Last week, I made a pretty big deal out of the fact that the top five college football teams in the country, per SP+, were all within 1.8 points of each other. This week, they're within 1.3.
We've technically got a new No. 1 team -- Texas eases into the top spot after a lopsided win over ULM -- but congestion remains the story. SP+ is pretty confident that it knows who the five best teams in the country are, and it seems pretty clear on No. 6-11 too. There's interesting stratification among the top tiers, but at this point one thing is certain: It's Ohio State versus the SEC when it comes to the top of the college football hierarchy.
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 will probably fall. If you're strong and unlucky in a loss, it will probably rise.