The fire hose that was Week 1 of the college football season saw stirring upsets, loads of surprises ... and one team, Nick Saban's Alabama, clearly standing out ahead of the pack. The numbers very much reflect that. While this week's SP+ ratings see teams bunched together from top to bottom (the No. 5 and No. 12 teams are separated by a minuscule 1.6 points, No. 29 and No. 43 by only 2.8, etc.), No. 1 is miles ahead of the pack.
At 32.9 adjusted points per game, Alabama is 8.1 points ahead of No. 2 Georgia, meaning Bama would be projected favorite of 8.1 points on a neutral field; that's nearly the same distance separating UGA and No. 17 UCLA. It's only been one week, and the Crimson Tide could still hit some bumps along the way, but there's no question who the top team in FBS is at the moment.
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.
It is, as always, important to note that SP+ is 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.
(Note: There was a problem with the SMU-Abilene Christian data, so I omitted it and will add it next week. SMU's preseason projections are listed above.)
This week's movers
Moving up
Boston College: up 24 spots from 60th to 36th
Virginia: up 23 spots from 56th to 33rd
WKU: up 21 spots from 107th to 86th
FIU: up 21 spots from 110th to 89th
Kentucky: up 20 spots from 58th to 38th
UAB: up 20 spots from 68th to 48th
Fresno State: up 20 spots from 82nd to 62nd
Buffalo: up 20 spots from 88th to 68th
South Carolina: up 20 spots from 89th to 69th
Pretty much all of these teams pummeled far lesser competition this week, but dominating lesser teams is nearly as predictive as how you play against good ones. (And we saw plenty of teams that very much failed to dominate lesser teams.) These teams handled their business a bit better than SP+ expected.
Moving down
Here are the teams that moved down the furthest in the table.
Louisville: down 42 spots from 32nd to 74th
Stanford: down 26 spots from 64th to 90th
Western Michigan: down 25 spots from 72nd to 97th
Houston: down 24 spots from 63rd to 87th
LSU: down 24 spots from 26th to 50th
Northwestern: down 23 spots from 76th to 99th
Indiana: down 23 spots from 28th to 51st
West Virginia: down 22 spots from 43rd to 65th
Louisiana: down 22 spots from 30th to 52nd
Washington State: down 21 spots from 45th to 66th
It's likely that some of these teams will rebound and charge back upward after disappointing first-week performances, but make no mistake: everyone on this list had disappointing first-week performances. And Louisville, with its not-as-close-as-the-final-score 43-24 loss to Ole Miss, deservedly tops this list.
Lots of movement in the top 15
The biggest jumps happened in the middle of the rankings, but there were some noteworthy shifts up top as well. Georgia hopped from fifth to second after beating Clemson in Charlotte (Clemson slipped from second to sixth), and Penn State climbed from 10th to fifth after winning at Wisconsin. But four teams climbed at least 10 spots to join the top 15 this week:
Michigan: up from 17th to seventh. Again, the teams in this range are so clustered that a small improvement can spark a solid climb in the rankings, but Michigan very much looked the part of a top-10 team against Western Michigan, a decent MAC team. The Wolverines averaged 9.2 yards per play to WMU's 4.6 and went on a 40-0 run starting about 10 minutes in. Bigger challenges await, but it was a nice first step for Jim Harbaugh's renovated squad.
Again, the teams in this range are so clustered that a small improvement can spark a solid climb in the rankings, but Michigan very much looked the part of a top-10 team against Western Michigan, a decent MAC team. The Wolverines averaged 9.2 yards per play to WMU's 4.6 and went on a 40-0 run starting about 10 minutes in. Bigger challenges await, but it was a nice first step for Jim Harbaugh's renovated squad.
Utah: up from 21st to 11th. After falling behind, 7-3, against FCS power Weber State following a kick return, Kyle Whittingham's team ratcheted up the intensity, going on a 37-3 run and cruising. With USC and UCLA both looking the part early, and Arizona State handling its business as well, the Pac-12 South currently grades out as the third-best division in FBS, and Utah is a large reason why. (The Pac-12 North, meanwhile, is barely ahead of the Sun Belt East and the No. 8 division.)
Auburn: up from 23rd to 13th. Akron very much looked the part of a bottom-five team in Auburn's 60-10 win on Saturday, but the Tigers still get some credit for their focused demolition of the Zips. They more than tripled Akron's yards-per-play average (10.6 to 3.4), and Bo Nix was 20-for-22 for 275 yards and three touchdowns, which would be pretty impressive even against a high school team. That pushed AU up a few spots.
Ole Miss: up from 25th to 15th. Louisville might have been the most disappointing team in the country, or close to it, this weekend, but Ole Miss helped out in that regard. Despite missing head coach Lane Kiffin, the Rebels scored on all but two possessions (not including their end-of-game, clock-killing drive) and held Louisville scoreless on the Cardinals' first six. We know the Ole Miss offense is going to be awesome this year, but if the defense backs up this performance with more of the same, this really could be a top-15 team.
For those teams to move into the top 15, four had to move out. Those honors went to Wisconsin (down from sixth to 18th), Iowa State (down from seventh to 19th), Miami (down from eighth to 25th) and North Carolina (down from 11th to 22nd).
