Where every Pac-12 team ranks in ESPN's SP+ rankings

Some Pac-12 teams may be excited with their ranking while others will be disappointed

Kevin Borba | Feb 16, 2023

Where every Pac-12 team ranks in ESPN's SP+ rankings /

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Stanford Cardinal

It is never too early to look ahead to the next college football season, especially when you consider those of us who love the sport deeply miss it already.

The onslaught of recruiting and transfers flying around has simmered down, and now college football fans turn their attention to spring ball. Most program's spring games will be taking place in March and April, but just because we haven't seen how each team looks after key departures doesn't mean it's too early to rank them ahead of next season.

That is exactly what ESPN's Bill Connelly did, as he released the 2023 preseason college football SP+ rankings. Connelly uses three categories for the basis of his rankings, which are returning production, recent recruiting (including transfers), and lastly recent history.

In his words the 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."

Let's take a look at where each Pac-12 team ranks based on this criteria.

Stanford

Ranking: 102

Rating: -13.2

Colorado

Ranking: 94

Rating: -10.9

Arizona

Ranking: 78

Rating: -5.8

Arizona State

Ranking: 63

Rating: 0.7

Cal

California Golden Bears head coach Justin Wilcox stands on the field with crutches before the game against the Sacramento State Hornets at FTX Field at California Memorial Stadium. — Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

Ranking: 58

Rating: 2.6

Washington State

Ranking: 53

Rating: 3.7

Oregon State

Ranking: 31

Rating: 12.3

UCLA

Ranking: 21

Rating: 12.3

Washington

Ranking: 16

Rating: 18.7

Utah

Ranking: 13

Rating: 19.0

USC

Southern California Trojans coach Lincoln Riley during the spring game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. — Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Ranking: 10

Rating: 21.3

Oregon

Ranking: 8

Rating: 21.6

Published Feb 16, 2023

KEVIN BORBA

Managing Editor and Publisher of CardinalCountry.com, formerly a Pac-12 Network Production Assistant and a contributing writer for USA Today's Longhorns Wire. I am a proud graduate of Quinnipiac University's sports journalism master's program. Follow me on Twitter @Kevin__Borba