There’s always a bit of nuance to understanding Week 1 results, especially when 60% of them are from FBS-versus-FCS games and only a few power conference teams actually played each other. But we can at least pull a little bit of the proverbial signal out of the proverbial noise.

Alabama was particularly dominant against a Western Kentucky team that started the season among the top 10 in the Group of Five, and Texas misfired for a single drive before pummeling Colorado State. Ohio State, on the other hand, stumbled around for 25 minutes against Akron before stepping on the gas. Oregon could never quite put away a good FCS team (Idaho, which began the year 13th in my FCS SP+ rankings), while Ole Miss and Tennessee utterly destroyed Furman (17th) and Chattanooga (28th), respectively.

I always say it’s how you play that matters, not who. The logic behind that always gets stretched a little bit early in the season, but SP+ still thinks it learned some things and moved teams around accordingly. The top of the rankings have quite the SEC flavor out of the gate.

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.

This week’s movers

Let’s take a look at the teams that saw the biggest change in their overall ratings. (Note: We’re looking at ratings, not rankings.)

Moving up

Plenty of teams saw their ratings rise after handling FCS teams with more brutality than expected (biggest riser: Central Michigan), but here are the five teams that saw their ratings rise the most after playing an FBS opponent.

• Arizona State: up 4.7 adjusted points per game (ranking rose from 79th to 66th)

• Coastal Carolina: up 4.4 PPG (from 85th to 78th)

• Nevada: up 4.0 PPG (from 121st to 110th)

• Sam Houston: up 3.7 PPG (from 115th to 104th)

• UNLV: up 3.5 PPG (from 82nd to 76th)

All of these teams overachieved well against projections, though as you’ll see with the numbers below, it’s harder to rise than fall early in the season. I guess it’s easier to be sure of who’s not it than who is it. And you can probably guess who leads the “not it” list.

Moving down

Here are the 10 teams whose ratings fell the most:

• Florida State: down 10.0 adjusted points per game (ranking fell from 12th to 30th)

• Clemson: down 9.0 PPG (from 16th to 31st)

• Western Kentucky: down 8.7 PPG (from 70th to 103rd)

• Florida: down 8.2 PPG (from 23rd to 43rd)

• LSU: down 7.7 PPG (from 10th to 20th)

• Wyoming: down 7.4 PPG (from 90th to 116th)

• Colorado State: down 7.2 PPG (from 100th to 121st)

• Houston: down 6.6 PPG (from 76th to 102nd)

• Jacksonville State: down 6.4 PPG (from 96th to 118th)

• West Virginia: down 6.4 PPG (from 34th to 55th)

While I admire Florida State attempting a “How many games could we win if we were great at special teams and bad at everything else?” thought experiment, the Seminoles have stumbled out of the gate so drastically that it feels surprising that they’ve only fallen 10 points. I guess they still have 10 more games to fall even further, though.

Elsewhere, this list is a solid combination of teams that underachieved in the biggest games of the weekend (Clemson, Florida, LSU, West Virginia) and teams that simply weren’t up to the challenge of facing solid opponents in Week 1 (WKU, Wyoming, CSU).

Conference rankings

Here are FBS’ 10 conferences, ranked by average SP+:

1. SEC: average rating of +16.8 adjusted points per game (37.0 offense, 20.2 defense)

2. Big Ten: +10.0 (27.3 offense, 17.3 defense)

3. Big 12: +6.7 (32.6 offense, 25.9 defense)

4. ACC: +5.4 (30.0 offense, 24.5 defense)

5. AAC: -7.7 (24.8 offense, 32.5 defense)

6. Sun Belt: -8.1 (25.6 offense, 33.7 defense)

7. Mountain West: -8.8 (24.0 offense, 32.7 defense)

8. MAC: -12.7 (16.4 offense, 29.1 defense)

9. Conference USA: -14.6 (20.0 offense, 34.6 defense)

Despite now having the top four overall teams and six of the top nine, the SEC’s average rating actually barely changed. Eleven of the team’s 16 teams saw their ratings rise, but four of the other five — Florida (blown out by Miami), LSU (lost to USC), Texas A&M (lost to Notre Dame) and South Carolina (barely beat Old Dominion) — fell enough to offset the rises. The SEC remains the best conference, but it’s appearing a bit top-heavy at the start.

The Big Ten, meanwhile, became a little less top-heavy. It still has two of the top six teams, but Oregon and Michigan, who couldn’t put away Idaho and Fresno State, respectively, until well into the fourth quarter, both slid a bit, and Iowa (pummeled Illinois State), USC (beat LSU), Washington (pummeled Weber State) and Nebraska (pummeled UTEP) all rose. In the final preseason projections, the conference had four of the top seven teams and a gap down to four more teams between 21st and 31st. Now there’s a bit more of a bridge between the first and second tiers.

Meanwhile, no conference improved its average more than the AAC this week, though that’s primarily because its teams manhandled FCS opposition beyond expectations. Still, 10 of their teams’ ratings rose (eight by at least three points) and only four fell, three (Rice, Charlotte, Temple) by decent margins.

Projecting the College Football Playoff

Using projected win totals and conference win totals, here’s both what the new 12-team CFP might look like based on updated SP+ projections and how it would play out if all the projected favorites won (which, of course, they probably won’t).

First round

12 Memphis at 5 Notre Dame (Irish by 16.9 with home-field advantage)

11 Missouri at 6 Penn State (PSU by 3.4)

10 Oregon at 7 Texas (UT by 9.3)

9 Alabama at 8 Ole Miss (Bama by 0.2!)

Quarterfinals

1 Ohio State vs. Alabama (Bama by 2.8)

4 Utah vs. Notre Dame (Irish by 3.0)

3 Miami vs. Penn State (PSU by 8.1)

2 Georgia vs. Texas (UGA by 4.9)

Semifinals

Alabama vs. Notre Dame (Bama by 8.1)

Penn State vs. Georgia (UGA by 9.2)

Finals

Alabama vs. Georgia (UGA by 4.2)

Amid all the change in college football, a familiar title game and a familiar champion.