ESPN's FPI predicts the outcome of every SEC Week 10 game
It’s Rivalry Week in the SEC, albeit incomplete. When the SEC remade its 10-game conference-only schedule, the folks in Birmingham opted to keep rivalry games on Thanksgiving Weekend instead of moving them to the last week of the regular season (Dec. 5).
COVID, however, got in the way of making it a complete conference rivalry week. Arkansas was unable to play this week, causing the Battle Line Rivalry game with Mizzou to be postponed. The SEC surprised many by also postponing Tennessee-Vanderbilt and having the Commodores instead play Mizzou. The move would appear to be focused on Eli Drinkwitz’s squad still being in the SEC East title hunt, though a longshot from making it to Atlanta. The Tigers would need Florida (6-1) and Georgia (5-2) to drop multiple games to take the division crown.
Alabama is the SEC West leader. Even against a ranked opponent (No. 22 Auburn), the Crimson Tide is heavily favored to win according to ESPN’s Football Power Index.
The FPI predicts the winner of all 6 Week 10 games:
- Florida (90.2 percent chance to win) vs. Kentucky
- Mizzou (88 percent) vs. Vanderbilt
- Alabama (92.2 percent) vs. Auburn
- Ole Miss (68.2) percent vs. Mississippi State
- Texas A&M (75.6 percent) vs. LSU
- Georgia (89.4) percent at South Carolina
Here is ESPN’s definition of the FPI:
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. FPI data from seasons prior to 2019 may not be complete.
I liked Feng’s numbers better. I may be misremembering his name, but I think I’m close.
Nobody should be thinking that aTm is improving faster than LSU this year. It will be an interesting game to watch.
Because they offer these percentages it seems like a cop out to me because even if the team considered 92% likely to win loses they can just shrug and and say — we were right. There was an 8 % chance and that happened.
No it’s even worse, it’s always 100%, an accident if they guess right. So on their very best day, they are still look ignorant.
All predictions of the future are moronic. Gambling adds another illogical result promotion to the outcome. In some cases someone will profit if they can influence an unexpected result. If you predict a result based on one factor you have one factor that could have an error in it’s predictive reliability. If you use 20,000 factors you have 20,000 possible errors, because they are all addressing something that might not happen. Have you noticed that nobody publishes a list of how many score predictions were wrong (99.999+ %). It cracks me up that nobody ever revisits the total failures of these self-embarrassing number addicts. Enjoy football because it’s a man’s game played by men on a big stage with a lot of work going into the exhibit of skill, tactics, fitness, and effort.