130-team S&P+ rankings, where Ohio State somehow remains the safest bet in college football

My S&P+ ratings have been extremely dialed in over the last couple of weeks. After a midseason slump, they hit 56 percent against the spread in back-to-back weeks with an absolute error — the average difference between projected and actual margins — at 11 or lower each week. (As means of comparison, the spread tends to have an absolute error around 12.2, and over the course of a season, almost no ratings system does better than that.)

I mention this not to pound my chest — okay, not entirely, anyway — but to set the table. Good predictive ratings are not résumé ratings, and they don’t give you bonus points for wins and losses. They simply compare expected output to actual output and adjust accordingly.

If you’re interested in a decent résumé ranking of sorts, I encourage you to visit this post on strength of schedule. I created a Resume S&P+ ranking, and it is updated through Week 11.

Below, however, are the predictive ratings, the actual S&P+. You’ll probably roll your eyes at the top team.

(You can find full unit rankings (and a yearly archive) at Football Outsiders. Also, if the chart below isn’t loading friendly on your mobile device, that Football Outsiders link should work.)

It’s become a weekly tradition since Urban Meyer’s Ohio State Buckeyes lost to Oklahoma: I post the updated S&P+, and I get yelled at because the Buckeyes are obviously too high. They moved to No. 1 in Week 7 thanks to a rampant run of dominance following the OU loss.

When they got rocked by Iowa, they fell only to No. 2 because of the cushion they had built with the aforementioned dominance. And following one of the most dominant wins of the year — 48-3 over Michigan State — they snuck back ahead of Alabama, which needed all of 60 minutes to eke past Mississippi State.

So yes. Despite two losses, my numbers (and others’, I should note,) still trust the everliving hell out of Ohio State. And while some may find that appalling, I should also note that S&P+ has actually underestimated the Buckeyes in half of their 10 games.

On average, Ohio State has overachieved its projection by about three points per game. That’s pretty impressive considering how favorable those projections have been. Plus, here’s your remind that Vegas liked the Buckeyes even more than S&P+ and has for much of the year. Vegas is also good at the predictions.

This year’s upper class pales in comparison to last year’s. With a plus-21.7 rating, the Buckeyes would have ranked sixth in last year’s S&P+ ratings after 10 games. I don’t think too many people would have found that odd.

Current No. 2 Alabama would have ranked seventh. Current No. 3 Wisconsin? 11th! Only two of this year’s teams would have been in last year’s top 10. That’s how much parity we have seen this year.

We haven’t seen a level of parity like this since 2007. Even Alabama pales in comparison to its 2016 self, even if the Crimson Tide have stubbornly refused to accede to our desire for chaos and has only flirted with getting upset by Texas A&M and Mississippi State. But despite this, someone still has to rank first. By a nose, it’s the two-loss Buckeyes.

I like to say you can prove yourself every week no matter who you’re playing. Texas A&M was Week 11’s poster boy for that. The Aggies outgained New Mexico by more than 400 yards and racked up a 55-14 win that could have been much, much worse — it was 48-7 at halftime. Consequently, Kevin Sumlin’s team blazed by a crowded field to become this week’s biggest riser.

Barry Odom’s Missouri Tigers, by the way, have now moved up 61 spots in four weeks. They beat Florida by 29 points a week ago, then finished the Butch Jones era off with a 33-point win over Tennessee on Saturday. S&P+ keeps moving them up, and the Tigers keep overachieving vs. their improving projections. They lost five in a row in September and October, and now they have won four in a row.

Wisconsin rocked Iowa (eventually), Ohio State destroyed Michigan State, Rutgers was barely able to stay within 30 points of Penn State, and Nebraska wasn’t able to keep Minnesota under 400 rushing yards. The Big Ten claimed four of the top five spots on the bad movers list. Thanks to the losing teams moving down more than the winning teams moved up, the Big Ten no longer has the best conference average.

A Big Ten team may have taken back the top spot, but the conference had itself a bad week overall. Combined with teams like Texas A&M, Missouri, Ole Miss, and Kentucky all rising, we have ourselves a new No. 1 conference.

Not too long ago, the SEC’s S&P+ average was in the double digits. Like Alabama, it isn’t quite as good as normal. But it is, for one week at least, still the safest bet in college football. We’ll see what happens next week.