Michigan got its season back on track with its first road win and conference win of the year after defeating Nebraska by a 30-27 final score on Saturday. As a result, the Wolverines have moved up a bit in the latest edition of ESPN and Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings.
For those of you who are new to SP+, it’s a ranking system made by Bill Connelly of ESPN. In the words of Connelly, it’s, “a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency – SP+ is intended to be predictive and forward-facing.
It is not a résumé ranking – so it does not automatically give credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling.”
In other words, it’s a predictive measure based on a team’s offensive, defensive, and special teams efficiencies. These get boiled down to a rating that predicts how many points a given team would beat (or lose to) the “average” college football team by. For example, after Michigan’s win over Nebraska, the Wolverines have a rating of 17.9, meaning they should defeat the “average” college football team by 17.9 points on a neutral field.
Michigan’s rating is just 0.5 points higher than it was last week and makes it the No. 18 team in the country, a rise from the previous edition of the rankings. Last week, SP+ only predicted Michigan to win by 1.4 points, so the Wolverines didn’t really do anything unexpected with their play.
As for the rest of the Big Ten, the conference still occupies the top three spots in the rankings, although Oregon is the new No. 1 overall team with Penn State and Ohio State right behind. The Ducks have a 3.1-point lead over Penn State. Additionally, after making a statement victory over Illinois, Indiana finds itself as the No. 6 team on the new rankings.
USC (No. 15) is the only other team in the Big Ten ranked ahead of Michigan, while Nebraska trails closely behind (No. 20) and actually moved up one spot as well after the loss.
The Wolverines are off this week, but looking forward to Week 6, Michigan is set to welcome in Wisconsin, which seems to be in a tailspin after a loss to Maryland on Saturday. SP+ currently has Wisconsin pegged as the No. 60 team in the country with a rating of 3.5, suggesting that if the game were to be played this week, Michigan should win by two touchdowns.
