Spring football roundups: ESPN's FPI ratings
The mothership signaled down some of their adjusted stats projections for the coming season for us down in the #content mines to fight over.
ESPN released their FPI ratings the other day, do y’all pay attention to these?
I usually like to follow Bill Connelly’s SP+, although not to the extent that I pay for ESPN+ in order to access it all. Bill is a thoughtful analyst who’s not afraid to tweak and challenge his own methods in order to try and arrive at the most accurate result. It’s kind of strange that ESPN has this FPI thing they promote when they already own SP+, which is a phenomenal tool.
If Big Mouse keeps losing money and they have to tighten their belts they’d better prioritize Bill because if they don’t, someone else will and SP+ will transform from a niche product in their repertoire to a serious competitor.
Anyways, FPI had the following rankings for the coming year, I’m including the top 11 because no. 11 is interesting and the last team to get even a 1% chance of winning.
Ohio State: 31.5 FPI and they have the number “36.7” listed under “WIN NC.” Apparently this means means a 36.7% chance of winning the National Championship…
Alabama: 28.2 FPI, 20.4% chance of WIN NC.
Georgia: 27.4 FPI, 19.1% chance of WIN NC.
Texas: 21.9 FPI, 5.7% chance of WIN NC.
LSU: 22.1 FPI, 4.1% chance of WIN NC.
Michigan: 21.4 FPI, 3.9% chance of WIN NC.
USC: 19.7 FPI, 2.7% chance of WIN NC.
Clemson: 19.4 FPI, 2.8% chance of WIN NC.
Notre Dame: 18.4 FPI, 1.6% chance of WIN NC.
Penn State: 17.5 FPI, 1% chance of WIN NC.
Oklahoma: 16.9 FPI, 1% chance of WIN NC.
From there it’s 15.0 and below with teams like Oregon, Florida State, etc. I can only guess at how they calculate chances to win the National Championship but I suspect it’s mostly nonsense.
For reference sake, here’s a ranking they released in June of 2022 for last season:
Alabama. Projected record: 11.3-1.5. Actual record: 9-2
Ohio State. Projected record: 11.8-1. Actual record: 11-1
Georgia. Projected record: 11.6-1.3. Actual record: 13-0
Clemson. Projected record: 11.1-1.6. Actual record: 10-2
Notre Dame. Projected record: 9.1-2.9. Actual record: 8-4
Texas. Projected record: 9.4-3.2. Actual record: 8-4
Michigan. Projected record: 9.5-2.6. Actual record: 13-0
Oklahoma. Projected record: 9.1-3.4. Actual record: 6-6
Pittsburgh. Projected record: 9.6-2.8. Actual record: 8-4
Auburn. Projected record: 7.4-4.6. Actual record: 5-7
They also had TCU out of the top 25 if you were curious. So what do we make of this?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to America's War Game to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.