Where does Ohio State land in final ESPN preseason SP+ rankings?

The 2024 season is fast approaching, and ESPN’s Bill Connelly has given his preseason SP+ rankings one final update. As was the case with Connelly’s post-spring update, the Buckeyes are staying put at No. 2, behind only No. 1 Georgia, which mirrors the order of the top of this year’s preseason AP Poll.

That said, specific Buckeyes SP+ ratings have changed.

First, a refresher…

Created by Connelly himself, SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency.” He’s been using and tweaking the predictive model since he debuted it at Football Outsiders in 2008. His preseason projections are based on three things: (1) returning production, (2) recent recruiting (quality and volume of transfers are factored in, too) and (3) recent history.

SP+ ratings reflect how many points better (positive) or worse (negative) a team is than the average FBS team in a given year. There are also offensive and defensive SP+ ratings — presented in adjusted scoring averages (points per game) — within a team’s overall SP+ rating.

“It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a resume ranking, and along those lines, these projections aren’t intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the season. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date.”

Bill Connelly, ESPN

How Ohio State’s SP+ ratings have changed this offseason…

The Buckeyes have an SP+ rating of 30.8, meaning they are projected to be 30.8 points better than the average FBS team in 2024. And, according to Connelly’s calculations, Ohio State is on track to post adjusted scoring averages of 35.7 points per game on offense (25th) and 4.9 points per game allowed on defense (2nd).

Back in February, Ohio State had an SP+ rating of 30.1 (2nd), plus adjusted scoring averages of 35.9 points per game on offense (20th) and 5.8 points per game allowed on defense (1st). Then in May, Ohio State had an SP+ rating of 32.7 (2nd), plus adjusted scoring averages of 36.6 (20th) and 4.0 points per game allowed on defense (1). It’s still surprising how low the Buckeyes’ offensive SP+ rating is in these projections considering the firepower they added through the transfer portal, although they did technically return only 62% of their offensive production from last season, per Connelly.

The Buckeyes’ special teams SP+ rating of 0.5 (20th) hasn’t budged throughout Connelly’s updates.

Here’s a look at the current top 10:

TEAM	SP+	OFF. SP+	DEF. SP+	ST SP+
1. Georgia	34.2	46.2 (3)	12.0 (5)	0.7 (4)
2. Ohio State	30.8	35.7 (25)	4.9 (2)	0.5 (20)
3. Oregon	29.0	47.1 (1)	18.1 (15)	-0.2 (85)
4. Alabama	27.8	42.7 (7)	14.9 (8)	0.7 (2)
5. Texas	27.7	44.4 (4)	16.8 (12)	0.5 (17)
6. Penn State	26.1	35.8 (24)	9.7 (4)	0.4 (28)
7. Michigan	25.0	31.9 (49)	6.9 (3)	0.6 (7)
8. Ole Miss	24.7	42.9 (6)	18.3 (16)	0.5 (26)
9. Notre Dame	23.4	39.0 (10)	15.6 (9)	0.2 (53)
10. LSU	23.1	46.3 (2)	23.2 (38)	-0.1 (83)

The only changes in the top 10, overall SP+ placement-wise, were Alabama and Texas flipping spots at No. 4 and No. 5 and Penn State and Michigan swapping spots at No. 6 and No. 7 while Notre Dame climbed a rung to No. 9 and LSU now rounds out the upper echelon at No. 10.

The Big Ten has the second-highest average overall SP+ rating (10.0), trailing only the SEC (16.7). Both conferences are up at least 3.9 points in average overall SP+ rating from last year, according to Connelly.

Connelly also provided Big Ten title odds in his analysis: Ohio State 29.7%, Oregon 25.2%, Penn State 19.0%, Michigan 15.0%, USC 2.7%, Wisconsin 2.3%, Iowa 2.1%, Washington 1.1%, Nebraska 0.7%, UCLA 0.7%, Maryland 0.5%, Rutgers 0.4%, Minnesota 0.3%, Indiana 0.1%, Illinois 0.1%, Purdue <0.1%, Michigan State <0.1%, Northwestern <0.1%.

Interestingly enough, Ohio State’s Big Ten title odds in Connelly’s SP+ projections (29.7%) are higher than its Big Ten title odds calculated by ESPN’s Football Power Index (25.7%). In ESPN’s FPI, Oregon has the edge at 37.5%, whereas Ohio State is atop the conference projection in Connelly’s metric.