We have good news and we have bad news. The good news is that the Ohio State football team has regained the No. 1 ranking in the latest release of ESPN’s SP+ Rankings. The bad news is that the Buckeyes’ lead is teetering on the edge after being relinquished for the first time in over a year to Alabama recently.
Some nuances of the metrics can be attributed to Ohio State missing out on playing enough games, but a lot of it has to do with the Crimson Tide looking like — well, the Crimson Tide and beating up on every team it plays not named Mississipi State. The reality is that there are a whole lot of metrics and measurements that can go into Alabama’s six games played vs. only three for OSU. But still, we don’t really know what goes into the secret sauce here when it comes to the data sets, so we’ll just have to trust the brainchild of Bill Connelly for now.
Also, in a bit of a quirk, Ohio State leapfrogged ‘Bama while not playing a game last week because of some adjustments to the Buckeyes’ opponents’ metrics. Take that for what it’s worth.
Ohio State’s total now is a rating of 28.4, just one-tenth of a point ahead of No. 2 Alabama’s 28.3. Behind those two, and rounding out the top ten are Wisconsin (26.5), Clemson (26.1), Notre Dame (21.0), Florida (19.8), BYU (19.2), Georgia (19.1), Cincinnati (18.6), and Oregon (18.1).
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🔥 NEW SP+ RANKINGS 🔥
* Unbeaten Ohio State back to No. 1
* ND finally moves up (and so does Wisconsin)
* Iowa's defense is gooooood
* Each of the top 18 teams moved at least 1 spot somehow
* Why does(n't) SP+ hate Penn State???https://t.co/mAFBYYoULQ— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) November 15, 2020
As a reminder, the SP+ Ratings are designed to predict the future performance of a team. In Connelly’s own words, he designed the rating as “a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency.”
Raise your hand with me if you’re still at a loss after that description. The best we can tell you is that it determines the strength of a team regardless of its win/loss record.
It’s fun to keep an eye on this as the season wears on because it has historically shown a pretty good gauge on how good a team is. It’s not perfect by any means, but anytime someone’s keeping score, it’s good to be No. 1 right?
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