Gophers football viewed as top-50 team heading into 2024

Bill Connelly's annual SP+ rankings are here!

Picture via GopherSports /

ESPN's Bill Connelly has become known for his SP+ college football rankings, which slot all 134 FBS teams in the country in order based on ESPN's analytics. The Gophers debut at No. 47 in the ranks.

According to the article, "SP+ is 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."

Minnesota was omitted from the preseason Associated Press Poll entirely earlier this month, and Connelly's rankings have them on the outside looking in for a top-25 ranking. Seven of the Gophers' 11 opponents this season will begin with a ranking higher than them.

Rutgers, Illinois, Michigan State, Purdue, Indiana and Northwestern are the only Big Ten teams to receive a ranking lower than the Gophers, which would put them as the 12th-best team in the conference to begin the new 18-team era.

Based on the list, Minnesota has the 89th-ranked offense, the 22nd-ranked defense and the 19th-ranked special-teams unit in the entire country.

Connelly also includes a returning production ranking, and the Gophers have the 20th-most returning production in the country at 70% as a team. They return the 49th-most production on offense at 67% and the 17th most on defense at 74%.

The Gophers will open up their 2024 campaign two weeks from Thursday against No. 40-ranked North Carolina on Aug. 29 at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.