Ranking the Big 12's toughest football games using ESPN's SP+

ESPN's SP+ rankings can tell a lot about how the upcoming college football season will look for all 138 FBS teams. These rankings by Bill Connelly include returning production (including transfers), recent history, and recent recruiting. It also includes other advanced numbers, as Connelly explains: As a reminder, 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. 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.

With these rankings out, the focus can now turn to what type of schedule Big 12 teams will play and how hard it will be. The conference has four teams in the top 30 with Texas Tech, BYU , Utah and Arizona , giving the league a solid group to start the season. In the Big 12 non-conference slate, the competition is not that great.

There are only four opponents -- out of 64 opportunities -- that rank inside the top 20. Those include No. 2 Oregon, No.