ESPN’s FPI has little faith in Michigan State football
Michigan State football is already a fourth of the way through their season and the Spartans are off to a perfect 3-0 start. You would think after such a nice start, as well as a very impressive 27-24 win at Maryland, that they’d be getting more respect nationally, but you’d be wrong.
Michigan State did not receive any AP Poll votes once again this week, which did take me by surprise. The one thing however that shocked me the most is how little faith ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) has in MSU.
ESPN’s FPI gives a percent chance for Michigan State to win their remaining games, and spoiler alert they do not fancy the Spartans' chances in many games.
Here is the percent chance the FPI gives MSU to win their final nine games.
Opponent | FPI chance to win |
|---|---|
@ Boston College | 21% |
Ohio State | 7% |
@ Oregon | 9% |
Iowa | 44% |
@ Michigan | 21% |
Indiana | 27% |
@ Illinois | 36% |
Purdue | 74% |
Rutgers | 50% |
To be fair to ESPN some of these percentages are very fair in my opinion. Michigan State is going to have a tough time beating either Ohio State or Oregon, so MSU having less than a 10 percent chance to win both is fine with me.
Even the Iowa and Rutgers games at home essentially being coin flips as well as MSU being the heavy favorite against Purdue are pretty accurate as well. I won’t even complain about only having a 21 percent chance to beat Michigan either.
But the three other games make no sense to me. No way in my mind does MSU only have a 21 percent chance at beating Boston College this weekend. I’m not saying Michigan State should be favored, but that low of a percentage is wild to me.
Then we have two Big Ten games, Indiana at home and a road contest against Illinois, where MSU has less than a 30 percent chance to win. Sure both teams are 3-0 to start their seasons as well, but their resumes are not substantially better than Michigan State’s like this data suggests. In fact, I think the Spartan’s resume and wins are better than both Indiana and Illinois right now.
In my opinion, these two games should be closer to coin flips like the Iowa and Rutgers games are, not heavily favoring Michigan State’s opponent.
The nice thing about these predictions is that Michigan State can prove them wrong. They already did that once when everyone, including ESPN’s FPI, gave Michigan State almost no chance at beating Maryland. We all know how that turned out.
Rest assured I know Jonathan Smith and his staff will have MSU ready to go and at the end of the day maybe this data will motivate them even more.