With the 2024 season fast approaching, ESPN’s Bill Connelly has updated his preseason SP+ rankings one last time. As with Connelly’s post-spring update, the Buckeyes remain at No. 2, behind only Georgia at No. 1, which matches the order of the leaders in this year’s preseason AP poll.
However, the Buckeyes’ specific SP+ ratings have changed.
First a refresher…
SP+ was developed by Connelly himself and is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of efficiency in college football.” He has been using and tweaking the prediction model since he introduced it to Football Outsiders in 2008. His preseason projections are based on three things: (1) the performance of returning players, (2) recent recruiting (quality and number of transfers are also taken into account), and (3) recent history.
SP+ ratings indicate how many points a team is better (positive) or worse (negative) than the average FBS team in a given year. Within a team’s overall SP+ rating, there are also offensive and defensive SP+ ratings – represented in adjusted point averages (points per game).
“This is a prediction of the most enduring and predictable aspects of football, not a ranking of resumes, and in that sense, these projections are not intended as a guess as to what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the season. They are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather so far.”
Bill Connelly, ESPN
Here’s how Ohio State’s SP+ ratings have changed this offseason…
The Buckeyes have a 30.8 SP+ rating, meaning they’re projected to be 30.8 points better than the average FBS team in 2024. And according to Connelly’s calculations, Ohio State is on pace to post adjusted scoring averages of 35.7 points per game on offense (25th) and 4.9 points allowed per game on defense (2nd).
In February, Ohio State had a SP+ rating of 30.1 (2nd) as well as adjusted scoring averages of 35.9 points per game on offense (20th) and 5.8 points allowed per game on defense (1st). Then in May, Ohio State had a SP+ rating of 32.7 (2nd) as well as adjusted scoring averages of 36.6 (20th) and 4.0 points allowed per game on defense (1st). It’s still surprising how low the Buckeyes’ offensive SP+ rating is in these projections considering how much firepower they gained via the transfer portal, even though they technically only returned 62% of their offensive output from last season, according to Connelly.
The Buckeyes’ special teams SP+ rating of 0.5 (20th) has not changed despite Connelly’s updates.
Here’s a look at the current top 10:
| TEAM | SP+ | OFF. SP+ | DEF.-SP+ | ST SP+ |
| 1. Georgia | 34.2 | 46.2 (3) | 12.0 (5) | 0.7 (4) |
| 2. State of Ohio | 30.8 | 35.7 (25) | 4.9 (2) | 0.5 (20) |
| 3. Oregon | 29.0 | 47.1 (1) | 18.1 (15) | -0.2 (85) |
| 4. Alabama | 27.8 | 42.7 (7) | 14.9 (8) | 0.7 (2) |
| 5. Texas | 27.7 | 44.4 (4) | 16.8 (12) | 0.5 (17) |
| 6. Penn State | 26.1 | 35.8 (24) | 9.7 (4) | 0.4 (28) |
| 7. Michigan | 25.0 | 31.9 (49) | 6.9 (3) | 0.6 (7) |
| 8. Ole Miss | 24.7 | 42.9 (6) | 18.3 (16) | 0.5 (26) |
| 9. Notre-Dame | 23.4 | 39.0 (10) | 15.6 (9) | 0.2 (53) |
| 10. University of California | 23.1 | 46.3 (2) | 23.2 (38) | -0.1 (83) |
The only changes in the top 10 in terms of overall SP+ ranking were that Alabama and Texas swapped places 4 and 5 and Penn State and Michigan swapped places 6 and 7, while Notre Dame climbed a rung to 9th and LSU now rounds out the upper echelon at 10th.
The Big Ten has the second-highest average SP+ overall rating (10.0), second only to the SEC (16.7). Both conferences improved their average SP+ overall rating by at least 3.9 points from last year, according to Connelly.
Connelly also gave the chances of winning the Big Ten title in his analysis: Ohio State 29.7%, Oregon 25.2%, Penn State 19.0%, Michigan 15.0%, USC 2.7%, Wisconsin 2.3%, Iowa 2.1%, Washington 1.1%, Nebraska 0.7%, UCLA 0.7%, Maryland 0.5%, Rutgers 0.4%, Minnesota 0.3%, Indiana 0.1%, Illinois 0.1%, Purdue
Interestingly, Ohio State’s odds of winning the Big Ten title in Connelly’s SP+ projections (29.7%) are higher than its odds of winning the Big Ten title as calculated by ESPN’s Football Power Index (25.7%). Oregon has the edge in ESPN’s FPI at 37.5%, while Ohio State is at the top of the conference projection in Connelly’s metric.
