ESPN’s Bill Connelly is best known for creating the S&P+ college football ranking system. It’s a rating that was created by Connelly to cut out the noise from college football coverage. The S&P+ system uses ‘play data and opponent adjustments‘ to create a deep team evaluation system. Connelly recently released his ratings for the past 90 years and he found that Michigan State football has only had one bad year in the last 90 years.
The graphic he released contains Michigan State’s percentile rating, year by year, from 1919-2018. It is a fun graphic to look at as he even took the time to annotate the chart to show fans key events highlighted by the rating system.
Of course, Michigan State football hit its peak in 1965-1966 through the efforts of Duffy Daugherty, Bubba Smith, George Webster, and many more.
