Sports talent composite, another way is possible.
Compiling statistics from each Football Bowl Subdivision team’s roster of 85 scholarship players, 247Sports breaks down recruiting ratings and transfers, giving each team a talent score. Looking at schools this way allows us to see who has the most talent on the roster, allowing us then to see who over or under-performed.
Near the top of the list, as you would suspect, are the Alabama Crimson Tide, the only team with a score over 1,000 points. The score discrepancy between Alabama and Oregon is the same as it is between Oregon and Kentucky, which ranks No. 27 on the list. That’s significant.
Another interesting note from 247Sports is there are a couple of important jumps in the standings. The top 16 teams stand apart from the rest, and every College Football Playoff national champion has ranked inside the top 10 since its debut in 2015.
So do the Oregon Ducks qualify in 2022? Are they among the top-10 teams with a roster talented enough to compete for a championship? Let’s take a look: