College Football SP+ Rankings After Week 11
There are still two weeks until Rivalry Week and three weeks until the conference championship games.
We still have seven undefeated teams (five in power conferences) and eight major CFP contenders.
Things still seem terribly uncertain (in a good way). But the three best teams in the country seem awfully safe.
Michigan, Georgia and Ohio State started 2023 with a big lead. Oregon remains within striking distance at No. 4, but Michigan no. 1 is about the same distance from no. 5 Penn State (8.7 points) as well as PSU is from no. 19 Ole Miss. We definitely know who the best teams in the country are. have been this season.
Below you will find this week’s SP+ rankings. What is SP+? In a single sentence, it’s a measure of college football’s efficiency adjusted for pace and opponents.
I developed the system at Football Outsiders in 2008, and as my experience with college football and its statistics grew, I made some changes to the system.
SP+ is indeed intended to be forward-looking and oriented towards the future.
This isn’t a resume ranking that rewards great accomplishments or particularly bold planning; it is not a good prediction system. It is simply a measure of the most enduring and predictable aspects of football.
If you are lucky or unconvincing, your rating will likely go down. If you are strong and unlucky with a loss, it will probably increase.
Let’s take a look at the teams that saw the biggest change in their overall rating. (Note: We look at ratings, not rankings.)
Here are the 10 teams that saw their ratings increase the most this week:
NMSU: Increased 3.9 adjusted points per game (ranking increased from 81st to 66th)
Appalachian State: Increased 3.4 points (from 71st to 59th)
Freedom: up 3.2 points (from 43rd to 27th)
Bowling Green: up 3.1 points (from 107th to 99th)
Middle Tennessee: up 3.0 points (from 113th to 102nd)
UNLV: increase of 2.8 points (from 73rd to 63rd)
Sam Houston: up 2.8 points (from 127th to 119th)
Northwest: up 2.8 points (from 89° to 75°)
Hawaii: up 2.5 points (from 124th to 118th)
Western Michigan: Up 2.1 points (from 118th to 114th)
The weight of conference adjustments becomes heavier after ten games, and a couple of Group of Five conferences (Sun Belt and CUSA) have benefited the most.
Among the top 20 teams, these are the three that saw the biggest movement this week:
Texas A&M: up 1.2 points (from 18th to 15th place)
Missouri: +1.0 points (from 21st to 17th place)
Georgia: Up 1.0 points (no change from second place)
Given that A&M, Mizzou and Georgia won conference games by a combined 139-34, I think the list makes sense. (Their three defeated opponents — Mississippi State, Tennessee and Ole Miss — all fell badly, too.)
Here are the 10 teams whose ratings dropped the most:
USC: dropped 4.4 points (from 17th to 24th)
Kentucky: down 3.5 points (25th to 31st)
Tennessee: down 3.4 points (11th to 16th)
Ole Miss: down 3.3 points (15th to 19th place)
Vanderbilt: dropped 3.3 points (from 104th to 115th)
Michigan State: down 3.1 points (from 72nd to 86th)
Pitt: 3.1 points less (from 68th to 78th)
Mississippi State: Down 3.0 points (from 60th to 69th)
Arkansas: down 2.8 points (50th to 58th)
Oklahoma State: down 2.7 points (31st to 45th)
The SEC has seen a downward shift due to the change in conference adjustments, and as a number of SEC teams have suffered blowouts in the conference, their teams have declined significantly.
In Mississippi State’s case, the decline was probably long overdue.
Here are the 10 FBS conferences, ranked by SP+ average. At this point, we’re pretty focused on bowling season.
1. SEC: +9.5 points average per team (32.8 on offense, 23.4 on defense)
2. Pac-12: +6.3 average (32.8 offense, 26.4 defense)
3. Big Ten: +5.9 average (24.6 offense, 18.8 defense)
4. Big 12: +5.5 on average (30.3 on offense, 24.9 on defense)
5. ACC: +4.1 average (27.7 offense, 23.6 defense)
6. Sun Belt: -4.2 average (25.7 offense, 29.9 defense)
7. MWC: -7.6 average (24.1 offense, 31.8 defense)
8. Conference USA: -8.4 average (21.4 offense, 29.8 defense)
9. AAC: -8.5 average (24.3 offense, 32.7 defense)
10. MAC: -11.9 average (17.2 offense, 29.0 defense)
The SEC is still in the lead after recent adjustments, but its average is less than 10 points per team and three teams have fallen out of the top 50. (Vanderbilt is now in the bottom 20.)
With the College Football Playoff rankings in sight, I will also include the Summary SP+ rankings each week in this article.
As mentioned above, SP+ is intended as a power assessment, not a resume evaluation tool, but Résumé SP+ attempts to fill this latter gap.
This is a look at two things: (1) how you would expect the average top five SP+ team to perform according to your schedule (in terms of scoring margin), and (2) how your scoring margin compares with (1).
Add a seven-point penalty for every loss a team suffers, and you can say this is what the CFP rankings would look like if SP+ were in charge.
(Note: Due to the high bar, teams must score clearly to be compared to the average of the top five teams, and due to loss adjustment, almost all teams here end up with a negative score. That’s what And.)
Here are the top 15 SP+ CVs this week:
1. Michigan (10-0): +3.4 points
2. Ohio State (10-0): +0.1
3. Georgia (10-0): -0.3
4. Florida State (10-0): -2.6
5. Oregon (9-1): -5.1
6. Washington (10-0): -5.3
7. Alabama (9-1): -10.9
8. Texas (9-1): -13.0
9. Penn State (8-2) : -13.6
10. Oklahoma (8-2): -16.8
11. JMU (10-0): -18.3
12. Liberty (10-0): -18.9
13.Louisville (9-1): -19.0
14. Kansas State (7-3): -21.0
15. Oregon State (8-2): -21.6
Again, the same top three lead, albeit in a slightly different order.
