Michigan was off this weekend with its second bye of the 2025 campaign. Even though the Wolverines weren’t in action, there was plenty of chaos in college football that led to a three-spot rise for the Wolverines in the latest
edition of ESPN and Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings.
For those of you who are new to SP+, Connelly describes it as, “A tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking.” SP+ takes into account a team’s efficiencies on offense, defense, and special teams to form one uniform metric that is used to predict how many points a given team would beat (or lose to) the “average” college football team by on a neutral field.
As for Michigan, the Wolverines are ranked as the No. 18 team in the country with an SP+ rating of 15.7, three spots higher and 0.1 points ahead of where they were a week ago. In other words, SP+ predicts Michigan should defeat the “average” team by 15.7 points on a neutral field.
Hopefully you had the chance to watch some Big Ten football yesterday, because the conference didn’t disappoint. The best game of the day was Indiana’s last-minute victory over Penn State despite an upset bid from the Nittany Lions. The win wasn’t enough to move Indiana back to the top spot, as it’ll remain at No. 2 behind Ohio State. Oregon also earned a road victory in nail-biting fashion, defeating Iowa 18-16 to help the Ducks keep the No. 3 spot in the rankings.
Speaking of Iowa, the Hawkeyes actually moved up two spots in the rankings in the loss to Oregon, signifying the two-point loss was actually better than what they were predicted to do. Iowa now sits at No. 15 while USC is a few spots ahead at No. 12. Penn State (No. 20), Washington (No. 21), and Illinois (No. 23) aren’t too far behind Michigan in the rankings.
Looking ahead to next week, Michigan is heading out to Chicago for a “neutral-site” matchup against Northwestern at Wrigley Field. The Wildcats put up a good fight in their loss to USC on Friday night and shouldn’t be a team to overlook despite their 5-4record. SP+ currently has Northwestern as the No. 67 team in the country with a rating of 1.7. In other words, SP+ is currently predicting Michigan to win by about two touchdowns on Saturday.
