Georgia won't get a revenge opportunity against Alabama until the SEC Championship at the very earliest, but if what we've seen through two weeks is any indication, the Dawgs might once again have the talent to challenge the big dog if or when given the opportunity.
Georgia's 56-7 win against a UAB that had -- past tense -- a top-15 defense was a massive Week 2 statement, one that, combined with the predictable Alabama sleepwalk past Mercer, closed the gap atop the SP+ ratings a bit. Alabama's ratings slipped a bit after beating a lower-tier FCS team, 48-14, but Georgia's rose as well, and after trailing by 8.1 adjusted points per game a week ago, UGA trails Bama by only 1.8 points now.
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: Early-season data parsing issues have rendered data collection a slow process. Consequently, not every team's Week 2 game has been compiled just yet. The rankings will be updated on Monday, once data collection is complete, but most of the top teams' games are included.)
We're only a couple of weeks in, and SP+ is still trying to decide what it thinks about a large portion of teams. Here are the ones it changed its mind on the most over the weekend.
Biggest rises
West Virginia: up 22 spots from 65th to 43rd
WMU: up 20 spots from 97th to 77th
Boise State: up 19 spots from 58th to 39th
Duke: up 19 spots from 111th to 92nd
Stanford: up 17 spots from 90th to 73rd
Baylor: up 16 spots from 64th to 48th
Louisville: up 16 spots from 74th to 58th
Most of these teams moved up after beating FCS or low-level FBS competition, but Stanford's rise is particularly interesting. The Cardinal looked like a bottom-30 team in week one, scoring only seven on Kansas State, and looked like the Stanford of old in a comfortable win at USC. Which one was the accurate impression? Can quarterback Tanner McKee continue playing as well as he did against the Trojans?
Biggest stumbles
UAB: down 31 spots from 48th to 79th
Boston College: down 24 spots from 36th to 60th
FIU: down 22 spots from 89th to 111th
Memphis: down 20 spots from 35th to 55th
Buffalo: down 18 spots from 68th to 86th
Minnesota: down 18 spots from 31st to 49th
NC State: down 18 spots from 29th to 47th
Wyoming: down 17 spots from 71st to 88th
Toledo: down 17 spots from 53rd to 70th
Arizona: down 16 spots from 88th to 104th
Most of these slips make sense if you watched the teams either suffer through blowout losses or closer-than-expected wins. Toledo's stumble, however, is interesting. SP+ thought far more highly of the Rockets' chances against Notre Dame than sports books did, and they almost pulled off the upset. But they did it with a pretty unsustainable formula. Notre Dame dwarfed Toledo from an efficiency standpoint and was victimized pretty heavily by poor turnovers luck. As a result, the Irish moved up in the rankings, and Toledo moved down. Those pesky stats can be antisocial sometimes.
SEC vs. Big Ten
We'll wait to talk about this week's big movers until all the games have officially been entered, but for now one thing jumps off the page: The SEC and Big Ten currently have 11 of the top 15 overall teams.
The SEC boasts the top two overall teams, of course, but Florida, Auburn and Ole Miss have all very much handled their business, and while Texas A&M slipped after nearly losing at Colorado, the Aggies still check in at 13th. Meanwhile, three Big Ten East teams -- Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State -- all boast identical 22.1 ratings (which means Ohio State has slipped since the start of the season while UM and PSU have risen a good amount), and the West's top two teams, Wisconsin and Iowa, both grade well, too.
Obviously there are more shifts coming in the future, but the country's two richest conferences are very much the country's two best so far.
Average SP+ rating by conference:
SEC (11.7)
Big Ten (11.3)
Big 12 (8.6)
Pac-12 (7.6)
ACC (7.6)
AAC (0.4)
Sun Belt (-4.7)
Mountain West (-4.9)
MAC (-8.8)
Conference USA (-8.9)
Most of those leagues' advantages, of course, come from two specific divisions.
Average SP+ rating by power-conference division:
SEC West (16.3)
Big Ten East (14.2)
ACC Coastal (9.2)
Pac-12 South (8.7)
Big Ten West (8.5)
SEC East (7.1)
Pac-12 North (6.6)
ACC Atlantic (5.9)
That's right, with five teams in the top 36 -- North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Miami, Virginia and Pitt -- the ACC Coastal is the third-best division in the country. It's been a totally normal year so far. Totally.
