Kentucky football ranked No. 11 in ESPN's SP+ final 2022 preseason projections

The college football season is officially under one week away from opening kickoff, meaning Kentucky is less than two weeks from taking the field. Preseason expectations, rankings, and projections have been the talk of the town over the last couple of weeks, so why not add in one more to further build the hype?

Sunday morning, ESPN college football staff writer Bill Connelly unveiled the final SP+ preseason projections for the 2022 season, which takes all 131 Divison I programs into account. In it, he tabbed Kentucky at No. 11 overall with an SP+ rating of 16.8, one of seven SEC schools ranked among the top 15. Connelly’s data has the ‘Cats winning 8.1 games, including 4.5 games in conference action.

* The entire damn SEC West is in the top 30
* USC is still unprojectable
* 7.2 points separate No. 3-4
* 7.1 points separate No. 4-18
* BYU is No. 1 in returning production
* Nevada's ret prod: a record low

THE FINAL 2022 SP+ PROJECTIONS ARE UPhttps://t.co/93yj045JmB

— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) August 21, 2022

The majority of SEC schools received higher ratings in the SP+ rankings than the actual AP and Coaches Polls. Tennessee, Mississippi State, and Auburn came in 15 spots higher than their AP rankings, Florida 12 spots higher, Ole Miss 11, and Kentucky nine.

In total, all seven SEC West schools rank among the top 30 in the SP+ projections. Vanderbilt (108) is the only SEC school outside of the top 50. With that in mind, it probably won’t shock you to hear that the conference as a whole ranks as the best in the country by these metrics, too — and by a wide margin. The SEC’s average SP+ rating is 15.0 while the next highest conferences of the Big Ten and Big 12 boast a rating of 9.4 and 8.9, respectively.

You might be asking: what the hell is SP+? Well, it’s based on three primary factors: returning production, recent recruiting, and recent history. Allow Connelly to explain.

SP+ is a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and, along those same lines, these projections aren’t intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the year. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date.

Here’s how Kentucky stacks up against its 2022 opponents in terms of the SP+ projections.

vs. Miami (OH) – No. 85
@ Florida – No. 26
vs. Youngstown State – N/A
vs. Northern Illinois – No. 84
@ Ole Miss – No. 9
vs. South Carolina – No. 37
vs. Mississippi State – No. 20
@ Tennessee – No. 10
@ Missouri – No. 50
vs. Vanderbilt – No. 108
vs. Georgia – No. 2
vs. Louisville – No. 39