ESPN’s FPI predicts the outcome of every SEC game on Rivalry Week Saturday

The 2021 SEC regular season comes to a close with Week 13, aka Rivalry Week.

Week 13 SEC got underway Thursday with one of the conference’s most bitter rivalries, the Egg Bowl. No. 9 Ole Miss took down Mississippi State 31-21 to notch the Rebels’ first 10-win regular season in program history.

Friday featured one of the SEC’s newer rivalries. In Fayetteville, No. 25 Arkansas took down Missouri 31-17, snapping a 5-game losing skid in the Battle Line Rivalry.

That leaves 10 SEC teams to play on Saturday in a slate heavy on in-state rivalries and SEC-ACC showdowns. ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) predicts which team wins those games:

• Georgia (97 percent chance to win) at Georgia Tech
• Florida (72.8 percent) vs. Florida State
• Alabama (81. 5 percent) at Auburn
• Tennessee (97.3 percent) vs. Vanderbilt
• Texas A&M (61.6 percent) at LSU
• South Carolina (19.1 percent) vs. Clemson
• Kentucky (39.2 percent) at Louisville

Here’s how ESPN explains the FPI:

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.

Andrew Olson

Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.