With the first and primary round of transfer portal activity in the books and spring practice right around the corner, the page has been fully turned to the 2025 college football season.
ESPN’s Bill Connelly has made his first power rankings projection for 2025 utilizing his SP+ tool.
Connelly’s SP+ model is more of an analytical tool rather than a prediction of the AP top-25. The three primary inputs are returning roster production, recent recruiting performance, and recent program performance.
A couple words of caution: That latter element (recent program performance) still includes noise from the last two years of the Tom Allen era, although there is very little that remains in Bloomington from those 2022-23 seasons. The SP+ waters muddied by such data, the model had IU ranked as the No. 18 team in the Big Ten and No. 90 in the nation at this time last year. Obviously, things went much better than that.
SP+ also does not factor in strength of schedule, which will obviously impact how things go in the standings in this era of imbalanced conference scheduling.
Arguably, the model should factor the historic performance of a new coaching staff in scenarios like 2024 Indiana. Because IU finished No. 11 in the final 2024 SP+ rankings, following Curt Cignetti’s pattern of success at his prior stops.
As the success of 2024 begins to infiltrate SP+, Indiana is now ranked No. 24 in Connelly’s first preseason 2025 update. Here’s how Connelly describes how IU landed at No. 24, relative to some preseason top-25 rankings that have them higher:
“The Hoosiers are lower because they’re just outside the top 40 in returning production and have no strong recent history on which to lean,” he wrote.
Here’s how Indiana’s 2025 opponents are ranked in the first edition of SP+. Obviously IU’s three most difficult games project to be their trips to Iowa, Oregon and Penn State:
Indiana – No. 24
- vs. Old Dominion – No. 97
- vs. Kennesaw State – No. 130
- vs. Indiana State – FCS
- vs. Illinois – No. 25
- at Iowa – No. 21
- at Oregon – No. 6
- vs. Michigan State – No. 76
- vs. UCLA – No. 69
- at Maryland – No. 67
- at Penn State – No. 3
- vs. Wisconsin – No. 41
- at Purdue – No. 116
Returning roster production makes up more than 60% of Connelly’s model and that data includes both players returning and experienced players who have transferred into a program. So for example, Cal transfer quarterback Fernando Mendoza is included in Indiana’s returning production.
IU ranks No. 44 nationally in overall returning production according to Connelly, including 61% (No. 55) on offense, and 60% (No. 45) on defense.
(You can see all of IU’s offseason roster activity by going here.)
Here’s a look at how all of the Big Ten teams rank nationally based on both based on their overall SP+ measure, and returning production, opponents in bold:
- Ohio State (No. 1 overall, No. 101 returning production)
- Penn State (No. 3, No. 33)
- Oregon (No. 6, No. 109)
- Michigan (No. 13, No. 29)
- Iowa (No. 21, No. 65)
- Indiana (No. 24, No. 44)
- Illinois (No. 25, No. 3)
- USC (No. 30, No. 97)
- Nebraska (No. 34, No. 50)
- Minnesota (No. 37, No. 40)
- Washington (No. 38, No. 84)
- Wisconsin (No. 41, No. 25)
- Rutgers (No. 43, No. 7)
- Maryland (No. 67, No. 85)
- UCLA (No. 69, No. 111)
- Michigan State (No. 76, No. 30)
- Northwestern (No. 87, No. 57)
- Purdue (No. 116, No. 127)
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