What happens when you produce a 56% success rate to your opponent's 43%, average 8.8 yards per play to their 5.6, gain 20-plus yards on 11% of your snaps (your opponent: 5%), score touchdowns on every red zone trip and still lose as a 22.5-point favorite? If you're Alabama, falling to Vanderbilt via turnovers luck and Diego Pavia's sheer panache, a couple of things happen: First, you disrupt bachelorette parties throughout downtown Nashville when students tear down the goalposts and march them more than two miles, down Broadway and into the Cumberland River.
Second, your SP+ rating doesn't really change.
After the most monumental upset of the 2024 season -- yes, NIU beat Notre Dame in Week 2, but this is Vanderbilt vs. Alabama we're talking about here -- Kalen DeBoer's Crimson Tide remain No. 3 in this week's SP+ rankings. They did just about everything they were supposed to do to beat Vandy but fell victim to an incredible set of circumstances.
My postgame win expectancy measure -- which looks at the predictive stats produced in a given game, tosses them into the air and says, "With these stats, you could have expected to win this game X% of the time" -- says that with this game's stats, Vandy would have won 1.8% of the time. That tops Rutgers-Washington (3.3%) and Arkansas-Auburn (6.7%) for the most unlikely win of the season.
The game could have massive implications for the SEC race -- and lord knows it was ridiculously fun to watch -- but Bama is, uh, still very good.
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.
Wisconsin: up 5.0 adjusted points per game (ranking rose from 66th to 39th)
Indiana: up 4.5 points (from 29th to 17th)
West Virginia: up 4.1 points (from 58th to 37th)
Charlotte: up 3.1 points (from 125th to 119th)
Florida: up 2.9 points (from 30th to 23rd)
Georgia: up 2.5 points (from seventh to fourth)
Arkansas State: up 2.5 points (from 123rd to 115th)
UCLA: up 2.5 points (from 84th to 76th)
Marshall: up 2.3 points (from 93rd to 87th)
Texas A&M: up 2.3 points (from 19th to 15th)
With preseason projections getting further phased out, conference adjustments picking up weight and Indiana putting together another strong performance, the ever-impressive Hoosiers have finally started to overcome their poor preseason ranking and reap the benefits of a lovely start. Meanwhile, Wisconsin, WVU, Charlotte and Texas A&M all moved up pretty dramatically following conference blowout wins. (And UCLA moved up by simply not playing horrible ball, apparently.)
Moving down
Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:
Missouri: down 4.5 adjusted points per game (ranking fell from ninth to 13th)
Florida State: down 4.2 points (from 48th to 68th)
Iowa: down 3.5 points (from 17th to 29th)
Oklahoma State: down 3.5 points (from 39th to 57th)
Tennessee: down 3.3 points (from fifth to eighth)
Michigan: down 3.1 points (from 15th to 27th)
James Madison: down 2.7 points (from 33rd to 49th)
Oregon State: down 2.7 points (from 63rd to 71st)
Toledo: down 2.6 points (from 72nd to 82nd)
UNLV: down 2.4 points (from 54th to 67th)
Florida State is the anti-Indiana this year, projected highly but beginning to fall rapidly as preseason projections fall out. Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma State and Tennessee, meanwhile, fell the old-fashioned way: by playing poorly.
Conference rankings
Here are FBS conferences ranked by average SP+:
1. SEC: 17.2 average rating (36.2 offense, 19.1 defense)
2. Big Ten: 10.7 average rating (29.0 offense, 18.3 defense)
3. ACC: 8.4 average rating (31.6 offense, 23.3 defense)
4. Big 12: 7.9 average rating (32.2 offense, 24.4 defense)
5. Sun Belt: -6.4 average rating (26.0 offense, 32.4 defense)
6. AAC: -7.7 average rating (24.5 offense, 32.2 defense)
7. MWC: -8.7 average rating (24.0 offense, 32.6 defense)
8. MAC: -14.4 average rating (17.2 offense, 31.5 defense)
9. CUSA: -15.1 average rating (19.4 offense, 34.3 defense)
With conference adjustments taking on more weight, the power conferences all saw their averages rise a hair while the Group of 5, Sun Belt aside, did the opposite.
SP+ projects the College Football Playoff
Here's what the new 12-team CFP would look like based on updated SP+ projections (and what the results would look like if the projected favorite won each game, even though that never actually happens).
First round
12 Boise State at 5 Oregon (Ducks by 17.9)
11 Indiana at 6 Alabama (Tide by 16.8)
10 Georgia at 7 Penn State (PSU by 0.5)
9 Notre Dame at 8 Ole Miss (Rebels by 10.2)
Quarterfinals
SUGAR BOWL: 1 Texas vs. 8 Ole Miss (Horns by 2.7)
FIESTA BOWL: 4 Kansas State vs. 5 Oregon (Ducks by 7.8)
PEACH BOWL: 3 Miami vs. 6 Alabama (Tide by 6.1)
ROSE BOWL: 2 Ohio State vs. 7 Penn State (Buckeyes by 5.2)
Semifinals
COTTON BOWL: 1 Texas vs. 5 Oregon (Horns by 5.8)
ORANGE BOWL: 2 Ohio State vs. 6 Alabama (Buckeyes by 1.9)
Finals
1 Texas vs. 2 Ohio State (Horns by 0.4)
Granted, they're probably not yet a danger to win a first-round game, but start talking to your children about the possibility of Indiana being in the College Football Playoff. The Hoosiers now have a 23% chance of finishing 11-1 or better and a 61% chance of going at least 10-2. What a time to be alive.
Résumé SP+
With the College Football Playoff rankings about a month away, it's time to start 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 latter 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 (1). 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. Obviously things are subject to huge changes since we just began conference play.
(Note: Because of the high bar teams have to clear in getting compared to an average top-five team, and because of the loss adjustment, almost every team here ends up with a negative score. It is what it is, especially since nearly everyone has already tripped up.)
Here is this week's Résumé SP+ top 15:
1. Texas (5-0): +4.3
2. Ohio State (5-0): +3.8
3. Miami (6-0): -4.9
4. Ole Miss (5-1): -6.9
5. Georgia (4-1): -7.5
6. Indiana (6-0): -7.7
7. Tennessee (4-1): -8.1
8. Alabama (4-1): -8.9
9. BYU (5-0): -9.6
10. Penn State (5-0): -9.7
11. Iowa State (5-0): -11.1
12. Pitt (5-0): -11.3
13. Oregon (5-0): -12.3
14. Clemson (4-1): -14.9
15. Army (5-0): -15.1
Other unbeatens: 20. Navy (5-0): -18.4; 55. Liberty (4-0): -33.3
You might want to also start talking to your children about the possibility of back-to-back Army-Navy games (one in the AAC Championship, one in the regularly scheduled early-December spot), with the winner of the first one -- but, funny enough, not the second one -- qualifying for the CFP. Granted, Boise State is probably the most likely team to grab the G5's automatic CFP spot, but Army might be second now.