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College football Week 5 SP+ rankings

Sometimes it's better not to play, apparently. Miami ranked 15th in last week's SP+ ratings and took a bye week before next Saturday's big game against Clemson. Of the teams ranked just above them...

  • UCF lost to No. 71 Tulsa

  • Texas lost to No. 45 TCU

  • Oklahoma lost to No. 41 Iowa State

  • North Carolina narrowly beat No. 58 Boston College

  • Auburn got absolutely walloped by No. 4 Georgia

Combined with some slight shifts in the weighting of opponent adjustments, Miami was able to move up to ninth in this week's rankings without lifting a finger. Now that's efficiency.

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. That is important to remember. 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.