Week 11 of the college football season was ... messy. The Pac-12 devoured itself, as it is wont to do. UConn reached bowl eligibility. Vanderbilt not only beat an SEC opponent for the first time in a while but beat a ranked opponent on the road. Arkansas State tried to lose to UMass. Weird day.
Among the top teams, however, not much changed: Georgia, Ohio State and Michigan continued to look like the best teams in the country, and Alabama and Tennessee continued with their typical level of quality.
Below are this week's SP+ rankings. There are no changes in the top five.
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:
Duke: up 4.5 adjusted points per game (up from 76th to 61st in the rankings)
FAU: up 4.2 points (92nd to 79th)
Ohio: up 3.9 points (102nd to 89th)
Air Force: up 3.6 points (69th to 57th)
WKU: up 3.6 points (63rd to 45th)
SDSU: up 3.3 points (98th to 86th)
South Alabama: up 3.2 points (46th to 32nd)
Boise State: up 3.1 points (64th to 51st)
Kent State: up 3.0 points (115th to 105th)
Penn State: up 2.7 points (12th to seventh)
Eight of the 10 risers are from the Group of 5 level, but we see a couple of particularly interesting names at the top and bottom of the list. Duke not only beat a bad Virginia Tech team but dominated, outgaining the Hokies by 126 yards with a strong efficiency advantage. That performance, combined with the continued phasing out of preseason projections (which were predictably unkind to the Blue Devils) resulted in a nice ratings boost. Meanwhile, Penn State continued to look awesome against mortal teams. The Nittany Lions are now 8-2 -- 0-2 against teams in the SP+ top three and 8-0 against everyone else -- following a 30-0 shutout romp over Maryland. SP+ tends to reward dominance.
Moving down
Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:
ODU: down 4.5 adjusted points per game (from 87th to 102nd in the rankings)
Virginia: down 4.4 points (80th to 93rd)
Texas A&M: down 3.8 points (36th to 52nd)
Appalachian State: down 3.6 points (45th to 66th)
Notre Dame: down 3.3 points (26th to 36th)
Nebraska: down 3.2 points (70th to 75th)
Oklahoma: down 3.1 points (13th to 18th)
UCLA: down 2.9 points (ninth to 15th)
Wisconsin: down 2.9 points (23rd to 33rd)
USF: down 2.8 points (114th to 120th)
It was a bad weekend in the state of Virginia; not only did Virginia Tech suffer another miserable defeat (they don't show up on the Moving Down list here because they've already done quite a bit of that in recent weeks), but Virginia also got blown out by Pitt, as did Old Dominion against James Madison. But hey, at least JMU's also from Virginia?
Still, the most noteworthy team here is almost certainly Texas A&M. Jimbo Fisher's Aggies have now lost six games in a row and, at 3-7, have clinched their worst record since at least 2008. The defense responded well after a couple of poor performances, but the offense once again vanished. A&M now ranks 82nd in offensive SP+.
Conference rankings
Here are the FBS's 10 conferences, ranked by average SP+:
1. SEC: 11.7 average SP+ (33.4 average offensive SP+, 21.9 average defensive SP+)
2. Big 12: 11.5 average SP+ (35.7 offense, 24.3 defense)
3. Big Ten: 8.6 average SP+ (28.4 offense, 19.9 defense)
4. Pac-12: 5.1 average SP+ (33.3 offense, 28.2 defense)
5. ACC: 2.3 average SP+ (27.7 offense, 25.4 defense)
6. AAC: 0.7 average SP+ (30.5 offense, 29.8 defense)
7. Sun Belt: -2.2 average SP+ (25.1 offense, 27.3 defense)
8. Conference USA: -7.4 average SP+ (26.7 offense, 34.2 defense)
9. MWC: -10.8 average SP+ (18.2 offense, 28.9 defense)
10. MAC: -12.2 average SP+ (21.8 offense, 33.8 defense)
Since this list hasn't changed in a while, let's make things interesting and look at another list: division rankings.
1. SEC West: 12.1 average SP+ (34.0 offense, 22.2 defense)
2. Big Ten East: 11.5 average SP+ (32.0 offense, 20.8 defense)
3. SEC East: 11.3 average SP+ (32.8 offense, 21.6 defense)
4. ACC Atlantic: 6.2 average SP+ (29.3 offense, 23.3 defense)
5. Big Ten West: 5.7 average SP+ (24.8 offense, 19.0 defense)
6. Sun Belt East: -0.8 average SP+ (28.0 offense, 28.4 defense)
7. ACC Coastal: -1.6 average SP+ (26.0 offense, 27.6 defense)
8. Sun Belt West: -3.6 average SP+ (22.2 offense, 26.1 defense)
9. MWC Mountain: -9.9 average SP+ (16.7 offense, 26.6 defense)
10. MAC West: -10.1 average SP+ (22.4 offense, 32.4 defense)
11. MWC West: -11.7 average SP+ (19.6 offense, 31.2 defense)
12. MAC East: -14.3 average SP+ (21.2 offense, 35.3 defense)
There aren't too many surprises there -- you probably expected the list to start with the SEC West and Big Ten East -- but holy smokes, is the ACC Coastal bad this year. Congratulations to UNC for winning enough close games to close out the division title (it's better than not winning a bad division), but the Tar Heels are the only Coastal team ranked higher than 49th, and four teams rank below 90th. The Sun Belt East has only one of the latter.
