Bowl season is complete, and only the national championship game remains in the 2022 college football season. After a number of tight, gripping contests and a few huge surprises, we saw a decent amount of movement in the SP+ rankings. But Georgia remains at the top of the list and is a projected favorite of 10.9 points in the title game against upstart TCU.
Below are the updated, nearly year-end SP+ ratings. 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 after a Week 13 game:
Texas Tech: up 3.3 adjusted points per game (from 41st to 30th in the rankings)
Mississippi State: up 2.3 points (from 19th to 12th)
Duke: up 2.3 points (from 53rd to 48th)
East Carolina: up 2.1 points (from 68th to 62nd)
Alabama: up 2.1 points (from fourth to second)
LSU: up 2.0 points (from 18th to 13th)
Memphis: up 2.0 points (from 49th to 42nd)
Oregon State: up 1.8 points (from 22nd to 19th)
Tennessee: up 1.7 points (no change from fifth)
Western Kentucky: up 1.7 points (from 65th to 61st)
On average, the SEC West had a lovely bowl season. Ole Miss no-showed to a degree against Texas Tech in the TaxAct Texas Bowl, and Arkansas didn't quite live up to projections in beating Kansas in overtime, but Mississippi State won a toss-up against Illinois, and LSU and Alabama put together two of the most resounding performances of bowl season. The West had three of the six biggest movers overall, though none rose like Texas Tech, which finishes in the top 30 in Joey McGuire's first season.
Moving down
Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most after a Week 13 game:
South Alabama: down 3.3 adjusted points per game (from 33rd to 45th in the rankings)
Purdue: down 2.9 points (from 47th to 56th)
San Jose State: down 2.7 points (from 82nd to 90th)
Utah: down 2.4 points (no change from 10th)
Clemson: down 2.3 points (from 11th to 14th)
Kansas State: down 2.2 points (from eighth to ninth)
Michigan: down 2.1 points (from second to third)
Coastal Carolina: down 2.0 points (from 72nd to 80th)
Utah State: down 1.8 points (from 108th to 114th)
Cincinnati: down 1.7 points (from 27th to 32nd)
Maybe the most interesting thing about this list: There are some big names here! Four teams that were in the top 11 heading into bowl season played poorly enough to fall more than two points, though the spacing of the teams was such that, of these four teams, only Clemson fell more than one spot.
Conference rankings
Here are the updated conference SP+ averages. The order of the rankings didn't change, but a few conferences certainly had better bowl seasons than others.
1. SEC: 15.5 average SP+ rating (35.3 offense, 20.2 defense), up 0.6 points per team
2. Big 12: 13.4 average (37.6 offense, 24.4 defense), up 0.5 points
3. Big Ten: 9.1 average (28.1 offense, 19.2 defense), down 0.3 points
4. Pac-12: 6.1 average (34.8 offense, 28.8 defense), down 0.2 points
5. ACC: 2.6 average (27.3 offense, 24.9 defense), up 0.5 points
6. AAC: 1.3 average (31.4 offense, 30.0 defense), up 0.4 points
7. Sun Belt: -2.9 average (24.8 offense, 27.9 defense), down 0.5 points
8. Conference USA: -8.0 average (27.1 offense, 35.0 defense), up 0.4 points
9. Mountain West: -10.8 average (17.3 offense, 28.0 defense), down 0.2 points
10. MAC: -13.0 average (20.6 offense, 33.0 defense), up 0.2
Thanks primarily to Alabama, LSU and Tennessee, the SEC enjoyed the best bowl season compared to projections and enjoyed the biggest average rise, slightly better than that of the Big 12 and ACC. Bringing up the rear? The Sun Belt, which didn't have tons of fun. Troy, Southern Miss and Marshall all won, but South Alabama and Coastal Carolina both got pounded, and Louisiana and Georgia Southern lost as well. Still, the conference was safely going to finish seventh overall whether it had a great or terrible December.
