College football's Week 8 SP+ rankings takeaways - ESPN

If the first eight weeks of the college football season have taught us anything, it's that we don't have an invincible team in 2024. Texas was the closest thing to it after seven weeks, and the Longhorns got roughed up at home by Georgia on Saturday. Ohio State is once again up to first in SP+ — this is the fifth time in six weeks that No. 1 changed hands — and the Buckeyes took the spot by not playing at all after losing a week ago. The top four teams have combined for five losses! Strange things are afoot!

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 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.

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.)

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

Navy: up 3.2 adjusted points per game (rating rose from 73rd to 64th)

Indiana: up 2.6 points (from 15th to 12th)

Army: up 2.5 points (from 53rd to 36th)

Virginia Tech: up 2.2 points (from 36th to 25th)

Georgia Southern: up 2.2 points (from 91st to 85th)

Arkansas State: up 2.1 points (from 122nd to 113th)

Colorado: up