ESPN’s FPI has a bit of a course correction going on with its outlook on Saturday night’s Week 8 SEC clash between Ole Miss and Texas.
The 7:30 p.m. ET kickoff in Austin on ABC will pit a surging Rebels team and a reeling Longhorns team. Ole Miss is risen to No. 7 in the AP rankings while Texas has fallen and fallen hard in those rankings, all the way from No. 1 to No. 19 after back-to-back losses to Oklahoma and Florida.
If recency bias were the indicator, then the Horns wouldn’t have much reason to show up on their home field on Saturday night. But a look at the ESPN FPI indicator for the matchup that features star quarterbacks Trinidad Chambliss and Arch Manning shows a swing in the other direction.
Isn’t Texas (4-2, 1-2 SEC) too good to lose 3 games in a row?
And is Ole Miss (5-1, 3-1 SEC) ready to go on the road in primetime and beat a desperate Texas team that is hell bent on not losing 3 in a row?
That ESPN FPI indicator believes the home team has a great chance to save face and put an end to those October struggles. The FPI is tilted in Texas’s favor and it’s tilted hard, giving the Longhorns a whopping 71% chance to take down the surging Rebels in Austin.
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We’ll see if that FPI really does know something about a matchup between teams that are right heading in opposite directions. That FPI believes those current directions have a good chance of not continuing come Saturday, that we’re going to get that course correction and it’s going to swing the other way for the Horns — and the Rebels.
While the ESPN FPI clearly favors the home team on Saturday night, here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about who has the edge in the Week 8 primetime affair in Austin:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
