Ohio State football tops ESPN’s Preseason SP+ Rankings for 2020

Season or not, Ohio State is the most talented team in the country heading into 2020 according to ESPN’s SP+ Preseason Rankings for 2020.

If you’re a metrics and analytics snob, then you’re going to love where Ohio State has landed on the preseason version of ESPN’s SP+ Rankings for 2020. That’s because it’s right at the top where it left off using the same metrics at the end of last season. This, despite losing to Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl.

The SP+ Rankings are built on several analytic measurables that gauge the predictive power of each college football team. The Buckeyes started out lower down the list in 2019, but as the season wore on, they set some pretty remarkable records for the historical measurement of teams, and stayed at No. 1 once it gained a foothold the rest of the year.

So what goes into the metrics you say? It’s a good question. ESPN doesn’t really go into detail on what’s in the secret sauce but has the following to say straight from its website for all of this ranking debauchery.

“They (SP+ Rankings) are based on the same factors as the February projections — returning production, recent history and recruiting — and they are updated for all transfers and opt-outs as of the afternoon of Aug. 31.”

Okay, I guess we’ll have to live with that. Bill Connelly is ESPN’s numbers guru with this thing, and it’s more or less his baby to raise and grow into adulthood throughout the season.

But enough about that. The top ten teams behind Ohio State include (in order) Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma, Penn State, Notre Dame, and Texas A&M.

On second thought, maybe it should be called the SEC+ Rankings, but that’s for another day.

 

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