Ohio State football has continually been at or near the top of ESPN’s SP+ rankings over the last few years.
The predictive formula Bill Connelly uses includes returning production, recruiting, recent history and other data that — according to ESPN — are built as a “tempo and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football. … These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information that we have been able to gather to date.”
With a ton of skill position players returning on the offensive side of the ball and the recent success on the field and in recruiting, you would naturally expect Ohio State to be pretty high on the projections for the 2023 season despite the loss of quarterback C.J. Stroud to the NFL draft. You would not be wrong.
In fact, the ESPN SP+ rankings projections (subscription required) have Ohio State among the top teams in the country once again, but how high exactly? We go through the top 25 for you based on whatever formula goes into making the college football sausage that ESPN is churning out at this early juncture.
Where is Ohio State compared to teams like Alabama, Michigan, USC, Clemson, Georgia and others? Let’s find out.