Bill Connelly, ESPN Staff WriterSep 5, 2023, 05:00 PM
Things went according to plan in week 1 of the college football season ... aside from where they went dramatically astray. Half of the week's games finished with scoring margins 10 or fewer points from SP+ projections, which is about normal. But Texas State also beat Baylor by 11 (42.6 points away from the projected margin), Oklahoma humiliated Arkansas State by 73 (37.2 points away), Duke made Clemson look like end-of-Tommy-Bowden-era Clemson (21-point win, 36.0 points off) and, of course, Colorado upset defending national runner-up TCU (three-point win, 29.1 points off).
Even with preseason projections still making up the vast percentage of the ratings because of a tiny sample of games, we still saw some teams make pretty significant movement heading into Week 2.
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.
Here are the full rankings:
Colorado watch
Last year, it took about three weeks for SP+ to get a read on transfer-heavy USC. I deemed the Trojans, who were coming off of a very poor 2021 season but boasted high-upside newcomers like soon-to-be Heisman winner Caleb Williams and reigning Biletnikoff winner Jordan Addison, to be unprojectable in 2022, and they started out artificially low in SP+. They overachieved projections by an average 16.6 points per game over three games before SP+ found their correct altitude. They underachieved by about 2.8 points per game from there.
It might take longer to catch up to Colorado. The Buffaloes changed the definition of "transfer-heavy" with their more than 50-transfer haul, and they were projected to improve by 15.0 adjusted points per game in SP+, easily the most in the country. But because CU was so utterly dreadful last season, they still began the season ranked in only the 80s. They overachieved projections by more than three touchdowns in Week 1.
Deion Sanders' Buffs moved up this week, but maybe not as much as you think. The offense rose significantly, by more than five points (nearly the most in the country, as you'll see below), but the defense didn't really hold up its end of the bargain. Overall, CU's SP+ rating improved by more than a field goal this week, which probably isn't nearly enough. I'm guessing the offensive rating will continue rising for a while, but as with USC, defense will determine Colorado's overall fate.
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 teams, offenses and defenses that saw their ratings rise the most this week:
Teams
Oklahoma (+7.6 points, from 13th to fifth)
Jacksonville State (+6.7 points, from 122nd to 97th)
UCF (+6.4 points, from 42nd to 22nd)
UTEP (+6.0 points, from 114th to 94th)
California (+5.6 points, from 62nd to 49th)
Miami (+5.3 points, from 36th to 24th)
Washington (+5.3 points, from 18th to 12th)
Syracuse (+4.9 points, from 56th to 40th)
FAU (+4.8 points, from 84th to 71st)
UAB (+4.8 points, from 100th to 86th)
I've been running SP+ for a while, and one of the most common early-season plotlines goes like this:
1. Team obliterates a bad opponent by far more than projected (and by far more than what most teams would do).
2. SP+ reacts by bumping said team up significantly.
3. Everyone on social media screams "BUT THEY AIN'T PLAYED NOBODY."
Treating a bad team like it's a high school team has far more predictive power than we might instinctively think. It isn't always a sign of greatness by any means, but it can be. So the fact that Oklahoma -- which was already projected higher in SP+ (13th) than in the preseason human polls (20th) -- was projected to beat a very bad Arkansas State team by 36 points and more than doubled that might mean something. The Sooners led 35-0 just 18 minutes into the game and ended up winning 73-0 despite scoring just once in the final 18 minutes.
Happily, we don't have to wait long to see if this is Sooner fool's gold. OU plays an intriguing SMU team this coming weekend, then plays a top-40 Cincinnati in Week 4. If they keep winning by huge margins, we'll know it means something.
Offenses
Texas State (+6.1 points)
California (+5.5 points)
Colorado (+5.2 points)
Oklahoma (+5.1 points)
Auburn (+5.0 points)
Texas State averaged 21.1 points per game last season and scored just seven on Baylor in an early-season blowout loss. So it hired G.J. Kinne, author of last season's incredible Incarnate Word offense -- the Cardinals averaged 51.5 points per game and came within three points of the FCS Championship Game -- and gave him free rein to overhaul the roster through the transfer portal. Poof, Texas State has a good offense. The Bobcats scored 42 points and averaged 6.4 yards per play in an 11-point upset of Baylor. Their offensive rating improved even more than Colorado's.
