College football’s Week 6 SP+ rankings takeaways

Michigan and Georgia both asserted themselves Saturday. Jim Harbaugh’s Wolverines outscored Minnesota with both their offense and defense in a 52-10 rout in Minneapolis, while Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs played their first complete game of the season, bowling over Kentucky 51-13 in Athens.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Michigan and Georgia therefore lead the way in the SP+ ratings, too. The two teams that have reached the College Football Playoff in each of the last two years are the most likely to dominate moving forward. But who’s No. 3? And what else does SP+ have to tell us about what we saw in Week 6?

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.

Here are the full rankings:

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:

• Utah State: up 4.0 adjusted points per game (from 96th to 85th)

• Kansas: up 3.3 points (from 45th to 37th)

• Louisville: up 3.0 points (from 29th to 20th)

• Northern Illinois: up 2.9 points (from 116th to 104th)

• Arizona: up 2.8 points (from 49th to 39th)

• Virginia: up 2.7 points (from 94th to 86th)

• Oklahoma State: up 2.6 points (from 66th to 48th)

• Louisiana: up 2.5 points (from 73rd to 62nd)

• Ohio: up 2.5 points (from 84th to 79th)

• Georgia Tech: up 2.4 points (from 77th to 70th)

Louisville’s all-or-nothing offense enjoyed enough alls on Saturday night for the Cardinals to pull off a 33-20 win over Notre Dame and jump to 20th overall. With North Carolina rising a bit as well, the ACC’s three remaining unbeatens are now separated by just 2.0 points, and while the league doesn’t have any top-10 teams at the moment, it’s got six in the top 30. This is going to be a really fun conference title race.

MOVING DOWN

Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:

• Liberty: down 5.0 adjusted points per game (from 44th to 72nd)

• Marshall: down 4.2 points (from 63rd to 77th)

• Central Michigan: down 3.7 points (from 121st to 127th)

• Notre Dame: down 3.6 points (from eighth to 12th)

• Baylor: down 3.6 points (from 64th to 75th)

• Miami: down 3.6 points (from 12th to 17th)

• Kansas State: down 3.2 points (from 16th to 24th)

• Louisiana-Monroe: down 3.1 points (from 115th to 122nd)

• Kent State: down 2.9 points (from 133rd to … 133rd)

• Arkansas: down 2.8 points (from 39th to 50th)

No, there wasn’t a “Just kneel out the win!! Why didn’t you just kneel out the win??” penalty in the SP+ ratings, though there should be. I guess, however, Miami’s failure to do so opened the Hurricanes’ defense to get hit by a couple of big plays in the weekend’s most shocking loss.

Conference rankings

Here are the FBS’ 10 conferences, ranked by average SP+:

1. SEC: 10.7 average points per team (33.4 offense, 22.8 defense)
2. Pac-12: 8.8 points (32.9 offense, 24.2 defense)
3. Big 12: 8.2 points (31.7 offense, 23.5 defense)
4. ACC: 6.4 points (28.9 offense, 22.5 defense)
5. Big Ten: 5.9 points (26.4 offense, 20.7 defense)
6. Sun Belt: -4.6 points (25.0 offense, 29.6 defense)
7. Mountain West: -5.9 points (23.6 offense, 29.5 defense)
8. AAC: -8.1 points (23.9 offense, 31.9 defense)
9. Conference USA: -11.7 points (20.1 offense, 31.7 defense)
10. MAC: -13.0 points (18.8 offense, 31.7 defense)

The SEC’s minimal dead weight continues to drive its No. 1 overall average. It has only one team ranked worse than 61st, while the Pac-12 has four. But if “how many top-10 teams do you have?” is in your “best conference” criteria, you might give the Pac-12 the nod.

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. Penn State (5-0): +7.0 points per game
2. Oklahoma (6-0): +6.5
3. Oregon (5-0): +6.2
4. Washington (5-0): +5.5
5. Ohio State (5-0): +3.5
6. Michigan (6-0): +3.0
7. Georgia (6-0): +2.7
8. Florida State (5-0): -1.4
9. North Carolina (5-0): -2.9
10. USC (6-0): -4.4
11. Texas (5-1): -5.4
12. Louisville (6-0): -8.3
13. Ole Miss (5-1): -9.3
14. Oregon State (5-1): -9.3
15. Alabama (5-1): -9.6

Other unbeatens:
16. Air Force (5-0): -9.9
28. James Madison (5-0): -18.5
30. Liberty (5-0): -19.0

The top five remained the same this week, while last week’s No. 6, Texas, fell five spots after losing to Oklahoma. Here’s your reminder that No. 3 Oregon and No. 4 Washington play this coming Saturday, followed by No. 1 Penn State and No. 5 Ohio State the weekend after that.