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: