Below are the updated 2026 SP+ rankings as of Sept. 27, 2026.

What is SP+? In a single sentence, it's a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency that I originally created at Football Outsiders in 2008. 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 -- no good predictive system does.

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.

Note: Early in the season, ratings are based primarily on preseason projections, including special teams ratings. Over the course of the season, preseason numbers are slowly phased out from week to week.

Within this page, we will also update the SP+ strength of schedule and résumé SP+ ratings each week. Obviously, these ratings aren't of much use early in a given season, but their relevance will increase as the race for College Football Playoff spots becomes more prevalent. Here's how they're defined.

Résumé SP+ compares each team's scoring margin (capped at 50 points for a given game) to what an average top-five team would be expected to generate against a given opponent. If a top-five opponent would be projected to win a game by 10.0 points, and a team wins by 15 instead, that's a +5.0 rating for that game. By the end of the season, only a handful of teams will have a positive rating because clearing a top-five bar is obviously very difficult. (Note: A seven-point penalty for losses is applied to the rating as well, meaning your rating has seven points deducted for each loss.)

SP+ strength of schedule is based on the expected win percentage an average top-five team (per SP+) would generate against each team's schedule. An SOS rating of .850, for instance, signifies that the average top-five team would be expected to win an average of 85% of its games, or 10.2 projected wins over a 12-game schedule. A lower expected win percentage signifies a harder schedule, so the lowest SOS rating ranks first.