As we head into college football's Championship Week, the sport's hierarchy, per SP+, couldn't be clearer. The No. 1 team is more than four points ahead of the No. 2 team, which is nearly three points ahead of No. 3, which is nearly two points ahead of No. 4, which is nearly two and a half points ahead of No. 5. The distance between No. 1 and No. 5 (11.4 points) is the same as the distance between No. 5 and No. 36!
Who's No. 1? You already know: Kirby Smart's Georgia Bulldogs. The Dawgs have been the class of college football in 2021. Whether we had a 12-team playoff or the old BCS, Georgia would be a significant favorite to win its first national title since 1980, but as things stand, they've got three games left to win the ring. And they'll be significant favorites in every game they play, even against Alabama in this week's SEC championship.
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. It is a look at how teams should likely perform moving forward.
We had established enough of an overall hierarchy through 12 weeks that even though the ratings for three of the top four teams changed pretty significantly this week, the order didn't. Ohio State's rating dropped by 2.9 points (pretty massive for this late in the year), Alabama's dropped by 0.9 and Michigan's rose by 0.8, but we still ended up with the same top four as last week.
There was movement in the rest of the top 10, however. Cincinnati handled its business and took advantage of stumbles by both Texas A&M and Wisconsin to move to fifth overall, and yet another awesome performance bumped Notre Dame up two more spots to seventh. I don't know if it will be enough to get the Fighting Irish into the CFP, but they have been fantastic down the stretch.
Meanwhile, the No. 10 spot is particularly fun this week. The No. 10 ranking has been a place for any number of fun upstarts this week -- UCLA early on, Pitt more recently -- and after a win over Vanderbilt that was far more dominant statistically than the 24-point winning margin would suggest, it's Tennessee's turn to sneak into the top 10. (And yes, here's another reminder that this is PREDICTIVE, as in, Tennessee would be predicted to play like a top-10 team moving forward if the season continued.) A 7-5 record doesn't really do justice for the upside the Vols showed at times in Josh Heupel's first season.
Largest jumps
We saw a number of emphatic performances over the weekend, which means we saw a good amount of movement in the rankings. Nine teams rose by at least 11 spots this week.
Western Kentucky: up 17 spots from 41st to 24th
Kentucky: up 13 spots from 35th to 22nd
Arkansas: up 11 spots from 36th to 25th
Fresno State: up 11 spots from 48th to 37th
UCLA: up 11 spots from 51st to 40th
UAB: up 11 spots from 53rd to 42nd
Illinois: up 11 spots from 77th to 66th
Utah State: up 10 spots from 90th to 80th
Old Dominion: up 10 spots from 106th to 96th
Largest stumbles
Seven teams, meanwhile, fell by at least nine spots.
North Carolina: down 16 spots from 30th to 46th
Louisville: down 16 spots from 31st to 47th
Boise State: down 12 spots from 32nd to 44th
Texas: down 11 spots from 43rd to 54th
Washington: down nine spots from 69th to 78th
TCU: down nine spots from 73rd to 82nd
Georgia Tech: down nine spots from 85th to 94th
Résumé SP+
Each week for the rest of the season, I'll also share my Résumé SP+ ratings. It's a look at your actual results vs. what the average top-five team would be expected to do against your schedule. I look at how SP+ would project the average top-five team -- crafted from a literal average of the top five SP+ ratings -- to perform against a given team's schedule, and I compare that to a team's actual results. Your scoring margin minus this projected scoring margin equals your Résumé SP+ rating.
Résumé SP+ is an attempt to look at how frequently teams are posting top-five caliber results and emphasize that how you play should matter as much as or more than who. This week's top 10:
1. Georgia: +10.0 PPG above what the average top-5 team would be projected to do against their schedule
2. Ohio State: +3.4
3. Alabama: +0.3
4. Michigan: -2.3
5. Cincinnati: -5.4
6. Notre Dame: -5.5
7. Oklahoma State: -7.5
8. Pitt: -8.3
9. Ole Miss: -8.8
10. Penn State: -9.5
As with the overall ratings, Ohio State fell, but not enough to fall to the rest of the pack. Meanwhile, the presence of PSU at No. 10 reminds you just how strange a season the Nittany Lions had. (That's two straight years where I've said that...)
I've found that taking Resume SP+ and adding a seven-point penalty for each loss is as close as I can get to a formula that replicates how my brain thinks the CFP rankings should go. It's a solid way of combining how you have performed with the simple fact that losses should matter. Here's the loss-adjusted Resume SP+ top 10:
1. Georgia (12-0)
2. Cincinnati (12-0)
3. Alabama (11-1)
4. Michigan (11-1)
5. Ohio State (10-2)
6. Notre Dame (11-1)
7. Oklahoma State (11-1)
8. Pitt (10-2)
9. Ole Miss (10-2)
10. Houston (11-1)
If I had a CFP vote, I would have Ohio State below Notre Dame and Oklahoma State, but otherwise it wouldn't look too different from this.
