College football's Week 9 SP+ rankings takeaways - ESPN

For maybe the first time in the 2024 college football season, we had a week in which nothing really happened.

I mean, things happened in Week 9: Two top-five teams (Ohio State and Texas) narrowly survived upset bids, Texas A&M made a statement, the Group of 5 playoff race crystallized and Pitt's defense (21 points) outscored both its opponent (13) and its own offense (20). But only four teams ranked in the AP Top 25 lost, and they all lost to higher-ranked teams. Even with Ohio State's serious flirtation with disaster, nothing of lasting consequence really unfolded.

For the sixth time in seven weeks, however, the top spot in the SP+ rankings did change hands. With Ohio State's aforementioned flirtations, Texas crept back ahead of the Buckeyes for the top spot despite its own narrow upset avoidance.

No one wants to be the top dog at the moment, and once again, we've got an interesting near-logjam at the top. The top five teams in this week's SP+ rankings are separated by only 1.6 points, and that batch includes two two-loss teams. Meanwhile, only one of the FBS' eight remaining unbeaten teams is currently in the SP+ top seven. It's a funky world out there at the moment.

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 (hence the lack of unbeatens near the top), so it does not automatically give credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling — no good predictive