With the start of spring practices fast approaching, ESPN released its initial SP+ rankings for the 2025 college football season, and the Michigan Wolverines are ranked favorably after a strong finish to 2024:
Michigan hasn’t even started spring practices yet, but that doesn’t mean its too early to compare the Wolverines to some of the top programs in college football for 2025.
Actually, it might be too early. But we’re going to do it anyway.
On Thursday, ESPN’s Bill Connelly released the initial SP+ rankings for the 2025 season, and the Wolverines are ranked pretty favorably after a strong finish to the 2024 campaign that featured wins over Ohio State and Alabama. Even after finishing with a record of 8-5 last year, Michigan checks in at No. 13 in the initial rankings.
For those of you who might be new to SP+, it’s a method of ranking college football teams based on tempo and efficiencies on offense, defense, and special teams. A team receives one uniform rating that predicts how many points a given team should beat (or lose to) the “average” college football team by on a neutral field. For example, Michigan currently has a rating of 17.7, meaning it should defeat the “average” college football team by 17.7 points.
With no games to be played until August, Connelly says his offseason projections are based on three factors — returning production, recent recruiting and recent history.
Connelly mentioned Michigan as a team the SP+ is buying heading into 2025 in part due to the arrivals of quarterbacks Mikey Keene and Bryce Underwood. Furthermore, Michigan has a number of quality returning players, such as Rod Moore, Derrick Moore, T.J. Guy, Ernest Hausmann, Brandyn Hillman, Jordan Marshall and many more. Transfers like Justice Haynes, Tre Williams, Damon Payne Jr. and Donaven McCulley will also help.
Additionally, while Michigan wasn’t exactly at the top of the recruiting rankings in 2023 or 2024, Michigan brings in a loaded 2025 class, featuring plenty of blue chip prospects like Underwood, offensive lineman Andrew Babalola, wide receiver Andrew Marsh, cornerback Shamari Earls and edge rusher Nathaniel Marshall, to name a handful, which raises the ceiling for the roster.
Elsewhere in the Big Ten, Ohio State checked in at No. 1 in the rankings, unsurprisingly given the Buckeyes just won a National Championship, recruit well and return plenty of talent. Penn State (No. 3) and Oregon (No. 6) were the only other teams in the Big Ten ranked ahead of Michigan. Other conference teams ranked close to Michigan include Iowa (No. 21), Indiana (No. 24), Illinois (No. 25) and USC (No. 30).