What happens when the top-ranked team in SP+ barely beats a team that just got smoked by a borderline top-40 opponent? That team falls back to the pack by a good amount. Georgia's narrow 13-12 win over Kentucky -- a game that wasn't close because of bad bounces or poor fortune -- means that heading into Week 4 of the 2024 college football season ... we really don't have a No. 1 team.
Ohio State technically earned the honors after beating the hell out of Bye Week, but after Georgia's tumble, the top five teams are all within 1.8 points of each other (and a surging No. 6 Tennessee isn't too far from that pack, either). The Bulldogs are still the only team to rank in the top 10 in offense, defense and special teams, but their offensive rating fell by four points, and strong performances from Alabama, Texas and Ole Miss created quite a logjam at the top.
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 probably will fall. If you're strong and unlucky in a loss, it probably will rise.