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Oklahoma football: ESPN’s SP+ preseason rankings show big OU rebound in 2023

By Chip Rouse

Sep 11, 2021; Norman, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma Sooners sooner schooner during the game against the Western Carolina Catamounts at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 11, 2021; Norman, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma Sooners sooner schooner during the game against the Western Carolina Catamounts at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports /
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The last time we visited way-early 2023 top-25 college football projections a month ago, Oklahoma football fairly solidly entrenched in the back end of the rankings, but inside the cutline nevertheless.

Since then, new data had become available as rosters were infused with the 2023 recruiting class and additions through the transfer portal, both areas in which the Sooners scored very well in comparison to the competition.

ESPN staff writer Bill Connelly has produced the initial SP+ projections for the next college football season.

In an article this week, available only to ESPN+ subscribers, Connelly stressed that the SP+ projections are not a resume ranking, but rather a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football. It is a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency and is intended to be a guess at what the Associated Press Top-25 will look like at the end of the 2023 season.

The SP+ rankings are adjusted periodically before and throughout the actual college football season. Connelly explains that the projections are based on three primary factors — returning production, recent recruiting and recent history — and weighted by their predictiveness.

Despite finishing with a 6-7 overall record, Oklahoma was No. 20 in the final SP+ rankings for the 2022 season after starting out at No. 5 in the SP+ preseason projections.

The group at the top in the initial SP+ top-25 projections for 2023 is the familiar cast of characters in No. 1 Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan and Alabama. Ten positions later, at No. 14, sits Oklahoma. The Sooners are the second-highest ranked Big 12 team next to Texas, which checked in at No. 9.

The SP+ methodology ranks Oklahoma 9th in offensive efficiency and 36th in defensive efficiency.

TCU (19) and Kansas State (22) are the only other teams out of the Big 12 ranked in the top 25.

Here is how the other Big 12 teams fall out in this initial SP+ projection for 2023:

34. Oklahoma State

35. Texas Tech

38. Baylor

39. UCF

43. Cincinnati

45. Iowa State

50. West Virginia

51. Houston

57. Kansas

62. BYU

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