Things went according to plan in week 1 of the college football season ... aside from where they went dramatically astray. Half of the week's games finished with scoring margins 10 or fewer points from SP+ projections, which is about normal. But Texas State also beat Baylor by 11 (42.6 points away from the projected margin), Oklahoma humiliated Arkansas State by 73 (37.2 points away), Duke made Clemson look like end-of-Tommy-Bowden-era Clemson (21-point win, 36.0 points off) and, of course, Colorado upset defending national runner-up TCU (three-point win, 29.1 points off).
Even with preseason projections still making up the vast percentage of the ratings because of a tiny sample of games, we still saw some teams make pretty significant movement heading into Week 2.
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.
Here are the full rankings:
