This week's picks

College Football Stats Glossary: SP+, EPA, Success Rate and More

College Football Charts
Data updatedOct 31, 2026

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Glossary

Every stat and term on the site, explained like you're five. Or like you're a grown adult who never asked what EPA means and is now too embarrassed to.

Ratings and advanced stats

What the numbers on team pages, charts and head to head mean.

SP+
Bill Connelly's rating, built from play-by-play efficiency and explosiveness and adjusted for who each team played. The number is how many points better than an average FBS team a team is on a neutral field. SP+ 20 beats SP+ 10 by about 10.
PRIME
A rating built possession by possession: how well a team turns drives into points and keeps opponents from doing the same, adjusted for opponents. Zero is an average FBS team.
Elo
A results-only rating. Every team has a number, 1500 is average, and the winner takes points from the loser after every game. Beat a great team and you take a lot. Beat a bad one and you take a few. It carries part of last season over, so it's slow to catch a team that changed.
Strength of record
How impressive a record is, given who a team played: how many more games it won than an average team would have against the same schedule. It grades the resume. SP+ and PRIME grade how good the team is.
Strength of schedule
How hard a team's opponents have been so far.
Opponent-adjusted
Corrected for who a team played. Hanging 50 on an FCS team counts for less than hanging 30 on Georgia.
EPA (expected points added)
Every down, distance and spot on the field is worth some number of points on average. 1st and 10 at the opponent's 20 is worth a lot more than 3rd and 15 at your own 10. EPA is how much one play changed that number. A 50-yard bomb is a big plus. A pick-six is a very big minus.
EPA per play
A team's average EPA across all its plays. For an offense, above zero means it adds points and higher is better. For a defense, lower is better.
Success rate
The share of plays that keep an offense on schedule: half the yards needed on 1st down, 70% of them on 2nd, all of them on 3rd and 4th. A 4-yard run on 1st and 10 is a success. A 4-yard run on 3rd and 6 isn't.
Explosive play rate
The share of plays that go for a run of 12 or more yards or a completion of 16 or more.
Yards per play
Total yards divided by plays: runs, passes and sacks.
Sack rate
Sacks divided by dropbacks. For an offense, lower is better. For a pass rush, higher is better.
Turnover margin
Takeaways (interceptions and fumbles recovered) minus giveaways (interceptions thrown and fumbles lost).
RECEIPTS
Record Explained: Coaching, Experience, Incoming talent, Pure luck and Toughness of Schedule. Where a team's wins came from. Every team starts as a .500 team. The record above or below .500 gets split four ways that add up to the real record: schedule (what an average team would win against that schedule), roster (the wins its talent and returning starters are worth on paper), coach (wins from playing better or worse than that roster) and luck (actual wins against the wins its SP+ says it should have). On team pages and in two charts.
Schedule, Roster, Coach and Luck RECEIPTS
The four parts of RECEIPTS. Schedule: what an average team would win against that schedule, minus .500. Roster: the extra wins from a roster this good on paper (247Sports talent and returning production). Coach: wins from playing better or worse than that roster should. Luck: actual wins against the wins SP+ expects. Recruiting rankings undersell the service academies, so their coaches get extra credit.
Luck watch
A tag for a team whose Luck RECEIPTS is 1.5 wins or more either way: "Lucky +2.4" or "Unlucky −1.6." Its record runs ahead of (or behind) how it's played, and lines and polls often follow records.
Expected wins
The wins a team should have, adding up its win chance in every game it played. Winning more than that usually means a lot of close wins, and close wins are mostly luck.
Talent composite and blue-chip ratio
247Sports' score for a roster, built from every player's recruiting rating, with the best players counting most. The blue-chip ratio is the share of the roster that were 4- or 5-star recruits.

How we pick

How the picks, tiers and projections work. The full method is on Sources and methods.

Projected score
Each team's SP+ offense, adjusted for how good the other team's defense is, plus special teams. The home team gets 2.5 points of home edge, split between the two scores.
Win chance
The projected margin turned into a percentage, assuming games usually land within about 14 points of the projection. A tie projection is 50%. A 14-point favorite is about 84%.
The numbers' pick
The team at least two of SP+, PRIME and Elo favor. The confidence is the average of their three win chances. Nobody overrides it.
Lock, Lean, Coin flip and Stay away
How sure the numbers are about a straight-up pick. Lock: SP+, PRIME and Elo all favor the same team and the average win chance is 80% or more. Lean: the ratings favor the team, but not that strongly or not all three. Coin flip: the average win chance is under 55%. Stay away: injuries take the pick down. Key players count by what they do for the team: a starting quarterback out is 2 points, the feature back, top receiver or top pass rusher half a point, the No. 2 receiver or playmaker a quarter, and a short-handed line or secondary half a point. Doubtful counts half. When the picked team's points, minus the other side's, reach 1, the pick drops a tier (a Lock to a Lean, a Lean or Coin flip to Stay away); at 2 it drops two.
Game of the week
The one game to watch on Saturday: the best matchup on the board, by how good both teams are and how close the projection is.
CFB Charts Top 25
SP+, PRIME and strength of record, each put on the same scale and averaged. Nobody votes.
Retro
Monday's look back: every final score against what we projected, what we got right and what we got wrong.

Conferences and the playoff

Who's who and how the 12-team field works.

FBS and FCS
FBS is the top level of college football: the 138 teams on this site. FCS is the level below. When an FBS team plays an FCS team, it's usually a paid tune-up.
Power 4
The SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. Notre Dame isn't in a conference, but we count it with the Power 4 wherever that matters.
Group of 6
Everyone else in FBS: the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 and Sun Belt, plus the independents other than Notre Dame. The highest-ranked team from those six conferences gets an automatic playoff bid.
Automatic bid
A guaranteed playoff spot. The ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC champions get one, and so does the highest-ranked team from the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 and Sun Belt.
At-large
A playoff spot earned by ranking high enough without an automatic bid. Notre Dame is in if it's in the top 12.
First-round bye
Seeds 1 through 4 skip the first round. Seeds 5 through 12 play first-round games at the higher seed's stadium.

For where the numbers come from and the exact math, see Sources and methods. If gambling stops being fun, call 1-800-GAMBLER.

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