Bill Connelly, ESPN Staff WriterOct 29, 2023, 03:00 PM
Favorites look wobbly but survive. It has been the modus operandi of the 2023 college football season, and it played out in Week 9: Washington thought seriously about losing to Stanford, and Penn State was tied with Indiana with two minutes left, but the Huskies and Nittany Lions both ended up with nine-point wins. Ohio State ground out another win with great defense, too. But unless your name was Oklahoma or Oregon State, your grand season plans remained intact.
That doesn't mean your SP+ rating couldn't change, though. Oregon's dominant win over Utah bumped the Ducks to fourth overall, Florida State's tidy performance against Wake Forest earned a bit more of the ratings' trust, and despite another tight win, USC slipped further thanks to yet another dismal defensive performance.
The top three, however, remained the same. We began the season with Michigan, Georgia and Ohio State leading the way, and through nine weeks, that remains the case.
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:
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:
Oregon: up 2.8 adjusted points per game (ranking rose from fifth to fourth)
Ohio State: up 2.7 points (fourth to third)
Coastal Carolina: up 2.5 points (75th to 64th)
SMU: up 2.5 points (46th to 40th)
Georgia: up 2.5 points (no change from second)
FAU: up 2.4 points (100th to 93rd)
Florida State: up 2.4 points (11th to eighth)
Ole Miss: up 2.3 points (21st to 16th)
Boise State: up 2.3 points (67th to 55th)
Western Michigan: up 2.2 points (127th to 118th)
Some big teams made big moves this week. Oregon, Georgia and Florida State won by a combined 119-42 on Saturday, and all three moved up; since Oregon's win came on the road against a Utah team that had been ranked 24th in SP+, the Ducks moved up the most. And Ohio State's defense continues to rise and rise; the Buckeyes are up to third in defensive SP+.
MOVING DOWN
Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:
Pitt: down 4.0 adjusted points per game (47th to 67th)
Houston: down 3.8 points (58th to 69th)
Syracuse: down 3.6 points (48th to 65th)
Vanderbilt: down 3.5 points (91st to 100th)
Cincinnati: down 3.4 points (65th to 75th)
Wake Forest: down 3.0 points (63rd to 70th)
Charlotte: down 2.9 points (124th to 131st)
Wyoming: down 2.8 points (78th to 91st)
Tulsa: down 2.8 points (103rd to 112th)
Duke: down 2.7 points (26th to 29th)
None of these moves should be particularly surprising. These 10 teams lost by an average score of 42-9.
Conference rankings
Here are the FBS' 10 conferences, ranked by average SP+:
1. SEC: +10.8 average adjusted points per team (32.6 offense, 22.0 defense)
2. Pac-12: +8.2 average (33.4 offense, 25.2 defense)
3. Big 12: +7.2 average (31.5 offense, 24.3 defense)
4. Big Ten: +6.3 average (25.4 offense, 19.2 defense)
5. ACC: +5.1 average (28.3 offense, 23.2 defense)
6. Sun Belt: -4.8 average (25.1 offense, 29.9 defense)
7. MWC: -7.2 average (23.5 offense, 30.8 defense)
8. AAC: -8.4 average (23.7 offense, 31.9 defense)
9. Conference USA: -10.2 average (21.2 offense, 31.2 defense)
10. MAC: -12.9 average (17.0 offense, 29.7 defense)
Even with both Mississippi State and South Carolina making overdue drops out of the top 50, the SEC still leads the way because of its lack of awful teams. Only one SEC team ranks worse than 60th, while the Pac-12 and Big 12 each have four such teams, the Big Ten has five, and the ACC now has six.
In the Group of 5, the Sun Belt maintains its comfortable lead, thanks not only to unbeaten James Madison (which has risen to 39th), but also to a surging Troy, which jumped to 45th with another easy win.
Résumé SP+
Since the College Football Playoff rankings are on the horizon, I'm also including résumé SP+ rankings in this piece each week.
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, most of these teams end up with a negative score. It is what it is.)
Here is this week's résumé SP+ top 15:
1. Michigan (8-0): +6.0
2. Ohio State (8-0): +2.1
3. Florida State (8-0): +0.9
4. Georgia (8-0): -1.1
5. Washington (8-0): -3.6
6. Oregon (7-1): -4.6
7. Penn State (7-1): -6.8
8. Oklahoma (7-1): -8.5
9. Texas (7-1): -9.0
10. Ole Miss (7-1): -11.5
11. Alabama (7-1): -11.5
12. Kansas State (6-2): -11.6
13. Notre Dame (7-2): -14.1
14. Air Force (8-0): -16.0
15. LSU (6-2): -17.7
Other unbeatens:
18. JMU (8-0): -19.2
20. Liberty (8-0): -20.5
I'm very curious what the CFP committee does with both Michigan and Georgia, two teams that have looked the part a decent amount (Michigan moreso) but have beaten up on schedules far weaker than those of Ohio State, Florida State and Washington. Michigan has been, to both my computer and my eyeballs, the best team in the country. But the committee has a habit of punishing teams for their scheduling, especially this early on in the process.
