College football SP+ rankings after quarterfinal CFP games

With two of four rounds done in the first ever 12-team College Football Playoff, it’s pretty clear that Angry Ohio State is the best team in the country. But following two of the best performances of the season by any college football team — wins over Tennessee and Oregon by a combined 83-38 — can the Buckeyes keep up this mean streak? And … who exactly is the second-best team in the country at this point?

SP+ doesn’t have much of an answer for the former question, but it’s got a hell of an answer for the latter.

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.

More on the CFP:
• Connelly’s first-round takeaways (E+)
• What’s next for eliminated teams? (E+)
• First look at semifinals

Who moved up and down?

(And who didn’t really move at all?) Since the last update right after the CFP first round, nine teams have seen their ratings rise by at least one point (CFP teams in bold):

• TCU: up 2.9 adjusted points per game (ranking rose from 37th to 26th)

• UTSA: up 2.6 points (from 73rd to 69th)

• Miami (Ohio): up 2.6 points (from 75th to 70th)

• Ole Miss: up 1.9 points (from third to second)

• Arkansas: up 1.9 points (from 27th to 23rd)

• Washington: up 1.4 points (from 61st to 57th)

• BYU: up 1.1 points (from 19th to 17th)

• Penn State: up 1.1 points (from eighth to sixth)

• Ohio State: up 1.0 points (no change from first)

Ohio State is finding that it’s hard to raise your rating much when you’re already No. 1. The Buckeyes still managed to expand their lead on the field, and most importantly in this moment, they extended their advantage over semifinal opponent Texas. SP+ projects a 4.8-point advantage for the Buckeyes in the Cotton Bowl, though that doesn’t necessarily account for either (a) Ohio State’s particularly dominant playoff form or (b) Texas’ relative travel advantage.

As notable as it is that Ohio State remained No. 1, though, Ole Miss’ 52-20 destruction of Duke in the Gator Bowl meant that the Rebels, already third in the ratings, rose even further with other teams around them falling. A dreadful early-season loss to Kentucky kept them out of the CFP, and ranking second overall probably won’t make them feel any less regretful about that.

Ten teams, meanwhile, saw their rating fall by at least two points:

• Oregon: down 3.1 adjusted points per game (ranking fell from second to fifth)

• Boise State: down 3.1 points (from 23rd to 33rd)

• Louisiana: down 2.9 points (from 41st to 54th)

• Georgia: down 2.7 points (from sixth to eighth)

• Coastal Carolina: down 2.7 points (from 86th to 96th)

• Colorado: down 2.5 points (from 26th to 38th)

• Colorado State: down 2.5 points (from 82nd to 94th)

• Bowling Green: down 2.4 points (from 71st to 78th)

• Duke: down 2.4 points (from 38th to 43rd)

• Fresno State: down 2.3 points (from 77th to 86th)

The three teams that lost playoff games by double digits all fell, which I guess isn’t particularly surprising. The biggest surprise might be a team that isn’t on this list. Alabama lost its fourth game of the season and its third as a double-digit favorite with Tuesday’s 19-13 ReliaQuest Bowl defeat to underdog Michigan. You’d think that would produce an automatic drop in SP+, but never forget that SP+ is incredibly antisocial.

My postgame win expectancy measure takes all the key, predictive stats that a game produces – the stuff that eventually goes into SP+ – and basically says, “With these stats, you could have expected to win this game X% of the time.” Alabama produced a much better success rate than Michigan (35.5% to 21.2%) and better explosiveness (13.1 yards per successful play versus 9.4). Winning the efficiency and explosiveness battles will win you most games, but turnovers and the resulting massive field position advantage (+12.4 yards per drive) won the game for Michigan. That’s not an incredibly sustainable path: Michigan’s postgame win expectancy was just 12.2%. SP+ saw that, said “Oh yeah, Bama controlled that game and would have won just about every time,” and basically left Alabama with the same SP+ rating as before.

Actually, it’s even wilder than that. There were 10 games this season where a team won with a postgame win expectancy under 12.5%. Alabama lost two of them — the Reliaquest Bowl and October 5’s stunning 40-35 loss to Vanderbilt (1.5%). It’s conceivable that Alabama was the least fortunate team of 2024. (I’m doubting the Tide will find much sympathy.)

Conference performances vs. SP+

Funky results aside, the Big Ten has had a spectacular bowl season. Acknowledging that bowls themselves, with dramatically different rosters and depth charts compared to the regular season, are only so indicative of overall quality, it probably means something that in the 11 postseason games that didn’t pit two Big Ten teams against each other (Oregon vs. Ohio State), the Big Ten team overachieved against projections nine times. Six of them overachieved by at least 10 points, too.

The only major conference that fared better than the Big Ten? Whatever conference was facing the ACC.

Conference performances vs. SP+ bowl projections

• Big Ten (13 games): +8.0 points per game

• MAC (6): +6.4 points per game

• Big 12 (9): +3.8 points per game

• AAC (7): +3.4 points per game

• Conference USA (4): +1.8 points per game

• SEC (14): -2.6 points per game

• Mountain West (5): -6.4 points per game

• ACC (12): -9.1 points per game

• Sun Belt (6): -9.4 points per game

ACC teams played in 12 postseason games, underachieved against projections in 11 of them and underachieved by double digits in seven. Yikes.

Bowls are only going to impact SP+ ratings so much considering all the other inter-conference games that took place earlier in the season, but both the ACC and Mountain West saw their teams’ average ratings fall by 1.1 points per team, while the Sun Belt fell by 0.7.

Average SP+ rating

1. SEC: 16.0 average rating (up 0.1 points since before bowl season)

2. Big Ten: 8.3 (up 0.5)

3. ACC: 5.6 (down 1.1)

4. Big 12: 5.6 (up 0.1)

5. AAC: -5.4 (no change)

6. Sun Belt: -5.8 (down 0.7)

7. Mountain West: -7.9 (down 1.1)

8. MAC: -11.1 (up 0.2)

9. Conference USA: -12.9 (down 0.3)

Projecting the College Football Playoff

We’ve got three playoff games remaining, and we’ve now got a clear title favorite.

National title odds, per SP+

• Ohio State 38.9%

• Penn State 21.2%

• Notre Dame 20.4%

• Texas 19.5%

Texas, Penn State and Notre Dame are separated by just 0.6 points in the SP+ ratings, so any game between them (including the Orange Bowl semifinal between the Nittany Lions and Fighting Irish) will be a relative tossup. But Ohio State has a projected 62% win probability against Texas and would be around 63% against either PSU or Notre Dame. Add that up, and the Buckeyes have about a two-in-five chance of taking the title. That feels like it’s underselling them considering how good they’ve looked in the last two games. We’ll see if they can maintain that ridiculous form.