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SEC teams held 6 of the top 10 spots in Bill Connelly’s initial SP+ ratings for the 2025 college football season. All 16 league teams are in the top 65, and all but 2 (Vanderbilt and Mississippi State) are in the top 40.
Alabama is the top team in the league, according to Connelly’s model. And only Ohio State has a better initial rating than the Crimson Tide.
Georgia (No. 4), Texas (7), Tennessee (8), Ole Miss (9), and LSU (10) also joined Alabama in the top 10. You can find Connelly’s full, 136-team ranking here. Each SEC team is listed below. The number in parenthesis is the SP+ rating, which can be read as how many adjusted points per game separates a specific team from the average college football team.
2 Alabama (26.1)
4 Georgia (24.5)
7 Texas (21.9)
8 Tennessee (21.3)
9 Ole Miss (20.2)
10 LSU (19.5)
12 Texas A&M (18.5)
15 Mizzou (15.7)
16. South Carolina (15.4)
17 Florida (14.4)
20 Oklahoma (13.1)
23 Auburn (12.1)
35 Arkansas (8.2)
40 Kentucky (6.4)
54 Vanderbilt (1.8)
65 Mississippi State (0.0)
Here’s how Connelly describes his model:
It’s 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. 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 season. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather.
Alabama is fascinating.
The Crimson Tide endured 4 losses in 2024, the most in a single season since 2007. With wins over Georgia, Mizzou, and LSU, Alabama was very much in play for a spot in the 12-team College Football Playoff before an unsightly 24-3 loss to Oklahoma on Nov. 23. Alabama beat Auburn to end the regular season, but then lost 19-13 to a Michigan team missing several of its best players in the ReliaQuest Bowl.
With a new quarterback in 2025, Alabama has a massive question mark on offense. However, coach Kalen DeBoer has multiple experienced options to contend with 5-star freshman Keelon Russell, he has one of the top wideouts in the sport in Ryan Williams, and he reunited with longtime offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb.
SP+ projects Alabama to have the No. 5 offense in the country.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
