Through four weeks of the 2021 college football season, only two teams have genuinely separated themselves from the riff-raff. Georgia and Alabama have been awesome, each beating top-10 teams away from home and destroying everyone else. Lots of other teams have looked the part once, maybe twice, but outside of the top two, the more we see of the FBS field, the less it feels we know.
SP+ certainly hasn't reached many conclusions. In Week 5's ratings below, fewer than two points separate the teams ranked fourth and eighth, and only three separate the teams ranked 10th and 21st. The silliness and unexpected results we've seen to date could continue for a while.
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.
Here are the teams that, between Week 4's performance and the further phasing out of preseason projections in the overall ratings, have moved up the most since this time last week.
Air Force: up 18 spots from 94th to 76th
Pitt: up 17 spots from 38th to 21st
Appalachian State: up 17 spots from 46th to 29th
Oregon State: up 17 spots from 60th to 43rd
Marshall: up 17 spots from 68th to 51st
Arkansas: up 16 spots from 32nd to 16th
Coastal Carolina: up 16 spots from 35th to 19th
Liberty: up 16 spots from 43rd to 27th
Boston College: up 16 spots from 50th to 34th
SMU: up 16 spots from 56th to 40th
Biggest stumbles
And here are the teams that fell the most.
Minnesota: down 26 spots from 30th to 56th
Washington: down 19 spots from 19th to 38th
TCU: down 18 spots from 27th to 45th
USC: down 16 spots from 17th to 33rd
BYU: down 16 spots from 33rd to 49th
Louisiana: down 16 spots from 52nd to 68th
Fresno State: down 15 spots from 44th to 59th
Tulane: down 14 spots from 63rd to 77th
LSU: down 13 spots from 26th to 39th
Stanford: down 13 spots from 70th to 83rd
FAU: down 13 spots from 75th to 88th
A new No. 1
While Alabama has certainly done very little wrong thus far -- the Tide jumped out to a 35-0 lead in just 18 minutes against Southern Miss on Saturday and cruised 63-14 -- the Tide have ceded their No. 1 ranking, at least temporarily. Kirby Smart's Georgia Bulldogs have been absolutely ruthless; for much of Saturday's 62-0 win over Vanderbilt, it looked as if the Dawgs would finish with more points than Vandy had yards. As with ESPN's FPI, this was enough to bump UGA just ahead of Bama.
A new No. 130
Just a week ago, UConn was in competition for the worst SP+ rating of all time. But the Huskies were downright competitive against Wyoming, jumping to a 13-0 lead and coming within a 2-point conversion of forcing overtime. That not only saved them from historical ignominy but also bailed them out of the No. 130 spot altogether. By 0.3 points, those "honors" now go to New Mexico State.
