Week 9 of the 2022 college football season began in funky fashion, with three underdogs winning outright in five Thursday and Friday games and the two others, Virginia Tech and Washington State, losing by a combined five points.
Chaos week coming? Nope. Once Saturday kicked off, order set in. All five unbeaten teams in action not only won but did so by an average score of 40-19, and while there were some surprises -- Tennessee destroyed a ranked Kentucky team, while two AP top-10 teams (Wake Forest and Oklahoma State) lost by a combined 96-21 -- the top of the college football food chain remained basically the same. Aside from Georgia and Alabama trading places, the top of the SP+ rankings went unchanged as well.
Below are this week's SP+ rankings. 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.
SP+ is indeed 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.
This week's movers
Let's take a look at the teams that saw the biggest change in their overall ratings. (Note: We're looking at ratings, not rankings.)
Moving up
Here are the 10 teams that saw their ratings rise the most this week:
Charlotte: up 6.0 adjusted points per game (from 122nd to 117th in the rankings)
North Texas: up 3.9 (97th to 86th)
Notre Dame: up 3.4 (46th to 32nd)
Boise State: up 3.0 (72nd to 64th)
Kansas State: up 2.7 (20th to 14th)
Georgia: up 2.6 (third to second)
FAU: up 2.4 (101st to 95th)
Oklahoma: up 2.3 (17th to 12th)
Ohio State: up 2.2 (no change from first)
Tennessee: up 2.2 (no change from fifth)
Charlotte got the ultimate interim coach bump, blowing out Rice by 33 points and getting a big ratings boost (if not a big rankings boost). Most of the other nine here enjoyed comfortable wins, and some (Kansas State, Ohio State, Tennessee) improved their strength-of-schedule ratings in the process as well.
Moving down
Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:
Georgia Tech: down 4.1 adjusted points per game (89th to 97th)
Northwestern: down 3.8 (90th to 96th)
USF: down 3.4 (98th to 107th)
Rutgers: down 3.4 (71st to 82nd)
Kentucky: down 3.1 (14th to 22nd)
Boston College: down 2.8 (94th to 99th)
Rice: down 2.8 (102nd to 108th)
ODU: down 2.8 (82nd to 87th)
Wake Forest: down 2.5 (27th to 34th)
Auburn: down 2.4 (43rd to 55th)
After enjoying a decent interim boost of their own, Brent Key's Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets were wrecked by Florida State on Saturday and were rather lucky to only lose by 25. Most of the other teams here suffered predictable drops after disappointing performances.
Conference rankings
Here are the FBS's 10 conferences, ranked by average SP+:
1. SEC: 13.3 average SP+ (34.2 average offensive SP+, 21.0 average defensive SP+)
2. Big 12: 12.2 average SP+ (35.8 offense, 23.7 defense)
3. Big Ten: 9.4 average SP+ (29.7 offense, 20.4 defense)
4. Pac-12: 5.4 average SP+ (32.0 offense, 26.7 defense)
5. ACC: 2.7 average SP+ (28.4 offense, 25.7 defense)
6. AAC: 0.3 average SP+ (29.0 offense, 28.7 defense)
7. Sun Belt: -0.8 average SP+ (26.0 offense, 26.8 defense)
8. Conference USA: -9.2 average SP+ (25.3 offense, 34.5 defense)
9. Mountain West: -12.6 average SP+ (18.0 offense, 30.6 defense)
10. MAC: -13.5 average SP+ (21.7 offense, 35.2 defense)
The order is pretty much set now, and only the decimal points are changing. That said, the ACC had a dismal week, with Syracuse suffering a dreadful blowout loss to Notre Dame and dragging down some other conference mates' schedule strengths. Two of the conference's other better teams, Wake Forest and NC State, also disappointed. In all, the league's average SP+ rating fell by 1.1 points, which I didn't think was possible at this point in the season.
Résumé SP+
Since we've officially reached CFP rankings season, I'm also including résumé SP+ rankings in this piece each week.
As mentioned above, SP+ is intended to be a power rating, not a résumé evaluation tool, but résumé SP+ attempts to fill that gap. It is a look at two things: (1) how the average SP+ top-five team would be projected to perform against your schedule (in terms of scoring margin) and (2) how your scoring margin compares to that. Throw in a seven-point penalty for every loss a team has suffered, and you can say that this is what the CFP rankings would look like if SP+ were in charge.
(Note: Because the original scoring scale didn't make a ton of intuitive sense, I'm presenting it in a slightly different way -- like a "games back" column in baseball standings. The top-ranked team sets the scale, and I'll list everyone below it by how many points they are behind the No. 1 team.)
Despite Tennessee's particularly brilliant performance Saturday, Ohio State and Georgia have still done far more against their respective schedules than any other team has to date. We'll see who has the edge in Tuesday's CFP rankings release, and with the No. 2 and No. 3 teams here playing next weekend, we'll see who has the edge on the field, too.
