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.