The ESPN FPI has released their 2019 pre-season football rankings, and as usual one of the worst analytic in sports ranks teams that at best is confusing and at worst is completely laughable. I have to admit though thanks to HokieMark’s comment where FootballOutsiders still ranked Alabama ahead of Clemson after losing by 4 Touchdowns to the Tigers!, FootballOutsiders will give the FPI a run for the worst. Be sure to check out his fine blog site https://accfootballrx.blogspot.com/.
We laughed in 2015 and we laughed in 2016, and then we laughed at it some more in 2017. I seemed to have skipped 2018. It is probably because I completely ignored the ESPN FPI for that year, but 2019 had me shaking my head in such total disbelief that I had to comment.
Now the 2019 FPI got off to a good start – Clemson is #1 and Alabama is #2, and then after that is where the non-sense started.
First of all the FPI has placed a whopping 10 SEC teams in the top 20. This from a conference that went a humbling 6-6 during bowl season with multiple blowout losses. Somehow a pedestrian 5-7 Tennessee team will enter 2019 season the 15th best team in the country. The last time we saw South Carolina they lost to Virginia 28-0 in a bowl game, and by 21 to Clemson. That’s your 19th best team. Florida State was 22, for no particular reason other than coming off their worst season in several decades.
Texas is #26, which seems odd since the team they hammered in the Sugar Bowl is Georgia at #3.
Any metric that uses recruiting rankings is inherently flawed. That’s where FPI falls apart. Tennessee statistically seems to recruit well enough, but has basically been irrelevant for the better part of the last 20 years.
The FPI should drop that component, and stick with predicative match-ups based on returning starters and current and previous year results.
I’m sure during the course of the football season we’ll find more humor with the FPI. It’s a rite of passage every fall.
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2 pings
Hokie Mark says:
February 17, 2019 at 1:17 am (UTC -4)
Agreed – FPI gives some ridiculous results. IIRC it’s based on the work of the “Football Outsiders” F+ (link: https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/fplus), which still has Alabama as slightly better than Clemson even after the blowout loss in the national championship! How can any metric which ignores the scoreboard be called “advanced”?
Jfann says:
February 17, 2019 at 10:29 am (UTC -4)
Wow makes you wonder about these analytic models HokieMark!