ESPN's Bill Connelly has released his initial SP+ rankings for the 2020 football season. If you aren't familiar with SP+, here is an explainer from KUSports.com

Connelly explains in his own terms below:

"I'm including both the number of scheduled games and average projected wins for each team planning on playing this fall. Those projected wins are based on teams' win probabilities for each game, and those probabilities are using only a one-point home-field advantage for reasons discussed here.

These average win totals are, by nature, extremely conservative. If you have an 80% chance of winning, it counts as 0.8 wins, and 60% counts as 0.6 wins. Using these average totals, you'll see no one projected to go unbeaten or winless. Alabama is a projected favorite of at least 9.5 points in nine of 10 games, but the Crimson Tide's average win total is only 8.0. Please don't yell at me personally on Twitter for "predicting" them to go 8-2, then demand to know who I think they're losing to. It's just the way these projections work."

MTSU starts the season at #107 - which obviously isn't totally correct given the fact there are only 76 teams playing this fall. As Connelly explained, he decided it made the most sense to keep all teams in the initial rankings, and teams that don't play will naturally begin to move down the list.

TEAM PROJ. SP+ OFFENSE DEFENSE FALL GAMES (AVG. WINS)

MTSU -10.3 28.8 (57) 39.1 (121) 10 (4.3)

In layman's terms, SP+ projects MTSU to have the 57th best offense in the country and the 121st best defense. Out of 10 games, the calculation projects, on average, 4.3 wins.

How does MTSU stack up against the rest of the CUSA?

WKU #57

UAB #66

Marshall #74

LA Tech #89

USM #92

FAU #95

CLT #98

FIU #104

MTSU #107

UNT #114

Rice #116

ODU #118

UTSA #123

UTEP #128

And for reference, Army is #99 and Troy comes in at #80 in the initial rankings.