Defenses (negative = improvement)
Louisiana-Monroe (-4.3 points)
Sam Houston (-4.1 points)
Houston (-3.7 points)
Jacksonville State (-3.7 points)
Duke (-3.3 points)
Houston and UTSA did not give us the game we were expecting. SP+ projected a 33-31 Houston win, and while it basically nailed the scoring margin, the teams scored less than half the points. Final score: Houston 17, UTSA 14. Consequently, Houston's defensive rating improved by 3.7 points, and its offense regressed by 3.5.
MOVING DOWN
Here are the teams whose ratings fell the most:
Teams
Arkansas State (-9.6 points, from 108th to 131st)
Nevada (-8.0 points, from 105th to 129th)
Boise State (-7.9 points, from 48th to 72nd)
Clemson (-7.3 points, from fifth to 23rd)
LSU (-7.2 points, from seventh to 25th)
Kent State (-7.1 points, from 132nd to 133rd)
North Texas (-7.0 points, from 87th to 112th)
Miami (Ohio) (-6.8 points, from 98th to 122nd)
South Alabama (-6.3 points, from 64th to 81st)
MTSU (-6.0 points, from 104th to 124th)
Two projected top-10 teams suffered very, very poor second-half performances at the end of the long weekend. LSU, a projected 4.4-point favorite over FSU on Sunday night, led the Seminoles by three at halftime as planned. Clemson, meanwhile, was a projected 15.0-point favorite over Duke on Monday night and led at half, too, if only by a 7-6 margin. The expected outcomes in both games were very much within reach ... and then the two sets of Tigers got outscored by a combined 53-7 in the second half.
They are no longer top-10 ... or even top-20 teams. Both teams fell about as much as a team can after one game. The only teams that fell by more suffered losses by an average score of 65-11.
Offenses
BYU (-5.3 points)
Florida (-4.8 points)
Clemson (-4.7 points)
UTSA (-4.4 points)
Ohio State (-4.0 points)
Utah and Duke could both have excellent defenses in 2023, but holding Florida and Clemson to a combined 18 points and 5.2 yards per play? That might not have been all on the Utes and Blue Devils. Those were very poor starts for a Gators team with a new starting quarterback and a Tigers team with a new offensive coordinator.
Defenses
Nevada (+6.3 points)
Boise State (+6.0 points)
Arkansas State (+5.9 points)
Kent State (+5.8 points)
TCU (+5.8 points)
For as incredible as Colorado's offense looked for much of the Buffaloes' 45-42 win over TCU, the Horned Frogs' defense looked equally hapless. Their defensive rating regressed by even more than Colorado's offense improved.
Conference rankings
Here are FBS' 10 conferences, ranked by average SP+:
1. SEC: 16.8 average, up 0.9 points (35.7 offense, 19.0 defense)
2. Big 12: 10.3 average, up 0.5 points (33.4 offense, 23.2 defense)
3. Pac-12: 9.9 average, up 2.7 points (34.3 offense, 24.4 defense)
4. Big Ten: 9.0 average, down 0.9 points (26.9 offense, 17.9 defense)
5. ACC: 7.1 average, up 0.5 points (28.4 offense, 21.3 defense)
6. AAC: -6.9 average, up 0.6 points (23.8 offense, 30.6 defense)
7. Sun Belt: -7.6 average, up 0.5 points (21.7 offense, 29.3 defense)
8. Mountain West: -11.0 average, down 1.1 points (18.5 offense, 29.5 defense)
9. Conference USA: -13.1 average, up 1.7 points (19.2 offense, 32.3 defense)
10. MAC: -15.3 average, down 0.6 points (17.5 offense, 32.7 defense)
By far the biggest average improvement belonged to the Pac-12, which saw 10 of its 12 teams' ratings improve, eight by at least 2.8 points. It now grades out higher than the Big Ten conference that raided it over the last two summers. That ... might be something interesting to follow this fall.
