ESPN’s Bill Connelly has released his updated SP+ predictions for the 2022 college football season.
Georgia came in at number 2 in Connelly’s initial ranking, released in February. A little over three months later, the Bulldogs have moved down that ranking. The first rankings were published shortly after the conclusion of the second national contracting day, while these new rankings also take into account the performance of each team in the transfer portal. Georgia, which has been inactive on the portal, has only eased off a little.
And in case you’re wondering what exactly goes into the SP+ rankings, this is how Connelly describes it:
“SP+ is a pace and opponent-adjusted measure of college football’s effectiveness. It is a predictive measurement of the most enduring and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and with that in mind these predictions are not meant to be a guess as to what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the year. These are simply early off-season performance rankings based on the information we’ve been able to gather so far.”
Here’s a look at the top 10 rankings and where the Bulldogs are from #10 to #1.
10 Wisconsin Badgers
Dan Powers/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
ESPN’s projected SP+ rating
18.2
9 Tennessee Volunteers
(AP Photo/Wade Payne)
ESPN’s projected SP+ rating
18.5
8Texas A&M Aggies
Thomas Shea-USA TODAY Sports
ESPN’s projected SP+ rating
18.5
7 Notre Dame Fighting Irish
Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports
ESPN’s projected SP+ rating
19.6
6 Clemson Tigers
Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports
ESPN’s projected SP+ rating
20.3
5 Oklahoma earlier
(Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images)
ESPN’s projected SP+ rating
20.3
4 Michigan Wolverines
Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports
ESPN’s projected SP+ rating
20.6
3 Georgia Bulldogs
(Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
ESPN’s projected SP+ rating
27.3
2 Crimson Tide of Alabama
Gary Cosby Jr-USA TODAY Sports
ESPN’s projected SP+ rating
28.6
1 Ohio state horse chestnuts
Syndication: The Columbus Dispatch
ESPN’s projected SP+ rating
29.9
