A good power rating is never more antisocial than when a team loses and doesn’t really move in the rankings. But when these teams lose road toss-up games to highly rated opposition, it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?

In two of the biggest games of Week 7, Ohio State dropped a last-minute heartbreaker at Oregon, and Ole Miss fell in overtime at LSU. Statistically, these games were almost perfect coin flips. My postgame win expectancy measure — which takes the key stats from a given game, tosses them into the air and says, “With these stats, you could have expected to win this game X% of the time” — say that Ohio State would have won 45% of the time and Ole Miss would have won 41% of the time. Both teams were only slightly favored and saw their SP+ ratings fall only a little bit. Consequently, neither actually saw their rankings drop. Both LSU and Oregon closed the gap on their beaten opponents, but they didn’t automatically rise above them.

All of this is a long way of saying, please don’t yell at me too loudly.

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.

This week’s movers

Let’s take a look at the teams that saw the biggest change in their overall ratings. (Note: We’re looking at ratings, not rankings.)

Moving up

Here are the 10 teams that saw their ratings rise the most this week:

• Army: up 3.4 adjusted points per game (ranking rose from 69th to 53rd)

• Northwestern: up 3.2 points (from 77th to 71st)

• Jacksonville State: up 2.6 points (from 106th to 94th)

• BYU: up 2.6 points (from 35th to 29th)

• Wisconsin: up 2.6 points (from 39th to 32nd)

• Louisiana-Monroe: up 2.2 points (from 112th to 109th)

• Western Kentucky: up 2.2 points (from 90th to 81st)

• Arizona State: up 2.0 points (from 59th to 46th)

• Texas State: up 1.9 points (from 72nd to 69th)

• New Mexico: up 1.8 points (from 127th to 126th)

Army was projected 103rd after a pretty dire couple of seasons and has still only risen so far after dominating what has been, to date, the second-weakest schedule in the country. But as preseason projections get phased further and further out of the ratings, the Black Knights continue to rise. They are now one of only two teams to have not trailed in 2024, along with an Indiana team that was off in Week 7.

Moving down

Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:

• Arizona: down 3.7 adjusted points per game (ranking fell from 40th to 60th)

• Liberty: down 3.6 points (from 64th to 74th)

• Oklahoma: down 3.5 points (from 16th to 26th)

• Washington: down 3.3 points (from 19th to 28th)

• Rutgers: down 3.0 points (from 44th to 58th)

• Utah: down 3.0 points (from 24th to 33rd)

• Coastal Carolina: down 3.0 points (from 80th to 84th)

• Eastern Michigan: down 2.9 points (from 110th to 116th)

• Toledo: down 2.8 points (from 82nd to 87th)

• Arkansas State: down 2.8 points (from 115th to 122nd)

If Army has had the second-weakest schedule to date, who has had the weakest? Liberty. And the Flames are not dominating in nearly the same way as the Black Knights. (Average scoring margin this season: 40-10 for Army, 33-21 for Liberty.) And just as Ohio State and Ole Miss can lose without really falling, Liberty fell significantly while winning in Week 7; the Flames underachieved by 14.5 points against SP+ projections and have underachieved in all but one game this season. They are unbeaten, but they probably wouldn’t be with an even slightly harder schedule.

Conference rankings

Here are FBS’ 10 conferences, ranked by average SP+:

1. SEC: 16.2 average rating (35.2 offense, 19.2 defense)

2. Big Ten: 10.5 average rating (29.3 offense, 18.9 defense)

3. ACC: 8.0 average rating (31.2 offense, 23.3 defense)

4. Big 12: 7.4 average rating (31.4 offense, 24.1 defense)

5. Sun Belt: -7.4 average rating (24.8 offense, 32.2 defense)

6. AAC: -8.2 average rating (24.0 offense, 32.3 defense)

7. MWC: -9.7 average rating (24.1 offense, 33.6 defense)

8. Conference USA: -15.6 average rating (19.7 offense, 35.1 defense)

9. MAC: -15.8 average rating (17.1 offense, 32.9 defense)

We’ve got movement! Thanks primarily to a poor pair of performances from two of the MAC’s three most highly rated teams (Toledo lost by 15 to Buffalo, while Bowling Green lost by 10 to Northern Illinois), the conference’s average rating fell below CUSA’s into last place overall. And because it seems easier for highly rated teams to fall than for poorly rated teams to rise, the SEC saw its average fall by the second-largest amount this week after two of its better teams (Alabama and Georgia) underachieved against two of its worst teams (South Carolina and Mississippi State, respectively) and Oklahoma got walloped by Texas. The SEC still has by far the best overall average, but the gap closed a bit.

