If nothing else, the first round of the College Football Playoff redefined what home-field advantage could be. The four first-round home teams combined to overachieve against the spread by 39 points, which stunk for both the road teams and viewers hoping for close games. But now that we've unearthed this new, caustic substance, we're unfortunately putting it away and moving back to neutral sites for better or worse. And with five of the remaining eight CFP teams within 3.8 points of each other in the updated SP+ ratings, we should now see some close games.
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 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.
More on the CFP:
• Connelly's first-round takeaways (E+)
• What's next for eliminated teams? (E+)
• First look at quarterfinals