This is the time of year when college football predictions and projections are flying.
Favorites are written about, betting lines get talked about, and arguments ensue.
In other words, it’s a great time to be alive.
Sometimes, however, a projection comes along that is so baffling that it needs to be examined — or ridiculed — further.
For this egregiousness, we turn to — to no one’s surprise — ESPN.
ESPN’s Football Power Index has done it again.
What exactly is the Football Power Index? Here is how ESPN describes it.
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 10,000 simulations of the rest of the season using FPI, results to date, and the remaining schedule. Ratings and projections update daily.
How do they come up with their numbers? A magician never reveals his secrets.
The FPI contains projected win/loss totals, percentage chance to win out, and percentage chance to win the conference for every college football team, and has them ranked from 1-130.
Currently, the Ohio State Buckeyes are ranked No. 13, which is no big deal. The big deals come when we look a little bit closer.
While OSU is ranked 13th in the FPI, they are third in the Big Ten. Both Michigan (No. 5) and Penn State (No. 12) are ranked ahead of the Buckeyes.
Michigan at the top of the B1G standings is understandable because the law of averages is quite a powerful force in this universe, but who knows why Penn State is ranked this high.
And yet, this still isn’t the most ridiculous aspect of the FPI.
With those 10,000 simulations, the Buckeyes average a 9-3 season. That’s fine. It’s certainly not impossible, and not even improbable.
The real issue comes in when we look at likelihood to win the Big Ten.
Michigan is at 48.2% likely to win the Big Ten this season.
I don’t know if they’d be 48.2% likely to win the Big Ten even if they were leading 14-10 at halftime of the 2019 Big Ten Championship Game.
Penn State is at 10.4% to win the Big Ten. With road games at Iowa, Michigan State, and Ohio State, along with the home game against mighty Michigan, having the Nittany Lions at 10.4% is maybe a tad high.
Still, it’s not an insulting or unlikely projection. If you give Penn State 10 opportunities to win the Big Ten this year, it wouldn’t be shocking to see it happen once.
But then we get to Ohio State.
The FPI has the Buckeyes with an 8.7% chance to win the Big Ten. In football.
Hell, even when Ohio State was banned from the Big Ten Championship Game in 2012, they still had at least a 12% chance of reversing the Earth’s rotation and moving time backwards to take a bowl ban in 2011 and be cleared for postseason play in 2012 and win the conference.
Saying Ohio State has an 8.7% chance of winning the Big Ten is proof that whatever information used for these 10,000 simulations needs to be recalled because it has been tainted.
This is an Ohio State program that has lost 12 conference games over the last decade — and five of those losses came in 2011!
Aside from that 2011 season where Jim Tressel stepped down in late May and Luke Fickell had to take the field with half of his best players suspended or exiled, the Buckeyes have won or shared a Big Ten or division title every year since 2005.
Every. Year.
Even including that 2011 season, you still have to go all the way back to 2004 to find a second season where Ohio State lost even two conference games.
Is it the four new starters on the offensive line? Three of whom were former 5-star recruits?
Is it the loss of Dwayne Haskins?
Granted, that is a heavy loss, but the Buckeyes are likely replacing him with Justin Fields, who only happened to be ESPN’s No. 1 recruit in the 2018 class.
Is it Ohio State’s defense, which gave up more points last year than any other Buckeye team before it? Doubtful. Based on Michigan’s 48.2% odds and their losses on that side of the ball from last year, the FPI doesn’t even look at a team’s defense.
Is it the Buckeyes’ schedule? Very possibly.
Road games at Nebraska, Northwestern, and Michigan are all dangerous, as are home games against Wisconsin and Penn State.
But Michigan travels to Wisconsin and Penn State, and they host Ohio State and Michigan State. The schedules aren’t so dissimilar that they would equate to a 40% differential in odds.
Perhaps it is coaching. After all, Ryan Day is only 3-0 in his head coaching career. Jim Harbaugh and James Franklin have seen much more as head coaches than Day.
Maybe ESPN’s computers see Day as the unknown and Ohio State is getting downgraded for it.
The irony of it all is that it should be the knowns of Harbaugh and Franklin that actually increase the Buckeyes’ odds.
Together, Harbaugh and Franklin are a combined 1-9 against Ohio State. Sure, all nine of those losses have come against Urban Meyer, and Meyer is now gone.
What remains, however, is what has always remained — Ohio State.
The day that the Buckeyes are truly only 8.7% likely to win the Big Ten is the day that half the team enlists in the military to fight the global war against the invading insect aliens from Galactar-7.
And even then, 8.7% would be a bit low.
This isn’t to say that Ohio State is going to win the Big Ten this year, because they absolutely may not.
But it is foolish and removes any credibility you want your invented rankings to have when you publish OSU’s chances as being only 8.7% to get it done.
And I’m not just saying this because there is no way to prove me wrong.
But it helps.