College Football HQ

ESPN's SP+ college football rankings experience major shakeup following Week 5

After the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the SP+ college football ratings squared off last weekend, there's been a huge shakeup both at the top and throughout the rankings...

Alex Weber

An Oregon cheerleader waves a Duck flag at Penn State
An Oregon cheerleader waves a Duck flag at Penn State / Ben Lonergan/The Register-Guard / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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Like clockwork, on Tuesday morning, ESPN's Bill Connelly published a refurbished version of his SP+ rankings, which are designed to strip away any nonsense and deliver the best predictive ratings of college football teams for a particular season.

Last week, we wrote about No. 1 Oregon going on the road to face No. 2 Penn State, at least according to the SP+ ratings. Perhaps the rest of the country should have listed to our friend Bill and bet with the top-rated Ducks, who pulled off the double-overtime upset in State College during a white-out. As a reward for such a performance, the SP+ numbers kept Dan Lanning's squad right at the front...

You can see the full top-25 right here...

SP+ Top 25 | Week 6

*(Movement up+ or down- vs. last week)

  1. Oregon
  2. Ohio State (+1)
  3. Indiana (+3)
  4. Penn State (-2)
  5. Texas Tech (+3)
  6. Tennessee (-1)
  7. Missouri (+7)
  8. Ole Miss (-1)
  9. Oklahoma (+1)
  10. Alabama (-6)
  11. Vanderbilt (+5)
  12. USC (-1)
  13. Texas
  14. Miami (-2)
  15. Michigan (+2)
  16. Georgia (-7)
  17. LSU (-2)
  18. Utah (+1)
  19. Notre Dame (+2)
  20. Texas A&M (-2)
  21. BYU (+4)
  22. Florida State (+9)
  23. Nebraska (-3)
  24. Louisville (+2)
  25. Illinois (+11)

If you have a magnifying glass handy, you can read through Connelly's mammoth 1-766 ranking of literally every team in the college football ranks. If your buddy's fraternity has a particularly strong intramural squad at your local state college, you might find their offensive efficiency rating in the 600 block. But for the sickos, feast your eyes...

What are the SP+ rankings?

Analytics, Alex! The answer is analytics. If that was your response, boom, here's your cake and congratulations, because that's the gist of it. Statistics and raw data are one thing — passing yards, rushing yards, touchdowns, turnovers, etc. — but advanced analytics like the SP+ ratings go beyond simple counting numbers.

Let's have Billy Connelly himself explain:

"What is SP+? In a single sentence, it's a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency that is intended to be predictive and forward-facing," he described of his SP+ model in an ESPN article. "It is not a résumé ranking, so it does not automatically give credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling -- no good predictive system does."

Connelly adds, in summation: "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."

Essentially, Connelly takes out wild turnovers and weird game-altering phenomena and is left with raw offensive and defensive efficiency numbers which are reflective of a team's quality on a down-to-down basis, but not necessarily the results that team has achieved or not achieved.

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Alex Weber
ALEX WEBER

Born and raised in the state of Kentucky, Alex Weber has published articles for many of the largest college sports media brands in the country, including On3, Athlon Sports, FanSided, SB Nation, and others. Since 2022, he has also contributed for Kentucky Sports Radio, one of the largest team-specific college sports websites in the nation. In addition to his work in sports journalism, Alex manages content for a local magazine named ‘Goshen Living’ and coaches cross country and track.