Big Ten Football Rankings Week 5 ESPN SP+: Michigan, Ohio State Ranked as 2 Best Teams in Country
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Ranking college football teams in a perfectly accurate manner is an impossible task. Human error comes into account whenever people try to do it, and one need only look at old BCS polls to know that the computers can get it wrong too.
Even though there will never be a perfect method for college football rankings, there is one system that does it better than all others, in my opinion — SP+.
SP+ was created by college football writer Bill Connelly many years ago, then working for SB Nation, now for ESPN. There's a whole lot of complex math involved that someone smarter than me like Connelly could explain, but it essentially boils down to this paragraph he wrote in 2017.
"SP+ is presented in the form of an adjusted points per game figure," Connelly wrote, though at the time it was called S&P+. "For instance, if Team A's S&P+ rating is plus-19.0, that means [Team A] is 19 points better than the average college football team. If Team B's rating is minus-12.0, [Team B] is 12 points worse than average."
And put another way — SP+ basically attempts to predict that if all things were even, with both teams playing on a neutral field with neutral conditions, who would be the expected winner.
Here's where all 14 Big Ten football teams rank in SP+, both nationally and relative to the rest of the conference, following Week 3's games.
Big Ten SP+ Rankings
- Michigan (25.0 rating, 1st overall in FBS)
- Ohio State (24.5 rating, 2nd overall in FBS)
- Penn State (18.2 rating, 13th overall in FBS)
- Wisconsin (13.2 rating, 25th overall in FBS)
- Maryland (10.9 rating, 31st overall in FBS)
- Iowa (7.1 rating, 38th overall in FBS)
- Minnesota (4.0 rating, 46th overall in FBS)
- Michigan State (2.5 rating, 57th overall in FBS)
- Illinois (2.4 rating, 58th overall in FBS)
- Rutgers (2.2 rating, 61st overall in FBS)
- Purdue (1.3 rating, 68th overall in FBS)
- Nebraska (0.5 rating, 69th overall in FBS)
- Indiana (-7.4 rating, 91st overall in FBS)
- Northwestern (-8.7 rating, 95th overall in FBS)
This year's rendition of "The Game" is setting up as another monumental clash in Ann Arbor. SP+ views Michigan and Ohio State as the country's two best teams, and the two atop the Big Ten by a wide margin. Notably, Penn State fell after struggling a good deal at Northwestern in Week 5. The Nittany Lions are still 5-0, but might be closer to Wisconsin and Maryland's level than they are to that of the two elites.
From Iowa to Nebraska, the bottom half of the conference continues to be a cluttered mess, with no team being definitively better than the rest. One thing has sorted itself out though — Indiana and Northwestern have established themselves as the two bleakest teams the Big Ten has to offer in 2023. A return to tradition, some might say.
If one wanted to make Big Ten conference tiers from these rankings, it's fairly easy to do so:
Tier 1 — The True Contenders
- Michigan, Ohio State
Tier 2 — Teams that are Pretty Good
- Penn State, Wisconsin, Maryland
Tier 3 — Teams that are Middling to Bad
- Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan State, Illinois, Rutgers, Purdue, Nebraska
Tier 4 — Really Bad
- Indiana, Northwestern
Related Stories on Big Ten:
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- SATURDAY GAME RESULTS: Week 5 of the 2023 college football season is in the books, as this past Saturday of Big Ten football brought several lopsided scores, giving more clarity as to which teams are on the rise, and which teams still have a lot to figure out. CLICK HERE
- IOWA QB LIKELY OUT FOR SEASON: Coach Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeyes are likely to be without starting quarterback Cade McNamara for the remainder of the 2023 season following a non-contact injury that he suffered during the Hawkeyes' 26-16 win over Michigan State. CLICK HERE