Alabama vs. Georgia: ESPN's FPI predicts winner of SEC Championship Game
The Worldwide Leader’s alphabet soup metrics are aligned for Saturday’s SEC Championship Game. ESPN’s FPI and SP+ both predict No. 1 Georgia will beat No. 3 Alabama.
ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) is giving Georgia a 66.5 percent chance to win, while Alabama’s chance is 33.5 percent. ESPN’s SP+ projects a 7-point win for UGA, suggesting Georgia -6.5 is the move for those betting with the latest odds.
ESPN explains the FPI is a simulation-based predictive rating system that produces numbers similar to Las Vegas sportsbooks’ power rankings:
The Football Power Index (FPI) is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season. FPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. Projected results are based on 20,000 simulations of the rest of the season using FPI, results to date, and the remaining schedule. Ratings and projections update daily.
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FPI is a predictive rating system designed to measure team strength and project performance going forward. The ultimate goal of FPI is not to rank teams 1 through 128; rather, it is to correctly predict games and season outcomes. If Vegas ever published the power rankings it uses to set its lines, they would likely look quite a lot like FPI.
Saturday’s top-5 showdown in Atlanta is set for 4 p.m. ET, airing on CBS. We’ll see if ESPN’s number-crunching gets it right.