SP+ projects the College Football Playoff

Here’s what the new 12-team CFP would look like based on updated SP+ projections and how it would play out if all the favorites won (which never happens).

First round

12 James Madison at 5 Penn State (PSU by 18.6)
11 Georgia at 6 Ohio State (OSU by 4.3)
10 Indiana at 7 Alabama (Bama by 12.6)
9 Tennessee at 8 Notre Dame (Irish by 2.4)

Quarterfinals

SUGAR BOWL: 1 Texas vs. 8 Notre Dame (UT by 8.6)
FIESTA BOWL: 4 Iowa State vs. 5 Penn State (PSU by 9.8)
PEACH BOWL: 3 Miami vs. 6 Ohio State (OSU by 6.2)
ROSE BOWL: 2 Oregon vs. 7 Alabama (Bama by 2.6)

Semifinals

COTTON BOWL: 1 Texas vs. 5 Penn State (UT by 5.9)
ORANGE BOWL: 6 Ohio State vs. 7 Alabama (OSU by 2.0)

Final

1 Texas vs. 6 Ohio State (UT by 1.7)

This is generally a pretty fast-and-loose exercise, so don’t take the seedings or anything too seriously. I’ll say this, though: After an extremely mediocre performance against Mississippi State, Georgia has underachieved against SP+ projections by more than 20 points in three of its last five games. For the year, the Bulldogs are underachieving by 8.8 points per game, and now they’re looking at a four-game stretch with three SP+ top-10 opponents. Their projected average win total is down to 9.1, and SP+ gives them only a 34% chance of finishing 10-2 or better.

We obviously don’t know how the CFP committee will treat the bigger-and-better SEC — specifically, how it will treat a three-loss SEC team against, say, an one- or two-loss ACC or Big 12 team — but I could have easily given that 11 seed to Indiana or Clemson in this exercise. The Dawgs better start looking the part immediately, or they might be on the outside of the first-ever 12-team CFP.

Résumé SP+

Since the College Football Playoff rankings are less than a month away, I’m also including Résumé SP+ rankings in this piece each week.

As mentioned above, SP+ is intended to be a power rating, not a résumé evaluation tool, but Résumé SP+ attempts to fill that latter gap. It is a look at two things: (1) how the average SP+ top-five team would be projected to perform against your schedule (in terms of scoring margin) and (2) how your scoring margin compares to (1). Throw in a 7-point penalty for every loss a team has suffered, and you can say that this is what the CFP rankings would look like if SP+ were in charge.

(Note: Because of the high bar teams have to clear in getting compared to an average top-five team, and because of the loss adjustment, almost every team here ends up with a negative score. It is what it is.)

Here is this week’s Résumé SP+ top 15:

1. Texas (6-0): +8.3 PPG
2. Ohio State (5-1): -3.6
3. Miami (6-0): -3.8
4. Indiana (6-0): -6.0
5. BYU (6-0): -7.0
6. Tennessee (5-1): -8.5
7. Oregon (6-0): -8.7
8. Alabama (5-1): -9.1
9. Iowa State (6-0): -9.2
10. Georgia (5-1): -9.6
11. Penn State (6-0): -9.7
12. Notre Dame (5-1): -11.2
13. Pitt (6-0): -11.4
14. Clemson (5-1): -12.1
15. Army (6-0): -13.0

Other unbeatens: 21. Navy (5-0): -18.5; 46. Liberty (5-0): -32.9

Compared to last week, Ohio State’s rating fell quite a bit (from +3.8 to -3.6), but because no one else really rose — Texas is now the only team with a positive rating, which isn’t how this usually goes — the Buckeyes remain in second place. Meanwhile, Indiana rose two spots in the rankings without playing, BYU jumped from ninth to fifth, and as you would probably expect, Oregon rose from 13th to sixth. A win over Ohio State will certainly paper over some cracks.

The biggest drop: Ole Miss, which fell from fourth to 17th after suffering a second loss. While SP+ is a power rating that still thinks highly of the Rebels, Résumé SP+ sees losses as losses.