ESPN’s Bill Connelly is back with SP+ preseason projections for the 2023 college football season. With the transfer portal window behind us and spring practices soon to begin across the country, the outlook for the 2023 season can begin in earnest.

As for the SP+, the system utilizes 3 major components in its preseason projections: returning production, recent recruiting and recent history. With that in mind, it’s not hard to understand the top 5 teams on the system heading to 2023.

Georgia — back-to-back national champs — unsurprisingly takes the top spot with Ohio State and Michigan right behind. Both the Buckeyes and Wolverines are projected to produce top-10 units on both sides of the ball.

No. 4 on the projections is Alabama while No. 5 brings another B1G squad in Penn State. Of particular note, the SP+ projects James Franklin’s squad to have the No. 5 defense entering the season.

Here is where every B1G team lands on the projections:

  • 2. Ohio State
  • 3. Michigan
  • 5. Penn State
  • 25. Wisconsin
  • 27. Iowa
  • 30. Minnesota
  • 41. Maryland
  • 44. Illinois
  • 47. Michigan State
  • 48. Nebraska
  • 49. Purdue
  • 64. Indiana
  • 83. Rutgers
  • 89. Northwestern

A reminder on SP+: It’s a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and, along those same lines, these projections aren’t intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the year. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date.