Editor's note: These rankings were originally published Sunday but updated on Monday once data from a final handful of Saturday games came in.
Alabama remains the best team in the country according to the SP+ ratings, but following a narrow 31-29 win over a spirited Florida, the Crimson Tide's advantage over the rest of the field continues to shrink. This season has featured a large number of surprises and upsets, and even Nick Saban and Bama nearly got sucked into the undertow. The twists and turns 2021 has provided thus far might only be the beginning.
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.
With Oklahoma, Ohio State and Clemson struggling to get past what are perceived as weak opponents (Nebraska, Tulsa and Georgia Tech, respectively), it was fair to wonder if some of the teams that looked particularly good in Week 3 -- Michigan? Penn State? Florida, maybe? -- might make big SP+ jumps.
Instead, we basically saw the status quo. The top seven remain almost the same as they were last week, and the only shift was slight: Ohio State nosing ahead of Clemson for No. 4
It's still early, of course. Preseason projections still account for 80% of the overall SP+ ratings through three games, and the phasing out of those numbers doesn't really kick in until a team has played at least four games. For now, that keeps well-projected teams like Clemson and, to a slightly lesser degree, Ohio State (not to mention others like Miami and Washington) propped up for one more week.
Biggest movers
We'll see some pretty big jumps and slides once teams' respective fourth games are in the books, but a few teams didn't wait that long to make a move.
Biggest rises
Nine teams rose by at least 12 spots this week.
Fresno State: up 31 spots from 75th to 44th
Minnesota: up 19 spots from 49th to 30th
Tennessee: up 17 spots from 45th to 28th
Oregon State: up 16 spots from 76th to 60th
San Diego State: up 16 spots from 78th to 62nd
UAB: up 15 spots from 79th to 64th
Baylor: up 14 spots from 48th to 34th
Rutgers: up 13 spots from 62nd to 59th
Missouri: up 12 spots from 65th to 53rd
SP+ was slow to warm on Fresno State for some reason, but a lovely performance against UCLA did the trick.
Biggest stumbles
Ten teams fell by at least 12 spots, as well.
Tulane: down 19 spots from 44th to 63rd
Colorado: down 17 spots from 67th to 84th
SMU: down 16 spots from 40th to 56th
Virginia Tech: down 15 spots from 22nd to 37th
Arkansas State: down 14 spots from 91st to 105th
Marshall: down 14 spots from 54th to 68th
Purdue: down 12 spots from 42nd to 54th
Washington State: down 12 spots from 61st to 73rd
Nevada: down 12 spots from 63rd to 75th
Here's your semi-regular reminder that stats are anti-social. SMU beat Louisiana Tech with a perfectly executed Hail Mary on the final play of the game, but SP+ was evidently pretty unimpressed with the 59+ minutes or so that preceded it.
History in the making
One team that has played four games and has therefore seen its SP+ rating adjusted far more for 2021 output: UConn. The Huskies are 0-4 (including a loss to the Patriot League's Holy Cross) and have been outscored 135-21 by three FBS opponents. They absolutely charged into last place in SP+ this past week, grading out 9.8 points worse than the third-worst team, UMass. Their current percentile rating is 0.16%, which, if it finished the season that low, would grade out as the sixth worst SP+ rating of all time and worst since 1937. A year after Alabama's 2020 percentile rating graded out as the best ever, we could be witnessing a completely different sort of history being made.
