2023 season, 15 games in. Ratings and records refresh through the season; nothing here is a preseason guess. Preseason projections →
Best:
Colorado#21 nationally
Median and standing are by Elo rating, measured against every conference with at least four rated teams.
Big 12 in orange, the rest of the country in grey. Elo rating, all 133 teams.
Showing 16 of 133 teams in the Big 12. Ranks stay national — #1 means first in the country, not first here.
Poll darlings the model is not sold on.
2023 coverage: Elo 133/133 · SP+ 133/133 · FPI 133/133 · SRS 133/133 · CORE off/def 133/133 · schedule 133/133 · AP poll 45. Metrics with no teams yet this season are left out of the table rather than shown as a column of dashes.
Every rating here is bought in except CORE, which we build. How we build it →
Every other column on this page is bought in — Elo, SP+, FPI, SRS and the AP poll all arrive from CollegeFootballData. CORE is the exception. We build it here, from play-by-play, and it is published nowhere else.
It answers a narrower question than a power rating: how good is this team per play, once you remove the situations it happened to face and the opponents it happened to draw? Two teams can post identical yards per play when one of them ran its snaps at a three-score lead against the worst defenses on the schedule. That gap is most of the difference between the two numbers, and every raw per-play stat carries it.
So we remove both, in two stages. First the situation: each play’s expected value is predicted from game state alone — period, clock, score margin, down, distance, field position, home or away, pass or rush — with no team identity in the model at all, and what is left over is the part the situation does not explain. Then the opponent: offenses and defenses form one connected network over a season, so both sides are fitted at once by ridge regression rather than credited separately. Ridge specifically, because in September the schedule graph is barely connected and an unregularised fit hands a huge rating to whoever beat an overmatched opener.
Reported in points per 100 qualifying plays, above average. Offense is better when high, defense when low. Overtime, garbage time, FBS-vs-FCS games, special teams and non-scrimmage plays are all excluded.
⚠ CORE is a measurement, not a forecast. It says what a team has already done per play, adjusted. It does not say who wins next week — that is a separate model, and the two are kept as separate objects on purpose. Full method →
 Arizona State |
| 3‑92‑7 conf |
| Big 12#2 |
| 1283 |
| D89O109 |
| #911 gm |
| 351 down 1 places since last week |  Cincinnati | 3‑91‑8 conf | Big 12#3 | 1342 | D106O66 | #5811 gm |
| 441 up 1 places since last week |  BYU | 5‑72‑7 conf | Big 12#4 | 1364 | D45O111 | #2711 gm |
| 49 |  Baylor | 3‑92‑7 conf | Big 12#5 | 1384 | D128O87 | #2611 gm |
| 571 down 1 places since last week |  Houston | 4‑82‑7 conf | Big 12#6 | 1421 | D98O80 | #4512 gm |
| 759 up 9 places since last week |  Oklahoma State | 10‑47‑3 conf | Big 12#7 | 1533 | D58O48 | #1513 gm |
| 796 up 6 places since last week |  Texas Tech | 7‑65‑4 conf | Big 12#8 | 1562 | D32O82 | #1412 gm |
| 9313 up 13 places since last week |  West Virginia | 9‑46‑3 conf | Big 12#9 | 1611 | D62O40 | #5712 gm |
| 956 down 6 places since last week |  UCF | 6‑73‑6 conf | Big 12#10 | 1617 | D54O22 | #5912 gm |
| 962 up 2 places since last week |  TCU | 5‑73‑6 conf | Big 12#11 | 1631 | D68O18 | #2111 gm |
| 1035 down 5 places since last week |  Iowa State | 7‑66‑3 conf | Big 12#12 | 1669 | D29O57 | #2412 gm |
| 104 |  Kansas | 9‑45‑4 conf | Big 12#13 | 1679 | D65O6 | #3812 gm |
| 1054 down 4 places since last week |  Utah | 8‑55‑4 conf | Big 12#14 | 1684 | D24O106 | #3012 gm |
| 1195 up 5 places since last week |  Arizona | 10‑37‑2 conf | Big 12#15 | 1822 | D46O12 | #6112 gm |
| 1242 up 2 places since last week |  Kansas State | 9‑46‑3 conf | Big 12#16 | 1942 | D38O21 | #1112 gm |
