I felt like a broken record this offseason: Top 3 vs. the field, top 3 vs. the field, top 3 vs. the field. In my preseason SP+ projections, the top three teams -- Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State -- were so far ahead of the pack that there was the same distance between No. 3 Ohio State and No. 4 Oklahoma as there was between Oklahoma and No. 18 NC State.
One week into the 2022 season, that picture is still mostly the same, as Ohio State's rating rose a bit following a home win over Notre Dame. But Alabama and Georgia both saw their ratings rise a lot following Saturday wins over Utah State and Oregon by a combined 104-3. They treated decent teams like FCS also-rans, and their ratings reflect it. No. 2 Georgia is now 10.9 points ahead of No. 5 Texas A&M -- the same distance separating A&M from No. 27 UCF. The teams that finished last season in the national title game are starting out well ahead of the pack. We'll see if it lasts.
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.
(Also, as you'll see, special teams don't carry much weight this early in the season -- almost none, in fact. That's why the range between good and bad is almost nonexistent this week.)
Here are the full rankings, along with a breakdown of the week's biggest movers.
This week's movers
Predictably, lots of teams made moves this first week. Here are the outliers.
Moving up
Here are the 11 teams that moved up at least 13 spots compared to the preseason projections:
Kansas (up 19 spots from 103rd to 84th)
South Alabama (up 19 spots from 109th to 90th)
Baylor (up 17 spots from 30th to 13th)
SMU (up 17 spots from 43rd to 26th)
Vanderbilt (up 17 spots from 108th to 91st)
UNLV (up 17 spots from 117th to 100th)
James Madison (up 16 spots from 94th to 78th)
Georgia Southern (up 16 spots from 118th to 102nd)
Miami (up 15 spots from 29th to 14th)
UCF (up 13 spots from 40th to 27th)
Texas Tech (up 13 spots from 49th to 36th)
With a few exceptions, most of these teams beat up on FCS competition in Week 1. So why did they move up so much? Two reasons: First, it doesn't take that much improvement, in terms of points, to move up a lot in the general No. 70-120 range. Those teams are pretty clustered together, and that's where many of these teams originated. (There's a similar cluster in about the No. 20-50 range.)
Second, beating up on FCS competition still says something! Not everyone does it, and there is more value than you might think in treating outmanned competition appropriately.
Moving down
College football is zero sum -- if someone's moving up, someone's moving down. Here are the 12 teams that dropped by at least 13 spots this week:
Oregon (down 25 spots from 24th to 49th)
Boise State (down 23 spots from 35th to 58th)
Louisville (down 21 spots from 39th to 60th)
San Diego State (down 16 spots from 59th to 75th)
Colorado (down 16 spots from 92nd to 108th)
Colorado State (down 15 spots from 96th to 111th)
Middle Tennessee (down 15 spots from 100th to 115th)
Iowa (down 14 spots from 27th to 41st)
Houston (down 14 spots from 32nd to 46th)
Memphis (down 14 spots from 63rd to 77th)
Cincinnati (down 13 spots from 16th to 29th)
USF (down 13 spots from 90th to 103rd)
A lot of the teams here were in the same clusters mentioned above, but let's talk for a moment about Oregon. On Saturday, the Ducks became the first of what could be many teams blown out by Georgia this year, falling 49-3 in Atlanta. Why did they drop that far when so many solid teams are likely to meet the same fate?
It's primarily because of how comprehensive the blowout was. Sometimes when even a great team wins by 40-plus, it includes a return score, some bad turnovers luck, etc. The fact that Georgia drove long distances seven straight times to score its seven touchdowns added a level of comprehensiveness to the blowout that we don't usually see. (There's a reason why UGA's offensive SP+ rating rose by nearly three points.)
Meanwhile, Oregon was caught in one of those clusters I mentioned, so there was more room to fall. Their actual rating dropped by 5.6 points -- significant but only the seventh-largest drop of the week. That their rating fell as much as it did tells you how close teams in that No. 20-50 range are.
Movement in the Top 15
What about the teams at the top? Who moved the most?
Utah drops out. Red zone plays carry extra weight in the SP+ formula, and since that's where the Utes primarily failed in their 29-26 loss to Florida -- they settled for two field goals, failed on fourth-and-goal in the third quarter (though I still struggle to see how they didn't score on third down) and, of course, threw an interception from the Florida 6 in the final seconds -- that cost them. Their rating dropped by just 2.6 points, but that was enough for them to stumble from 12th to 24th.
Looking like Top 10 teams. Five teams started out in the Top 10 and completely looked the part in Week 1. Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Texas A&M and Tennessee all saw their ratings rise by at least 4.5 points after dominant debut performances.
A&M might be the most surprising of that bunch, considering they only beat FCS' Sam Houston, 31-0. But they more than doubled SHSU in terms of yards per play (7.4 to 3.6), they dominated on both ends in the red zone, and their explosiveness measures were off the charts. Offensive efficiency is a concern, but everything else looked rock solid.
Hello, Bears and Canes. Of all the teams that rose while blowing out overwhelmed FCS opponents, Baylor and Miami might have been the most noteworthy. They handled their business quickly and mercilessly against Albany and Bethune-Cookman, respectively, and each saw their ratings rise by more than four points. It's rather funny that these two teams made the jump, though -- they were two of the teams SP+ trusted far less than AP poll voters to start the season. SP+ has changed its mind, apparently. We'll see if the ratings stick when tougher opposition shows up on the schedule. (Baylor plays at BYU in Week 2.)