Bill Connelly, ESPN Staff WriterOct 1, 2023, 01:00 PM ET
For once, we don't have a new No. 1 in the SP+ rankings. We went from Georgia to Alabama after Week 1, then back to Georgia after Week 2, then to Ohio State and Michigan after Weeks 3 and 4, but Michigan held onto the top spot this week after a dominant performance against Nebraska.
We're in an interesting spot heading into October. No one is necessarily playing to the general standard of a dominant No. 1, but about nine teams are playing like they should be in the top five, and only 6.8 points separates No. 1 from No. 13. October's going to be pretty interesting, friends.
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:
This week's movers
Let's take a look at the teams that saw the biggest change in their overall ratings. The distance between the top teams and the bottom teams is compressing a bit - likely because of that "no dominant No. 1 thing," along with the lack of a truly dominant conference - so most of the teams that rose are from the lower ranks and most of the teams that fell were from higher up. (Note: We're looking at ratings, not rankings.)
MOVING UP
Here are the 10 teams that saw their ratings rise the most this week:
Colorado State (up 5.7 adjusted points per game, from 115th to 103rd)
Louisiana Tech (up 4.8 points, from 111th to 99th)
Arkansas State (up 4.6 points, from 114th to 109th)
Louisiana-Monroe (up 4.6 points, from 122nd to 115th)
Purdue (up 4.5 points, from 77th to 68th)
Bowling Green (up 4.5 points, from 126th to 119th)
Tulsa (up 4.4 points, from 99th to 90th)
Virginia Tech (up 4.2 points, from 80th to 72nd)
Northern Illinois (up 4.2 points, from 121st to 116th)
San Jose State (up 3.6 points, from 73rd to 65th)
Those are primarily Group of Five teams and all teams outside of the top 60, so let's also show you the five top-50 teams that rose the most:
Texas Tech (up 1.9 points, from 37th to 32nd)
West Virginia (up 1.8 points, from 56th to 43rd)
Boise State (up 1.5 points, from 61st to 53rd)
Air Force (up 1.5 points, from 42nd to 37th)
Washington State (up 1.3 points, from 28th to 20th)
Washington State moved up eight spots without even playing! That's a good bye week right there! (How does that happen? Opponent adjustments. Oregon State and Colorado State, recent victims of the unbeaten Cougars, both looked good and dragged the Cougs upward because of it.)
MOVING DOWN
Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:
USC (down 4.6 points, from fifth to 10th)
Utah (down 4.3 points, from 18th to 26th)
Syracuse (down 3.9 points, from 30th to 35th)
Penn State (down 3.4 points, from 10th to 13th)
Duke (down 3.3 points, from 24th to 28th)
Georgia (down 3.2 points, from second to fourth)
Washington (down 3.2 points, from fourth to seventh)
Kansas (down 3.0 points, from 40th to 45th)
Florida (down 3.0 points, from 32nd to 34th)
California (down 2.8 points, from 65th to 74th)
A number of highly-rated Pac-12 teams disappointed a bit -- USC struggled to put away the Colorado team that Oregon blew out, Utah fell to Oregon State due to destitute offense, and Washington struggled to put away Arizona. Meanwhile, upstarts Syracuse and Duke couldn't get over the hump against Clemson and Notre Dame, respectively.
SP+ continues to be lukewarm on Penn State despite another easy Nittany Lions win. PSU started slowly against a bad Northwestern team, and that evidently held them back a bit, especially considering the sea of very good teams it's trying to keep up with. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if the Nittany Lions beat Ohio State and/or Michigan, the numbers will be suitably impressed.
Conference rankings
Here are the FBS' 10 conferences, ranked by average SP+:
1. SEC: 11.5 average (33.3 offense, 22.0 defense)
2. Pac-12: 8.9 average (32.7 offense, 23.9 defense)
3. Big 12: 8.2 average (31.6 offense, 23.5 defense)
4. Big Ten: 6.8 average (26.9 offense, 20.2 defense)
5. ACC: 6.0 average (28.6 offense, 22.7 defense)
6. Sun Belt: -3.9 average (24.9 offense, 28.9 defense)
7. Mountain West: -6.0 average (23.1 offense, 29.1 defense)
8. AAC: -7.4 average (23.8 offense, 31.1 defense)
9. Conference USA: -10.6 average (20.4 offense, 30.9 defense)
10. MAC: -12.1 average (19.2 offense, 31.2 defense)
The SEC holds onto its overall advantage, thanks once again to its relative lack of dead weight. Twelve of the league's 14 teams rank 41st or better, which offsets the fact that it's got only two teams in the top 10 and none in the top three. The Big Ten, meanwhile, is the exact opposite: It has the top two teams in the country and Penn State still looking solid at 13th, but it also has two teams ranked in the 90s and five more outside the top 50.
Résumé SP+
The College Football Playoff rankings are still a few weeks away, but I'm going to go ahead and start including Résumé SP+ rankings in this piece each week, simply because I'm curious.
As mentioned above, SP+ is intended to be a power rating, not a résumé evaluation tool, but Résumé SP+ attempts to fill that latter gap. It is a look at two things: (1) how the average SP+ top-five team would be projected to perform against your schedule (in terms of scoring margin) and (2) how your scoring margin compares to (1). Throw in a seven-point penalty for every loss a team has suffered, and you can say that this is what the CFP rankings would look like if SP+ were in charge.
(Note: Because of the high bar teams have to clear in getting compared to an average top-five team, and because of the loss adjustment, almost every team here ends up with a negative score. It is what it is.)
Here is this week's Résumé SP+ top 15:
1. Penn State (5-0): +7.8
2. Oklahoma (5-0): +7.5
3. Oregon (5-0): +5.7
4. Washington (5-0): +4.8
5. Ohio State (4-0): +3.9
6. Texas (5-0): +3.0
7. Miami (4-0): +2.4
8. Michigan (5-0): +0.0
9. Florida State (4-0): -1.0
10. Georgia (5-0): -1.9
11. USC (5-0): -2.1
12. Kansas State (3-1): -5.0
13. Washington State (4-0): -5.1
14. Oregon State (4-1): -6.8
15. Maryland (5-0): -7.2
Some love for the Nittany Lions! Interestingly, a full eight teams are at least slightly on the positive side of the ledger -- that means that eight teams have beaten their opponents like a top-five team should. And Georgia isn't one of them! The slow-starting Bulldogs have yet to really impress in a pair of conference games against teams outside the top 30 (Auburn and South Carolina).
Other unbeatens:
16. North Carolina (4-0): -7.3
18. Kentucky (5-0): -8.3
23. Air Force (5-0): -10.7
25. Louisville (5-0): -12.6
28. Missouri (5-0): -14.6
29. Liberty (4-0): -14.7
30. Fresno State (5-0): -15.2
36. James Madison (5-0): -20.8
