The conference title games are over, and the CFP and bowl pairings will be revealed soon. Let's see what SP+ says about college football's hierarchy now that the regular season is officially done.
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 five teams that saw their ratings rise the most this week:
Utah: up 2.4 adjusted points per game (no change in the rankings)
NMSU: up 2.0 points (from 116th to 111th)
Clemson: up 1.7 points (from 13th to 11th)
Kansas State: up 1.6 points (from ninth to eighth)
Michigan: up 1.5 points (no change)
Moving down
Here are the five teams whose ratings fell the most:
North Carolina: down 2.4 adjusted points per game (from 46th to 52nd in the rankings)
Boise State: down 2.2 points (from 52nd to 58th)
Coastal Carolina: down 1.9 points (from 69th to 72nd)
North Texas: down 1.9 points (from 73rd to 78th)
Ohio: down 1.6 points (from 85th to 87th)
Résumé SP+
Each week down the stretch, I have also been sharing what I call the résumé SP+ rankings, a look at (1) how the average SP+ top-five team would be projected to perform against a given team's schedule -- in terms of scoring margin (which I cap at 50 points) instead of straight wins and losses -- and (2) how the team's scoring margin compares to that projection. Throw in a seven-point penalty for every loss a team has suffered (because losses matter on the résumé!), and we have what the CFP rankings would look like if SP+ and only SP+ were in charge.
With the CFP rankings reveal coming up, here's the final Résumé SP+ top 15.
TCU labored through a lot of close games -- against a top-25 strength of schedule, it should be noted -- but still looked the part of a CFP team and ended up just ahead of a pair of two-loss SEC teams on the list.
