pac-12-fpi

Cal looks like a .500 football team in 2023, or at least that’s what ESPN’s Football Power Index projects.

Not surprisingly USC has the highest FPI among Pac-12 schools, with Oregon second and Utah third, while Cal ranks sixth in the conference.

ESPN admits that its FPI is less effective for preseason forecasts than it is in rating teams once the season gets going and results can be tabulated. But it still provides a glimpse of what might be expected.

So let’s take a look at Cal specifically and the Pac-12 in general.

The ESPN FPI ranks Cal 52^nd in the county with an expected won-loss record of 5.7-6.3. That suggests the Bears will finish either 5-7 or 6-6 in the regular season. The Bears have a 53% chance of getting six wins or more but just an 0.2% chance of winning the conference. That’s a one-out-of-500 chance for those of you wondering how that decimal percentage works out. Cal has a 0% chance of getting into the College Football Playoff, according to the FPI.

Meanwhile, Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia rank one, two and three, respectively, nationwide, and the Buckeyes have an 82.2% chance of getting into the four-team College Football Playoff and a 36.7% chance of winning the national championship.

USC ranks seventh nationwide with a 50.2% chance of winning the Pac-12 title and a 24.7% chance of reaching the College Football Playoff. What is interesting about that is that the Trojans have a much higher chance of winning the conference title than getting a CFP berth. That contrasts with Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia, all of whom have a better chance to get to the CFP than to win their conference title. That says something about the low standing of the Pac-12 in the FPI calculations.

Oregon, which is 13^th nationwide, and Utah, which ranks 15^th in the country, are projected to have about the same chance to win the Pac-12 title – about 17% — but a minuscule chance to getting into the CFP – both less than 5%. USC, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Oregon State are the only Pac-12 teams with a chance to get into the CFP, according to the FPI calculations.

The FPI says Stanford, Arizona State and Colorado have a 0% chance of winning the conference title. Furthermore, the Buffaloes have only a 1.7% chance to win at least six games and are projected to finish either 2-10 or 3-9. Those numbers are not likely to sit well with new Colorado head coach Deion Sanders.

Here is an excerpt on the explanation of the FPI calculations

What goes into FPI?

Each team’s FPI rating is composed of a predicted offensive, defensive and special teams component. These ratings represent the number of points each unit is expected to contribute to the team’s net scoring margin on a neutral field against an average FBS opponent.

In the preseason, these components are made up entirely of data from previous seasons, such as returning starters, past performance, recruiting rankings and coaching tenure (more on the preseason component below). That information allows FPI to make predictions (and make determinations on the strength of a team’s opponents) beginning in Week 1, and then it declines in weight as the season progresses. It is important to note that prior seasons’ information never completely disappears, because it has been proved to help with prediction accuracy even at the end of a season. Vegas similarly includes priors when setting its line.

Once the season is underway, the main piece of information powering these offensive, defensive and special teams predictions is past performance from that season’s games, in terms of expected points added per game. Expected points added, or EPA, is a measure of success/failure that takes into account yards, turnovers, red zone efficiency and more to determine how many points each unit is contributing to the team’s scoring margin. For example, if a team wins by an average of 10 points per game, it could be that plus-seven of that is offense, plus-four is defense and minus-one is special teams. Because expected points added is built on play-by-play data, it’s fair to say that FPI looks at every play of every game in the season.

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Cover photo of USC’s Caleb Williams and Lincoln Riley by Kyoshi Mio, USA TODAY Sports

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