ESPN releases preseason SP+ rankings for 2023 college football season
ESPN recently released their 2023 preseason SP+ rankings, with the Florida Gators coming in among the top 20 in the country.
ESPN’s Bill Connelly developed the SP+ ranking system in 2008 and, in his own words, is “a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” and “intended to be predictive and forward-facing.”
There are three primary factors that Connelly uses to determine the preseason SP+ rankings: returning production, recent recruiting and recent history.
Recent production refers to how much talent that contributed is returning for the next season. Recent recruiting provides context for the caliber of players that will be replacing those that have left the program. Recent history incorporates the previous two-to-four seasons of results, providing an indication of what the program’s goals are and what direction they are going in.
Florida comes in at No. 20 nationally, No. 7 in the SEC, and No. 3 in the SEC East, behind Georgia (No.1) and Tennessee (No. 6) in their division. They scored a national rating of 15.1, less than half of what the No. 1 ranked Bulldogs scored (31.7). Offensively, they come in at No. 22 in the nation with a score of 37.3. Defensively, they come in at No. 34 in the nation with a score of 22.2.
Using Connelly’s three factors, the rating makes sense for the Orange and Blue. If you only consider the amount of roster turnover from last season, the SP+ rankings would probably have been much lower than No. 20. But because of Billy Napier’s increased quality of players brought in via the transfer portal and the last two recruiting cycles, the projection bumped the Gators up a bit. The upward trajectory of the program also plays a factor.
The first look at the 2023 Florida Gators team will come on Thursday, April 13, when the Orange and Blue play in their annual Orange and Blue Debut spring game. Last year, Napier moved the game from a Saturday to Thursday in order to get more recruits on campus. It seems like the program liked how it went as this is now the second consecutive year that the game will be held on a Thursday. The Gators announced a crowd of about 45,000 fans for last season’s game.
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