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Where is Penn State football in the final 2024 preseason SP+ ratings?

Greg Pickelby:Greg Pickel•08/13/24•

GregPickel

nittany-lion-mascot-generic-penn-state-football-on3
The Penn State Nittany Lion mascot. (Credit: Steve Manuel | Blue White Illustrated)

Penn State football is a top 10 team entering the 2024 season, according to college coaches (including James Franklin) who vote in the USA Today poll and also media members who submit ballots for the Associated Press top 25. The former lists the Nittany Lions at No. 9 and the latter No. 8. Now, a data-driven top 25 is out, too, and it also has PSU inside the top 10, albeit a bit higher than the aforementioned sets of rankings.

ESPN’s Bill Connelly released his final SP+ ratings of the preseason on Tuesday. Penn State checks in at No. 6. The Lions moved up one spot from Connelly’s post-spring rankings. Those, like the longtime college football writer’s March top 25, had the Lions at No. 7. For those who are unaware, Connelly explains the methodology of his rankings as follows:

“As always, these are based on three primary factors: returning production (final rankings for which you can find at the bottom of this piece), recent recruiting and recent history. How good have you been recently? Whom do you have coming back? How good are the players replacing those you don’t have coming back? That’s loosely what we ask when we’re setting expectations for a team; it’s also what these projections attempt to do objectively.

“As always: 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.”

More Penn State thoughts from the final preseason SP+ rankings

Penn State (26.1 points) sits behind No. 1 Georgia (34.2), No. 2 Ohio State (30.8), No. 3 Oregon (29), No. 4 Alabama (27.8), and No. 5 Texas (27.7). The SP+ data ranks the Lions’ offense as the 24th-best overall, while the defense checks in at No. 4 nationally. Last but not least, special teams rank 28th.

Most of the SP+ top 25 mirrored the AP top 25. Penn State, of course, was higher in the former than the latter, which was one of Connelly’s takeaways.

“James Franklin’s Nittany Lions are 21-5 over the past two seasons — 0-4 against top-five caliber Michigan and Ohio State teams and 21-1 against everyone else,” Connelly writes. “Those losses contribute to a general perception of underachievement for PSU, but SP+ has still ranked them sixth or better after four of the past six full seasons and projects them sixth to start 2024. Voters didn’t have them too far away, but they were still eighth in the AP poll and ninth in the coaches poll.”

Here’s where Penn State’s 2024 opponents are in the SP+ rankings (note that 134 teams are ranked):

Aug. 31 – at West Virginia (No. 34, 9.7 points)
Sept. 7 – Bowling Green (No. 104, -11.2)
Sept. 14 – BYE WEEK
Sept. 21 – Kent State (No. 130, -20.9)
Sept. 28 – Illinois (No. 61, 0.1)

Oct. 5 – UCLA (No. 37, 8.8)
Oct. 12 – at USC (No. 21, 13.9)
Oct. 19 – BYE WEEK
Oct. 26 – at Wisconsin (No. 26, 12.9)

Nov. 2 – Ohio State (No. 2, 30.8)
Nov. 9 – Washington (No. 32, 10.3)
Nov. 16 – at Purdue (No. 68, -1.4)
Nov. 23 – at Minnesota (No. 47, 4.2)
Nov. 30 – Maryland (No. 46, 5.2)

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