For much of the college football preseason and early season, we talked about the top three versus the field — Georgia, Ohio State and Alabama standing far ahead of the rest of FBS in terms of both power ratings and national title odds.
We must abridge that a bit! Alabama’s loss to LSU on Saturday evening, combined with a level of play that just isn’t quite to Bama’s annual standards, has left us with a top two versus the field.
Or is it a new top three? Georgia eased ahead of Ohio State for the top spot this week — not a surprise considering the Dawgs’ comfortable win over Tennessee and the Buckeyes’ terribly underwhelming 21-7 win over Northwestern — but the most noteworthy team might be Michigan, which not only hopped Alabama for third but moved to within 3.3 points of Ohio State overall. The Wolverines are closer to first than fifth at this point.
Below are this week’s SP+ rankings. What is SP+? In a single sentence, it’s a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. I created the system at Football Outsiders in 2008, and as my experience with both college football and its stats has grown, I have made quite a few tweaks to the system.
SP+ is indeed intended to be predictive and forward-facing. It is not a résumé ranking that gives credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling — no good predictive system is. It is simply a measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football. If you’re lucky or unimpressive in a win, your rating will probably fall. If you’re strong and unlucky in a loss, it will probably rise.
This week’s movers
Let’s take a look at the teams that saw the biggest change in their overall ratings. (Note: We’re looking at ratings, not rankings.)
Moving up
Here are the 10 teams that saw their ratings rise the most this week:
Ohio: up 3.4 adjusted points per game (from 113th to 102nd in the rankings)
UConn: up 3.0 points (123rd to 121st)
North Texas: up 3.0 points (86th to 78th)
Fresno State: up 2.4 points (77th to 75th)
Louisville: up 2.3 points (44th to 32nd)
CMU: up 2.2 points (112th to 106th)
Temple: up 2.1 points (118th to 112th)
Notre Dame: up 2.1 points (32nd to 26th)
Kansas: up 2.1 points (52nd to 44th)
Florida State: up 2.0 points (33rd to 27th)
UConn is 5-5!! The Huskies demolished UMass on Saturday to move within a single game of bowl eligibility. Are they actually good? Not really. A healthy jump this week moved them to just 121st overall, and SP+ gives them a 64% chance of losing out to both Liberty and Army. But still: Every fan base deserves to be happy occasionally, and this has been a fun run to track. And even if they end up 5-7 … that’s still more games than they won from 2018 to ’21 combined. Great story.
Moving down
Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:
James Madison: down 4.1 adjusted points per game (from 41st to 59th)
Miami: down 3.2 points (62nd to 74th)
Texas A&M: down 3.1 points (25th to 36th)
Southern Miss: down 3.1 points (75th to 81st)
Purdue: down 2.8 points (36th to 48th)
Clemson: down 2.6 points (11th to 18th)
Oklahoma State: down 2.5 points (19th to 24th)
Stanford: down 2.4 points (78th to 85th)
Indiana: down 2.3 points (85th to 88th)
Maryland: down 2.3 points (26th to 34th)
JMU’s recent slide picked up steam with Saturday’s 34-10 loss to Louisville, but among other teams, the Dukes still remain 15 spots ahead of Miami, which is in absolute collapse mode. Mario Cristobal is recruiting well and could turn the Hurricanes ship around at some point, but he took over a program that fired Manny Diaz after going 7-5 (and suffering a narrow loss to Florida State), and now the 4-5 Canes have only a 36% chance at reaching bowl eligibility and got smoked 45-3 by FSU on Saturday. Yikes.
Conference rankings
Here are the FBS’s 10 conferences, ranked by average SP+:
1. SEC: 12.6 average SP+ (34.1 average offensive SP+, 21.6 average defensive SP+) 2. Big 12: 12.0 average SP+ (36.2 offense, 24.3 defense) 3. Big Ten: 9.0 average SP+ (29.0 offense, 20.1 defense) 4. Pac-12: 5.2 average SP+ (32.6 offense, 27.4 defense) 5. ACC: 2.6 average SP+ (28.2 offense, 25.7 defense) 6. AAC: 0.3 average SP+ (29.4 offense, 29.1 defense) 7. Sun Belt: -1.6 average SP+ (25.7 offense, 27.2 defense) 8. Conference USA: -9.0 average SP+ (25.8 offense, 34.7 defense) 9. Mountain West: -12.1 average SP+ (17.7 offense, 29.8 defense) 10. MAC: -13.1 average SP+ (21.5 offense, 34.5 defense)