If the first eight weeks of the college football season have taught us anything, it's that we don't have an invincible team in 2024. Texas was the closest thing to it after seven weeks, and the Longhorns got roughed up at home by Georgia on Saturday. Ohio State is once again up to first in SP+ -- this is the fifth time in six weeks that No. 1 changed hands -- and the Buckeyes took the spot by not playing at all after losing a week ago. The top four teams have combined for five losses! Strange things are afoot!
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 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.
Navy: up 3.2 adjusted points per game (rating rose from 73rd to 64th)
Indiana: up 2.6 points (from 15th to 12th)
Army: up 2.5 points (from 53rd to 36th)
Virginia Tech: up 2.2 points (from 36th to 25th)
Georgia Southern: up 2.2 points (from 91st to 85th)
Arkansas State: up 2.1 points (from 122nd to 113th)
Colorado: up 1.9 points (from 54th to 40th)
Miami (Ohio): up 1.8 points (from 108th to 99th)
Washington State: up 1.8 points (from 57th to 44th)
LSU: up 1.7 points (from 12th to 11th)
Nobody seems to want the No. 1 ranking here, but three teams that have done nothing but move up in 2024 -- Army, Indiana and Navy -- continued to do so. This out-of-nowhere trio combined to win games by a margin of 152-52 on Saturday, and with preseason projections getting phased further and further out of the ratings, they saw their ratings once again rise more than anyone else's. It's your world, Hoosiers (and Black Knights, and Midshipmen).
Moving down
Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:
Nebraska: down 3.8 adjusted points per game (ranking fell from 22nd to 32nd)
Arizona: down 3.7 points (from 60th to 70th)
Purdue: down 3.6 points (from 82nd to 89th)
Kentucky: down 3.5 points (from 23rd to 34th)
West Virginia: down 3.5 points (from 43rd to 61st)
Houston: down 3.3 points (from 77th to 86th)
Boston College: down 3.2 points (from 49th to 65th)
Stanford: down 3.1 points (from 86th to 92nd)
Oklahoma: down 2.9 points (from 26th to 31st)
Troy: down 2.7 points (from 95th to 102nd)
Nebraska saw its rating punished pretty severely after a 56-7 loss to Indiana, but most of the other teams near the top of this list both performed poorly in Week 8 and suffered from the further phasing out of preseason projections. Purdue has been abjectly awful for all but about one half this season, and Arizona, West Virginia and Oklahoma also have been more disappointing than not. OU's strong defense continues to keep its overall rating afloat, but the Sooners' offense ... yuck.
Conference rankings
Here are FBS conferences ranked by average SP+:
1. SEC: 15.5 average rating (34.2 offense, 18.9 defense)
2. Big Ten: 9.8 average rating (28.9 offense, 19.1 defense)
3. ACC: 7.2 average rating (31.2 offense, 24.0 defense)
4. Big 12: 6.6 average rating (31.0 offense, 24.4 defense)
5. Sun Belt: minus-7.7 average rating (24.2 offense, 31.9 defense)
6. AAC: minus-8.1 average rating (24.3 offense, 32.5 defense)
7. Mountain West: minus-9.9 average rating (23.9 offense, 33.6 defense)
8. Conference USA: minus-15.6 average rating (18.9 offense, 34.3 defense)
9. MAC: minus-15.6 average rating (17.6 offense, 33.1 defense)
No changes this week, though the MAC nearly reeled CUSA back in at the bottom.
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 Army at 5 Penn State (PSU by 18.6)
11 BYU at 6 Tennessee (UT by 12.3)
10 Notre Dame at 7 Georgia (UGA by 5.4)
9 Ohio State at 8 Indiana (OSU by 7.8)
Quarterfinals
Rose Bowl: 1 Oregon vs. 8 Ohio State (OSU by 4.5)
Fiesta Bowl: 4 Iowa State vs. 5 Penn State (PSU by 10.8)
Peach Bowl: 3 Miami vs. 6 Tennessee (UT by 0.01!)
Sugar Bowl: 2 Texas vs. 7 Georgia (UT by 1.8)
Semifinals
Orange Bowl: 5 Penn State vs. 8 Ohio State (OSU by 4.7)
Cotton Bowl: 2 Texas vs. 6 Tennessee (Texas by 5.7)
Finals
2 Texas vs. 8 Ohio State (OSU by 1.7)
We're in a weird spot right now where the teams that are most likely to end up with the best records and/or seeds are not also the teams with the best SP+ ratings. That could make for one funky bracket. And in this house, we love funk.
Résumé SP+
Since the College Football Playoff rankings are on the horizon, I'm also 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.
(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.)
Here is this week's Résumé SP+ top 15:
1. Indiana (7-0): minus-1.2 (up three spots from last week)
2. Texas (6-1): minus-2.1 (down one spot)
3. Ohio State (5-1): minus-3.2 (down one spot)
4. Miami (7-0): minus-3.6 (down one spot)
5. Oregon (7-0): minus-6.6 (up two spot)
6. Georgia (6-1): minus-7.4 (up four spot)
7. Tennessee (6-1): minus-7.5 (down one spot)
8. BYU (7-0): minus-8.4 (down three spot)
9. Penn State (6-0): minus-9.8 (up two spot)
10. Iowa State (7-0): minus-10.7 (down one spot)
11. Notre Dame (6-1): minus-11.3 (up one spot)
12. Clemson (6-1): minus-11.9 (up two spots)
13. Pitt (6-0): minus-11.9 (same spot)
14. Army (7-0): minus-14.0 (up one spot)
15. Ole Miss (5-2): minus-14.6 (up two spots)
Other unbeatens: 20. Navy (6-0): minus-17.1 (up one spot) 39. Liberty (5-0): minus-33.4 (up eight spots)
That seven-point loss penalty is creating some funky (there's that word again) results here. Texas, Ohio State, Georgia and Tennessee would have ranked first through fourth without it, but that's all beside the point. More than halfway through the 2024 regular season, Indiana! Has the best résumé! In college football!!!