College Football By the Numbers

Figuring out what to make of early season college football results can be hard. Bill Connolly of ESPN joins AP’s Ralph Russo to sort through the noise using Bill’s SP+ rankings. The advance metric system looks beyond wins and losses to judge the performance of each team. College football followers are often too quick to dismiss results of any game that doesn’t qualify as a big game. Every team is terrible. Every schedule is soft. Connolly’s system helps quantify the value of each team and game. It allows us to see why it’s significant that Georgia beat Arkansas State 55-0 and why being the 17th ranked team in the country is not so different from being the 37th ranked team in the country. Plus, why Russo might be ready to jump on the UCF bandwagon.