Analytics are becoming an increasingly larger part of sports as a whole, and one of ESPN’s college football stats has released its final rankings before the beginning of the college football season.
Writer Bill Connelly’s posted the final rankings (subscription required) on Sunday for ESPN’s SP+ stat, which he frames as a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency.” The stat takes “recent production, recent recruiting and recent history” into account in an attempt to statistically rank college football teams.
The Tigers landed at No. 21 in the rankings, which Connelly noted makes them one of the teams that could play potential sleeper in the SEC this season:
Tennessee, Mississippi State and Auburn are all 15 spots higher in SP+ than in the AP poll. Florida is 12 spots higher, Ole Miss 11 and Kentucky nine. Two main things to take from this: First, SP+ really likes the SEC this season (as we’ll see below). The combination of quality returning production averages and high-level recruiting and transfer portal usage should make for strong output in what is generally college football’s strongest conference.
Connelly also ranked teams by returning production, where the Tigers did not fare so well — they were ranked No. 55 on the list with an estimation of 65 percent returning production.
Auburn will have a chance to put the statistics to the test when it kicks off its season against Mercer on Sept. 3.
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