The Simple Rating System is a set of computer rankings focused on only two variables: strength of schedule and margin of victory. I published weekly college football SRS ratings each week last season, and you can read more about the SRS there. Last month, Jason Lisk of the Big Lead took the Las Vegas point spread for each NFL game to come up with a set of power rankings; I stole Lisk’s idea and used the same point spreads to create implied SRS ratings for every NFL team. The idea is that if the 49ers are a 10.5-point neutral site favorite over the Jaguars, that’s one data point that implies that Las Vegas views San Francisco as 10.5 points better than Jacksonville. By taking every data point, and using Excel to iterate the ratings hundreds of times, you can create a set of implied team ratings.

Last week, the Golden Nugget released the point spreads for 248 college football games. By using the same process, those point spreads can help us determine the implied ratings that Las Vegas has assigned to each team.

We don’t have a full slate of games, but we do have at least 1 game for 83 different teams. Theoretically, this is different than using actual game results: one game can be enough to come up with Vegas’ implied rating for the team. That’s because once we’re confident in Oklahoma’s rating, Tulsa being 18-point underdogs in Norman gives us a good estimate for how Vegas views Tulsa. I assigned 3 points to the road team in each game in coming up with the implied SRS ratings. For example, Arizona is an 11-point favorite on the road against California. So for that game, we assume Vegas believes the Wildcats are 14 points better than the Golden Bears; if we do this for each of the other 247 games, and then iterate the results hundreds of times, we can come up with a set of power ratings.

Unsurprisingly, Alabama comes out as the highest-rated team. The Crimson Tide are being rated as 19.6 points better than “average,” although average isn’t really a concept with much meaning here. The SRS rating has little meaning in the abstract, but is useful to get a sense of the Crimson Tide’s rating relative to the rest of the teams. If Alabama is 10 points better in the SRS than a team, that means Alabama would be projected as a 10-point favorite on a neutral site. In the table below, I’ve included the number of games for which we have point spreads for each team on the far left. The “MOV” column shows the home field-adjusted average point spread for that team, the “SOS” column shows the average rating of each team’s opponent (for only the number of games for which we have lines), and the “SRS” column shows the school’s SRS rating.

These ratings are not meant to surprise you: if they did, that would probably be a sign that I did something wrong. But it is interesting to take a look at the results.

Alabama lost Dee Milliner, Chance Warmack, Eddie Lacy, Nico Johnson, Barrett Jones, Jesse Williams, Quinton Dial, and Michael Williams to the NFL Draft, but Nick Saban’s squad still has a large lead on every other team in the country. Alabama is even a six-point favorite when they travel to College Station to face Johnny Manziel and Texas A&M.

Then again, it’s easy to see why Vegas loves the Crimson Tide. If you recall, Alabama entered 2012 as a (generally) young team just off a national championship, and the expectation was 2013 would be the year that the newest crop of talent would begin to shine. Of course, things tend to work themselves out pretty quickly in Tuscaloosa: Alabama finished first in the recruiting rankings in four of the last five years before signing another #1 class for 2013.

Ty Duffy puts Alabama, Stanford, Oregon, Texas A&M, and Ohio State in his top five; that’s pretty similar to these implied ratings, although Vegas doesn’t appear to be as high on the Cardinal. Of course, it’s worth pointing out that rankings and ratings are meant to answer two different questions: for rankings, it’s worth pointing out that Oregon has to travel to Palo Alto to play Stanford, which might bump Stanford up in your rankings, but not these ratings.

Another team Vegas is pretty high on is Georgia. The Bulldogs return Aaron Murray, the quarterback who finished atop my 2012 passer rankings. Last December, I argued against Georgia on the basis of a (for the SEC) creampuff schedule; this year, it makes sense to assign Georgia a high rating but a low ranking. In addition to division games against Florida and South Carolina, the Bulldogs get LSU from the West and face Clemson out of conference. And then in Atlanta, they’d still need to beat the West champion (presumably Alabama, A&M, or LSU). Georgia may be good, but they have a tough road to get to the BCS title game.

Let me close with a look at all 248 games, sorted from most impressive line to least impressive. What does most impressive mean? Take the top game on the list: Alabama is listed as a 23-point road favorite against Mississippi State. The Bulldogs are 4.6 points below average, so that would imply that Alabama is 21.4 points better than average. That’s the top implied game rating of the 248 games listed. Of course, each team’s rating in the table above is simply the average of their implied ratings for each game.

It’s pretty clear that Vegas loves the Ducks, even with Chip Kelly now in Philadelphia. Oregon is a 4-point road favorite against Stanford on Thursday night matchup, and favored by at least 12 points in every other game. Even the 4-point spread is probably giving Stanford some extra credit for winning last year and not necessarily a reflection of the two teams (for example, Oregon is a 20-point home favorite against UCLA while Stanford is only a 10-point home favorite against the Bruins). The table above is fully searchable, so you can find the spread for any game you like by typing in any team’s name into the search box.

One other interesting name to look at is Louisville, a team that wasn’t very good last year but still managed to land in (and win) a BCS Bowl. The Cardinals rank as just the 25th best team according to Las Vegas even though some have them in their preseason top five. A big year by quarterback Teddy Bridgewater — in the mix for #1 pick in the 2014 Draft — will only add to the hype. The Cardinals look to be 2013’s version of Boise State, hoping to ride an undefeated season to a BCS berth.

Home games against the Ohio Bobcats, Eastern Kentucky Colonels, and FIU Golden Panthers aren’t even given lines; in Louisville’s other nine games, only a trip to Cincinnati (-3) on December 5th carries a single-digit line. It’s not inconsistent to think Louisville isn’t that good and to think that they will start the season 11-0. Looking at the Kentucky line is particularly revealing: the Wildcats are 14-point home dogs to Louisville, 20-point home dogs to Florida, and 30-point underdogs to Alabama.