What is up with this? Oklahoma football is coming off of a dominant win over a solid opponent, ranked No. 4 in the country, and yet ESPN’s Football Power Index currently spots them as the ninth best team in the nation.
Unlike the weekly human polls (the Associated Press Top 25 and the Coaches Poll), which mostly serve as a retrospective measurement of a team’s performance on a week-by-week basis throughout the season, the ESPN FPI describes its measurement model as an assessment of “team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season.”
I have no argument with the ESPN Power Index having Clemson and Alabama as heavy favorites to be at the top of the pile once the dust settles in the wake of the regular-season wars and sets the stage for the four teams selected to fight it out in the four-team playoff for college football’s national championship. The opening weekend had little bearing on that overwhelming projection.
The FPI model projects Oklahoma’s 2019 win total at 10.7 and gives the Sooners a 61-percent chance of winning the Big 12. Since the College Football Playoff selection committee has made it a point the past year or so to say that conference titles matter, that data point alone should stand in OU’s favor for a higher evaluation, and perhaps especially at this very early point in the season.
No. 3 LSU, Georgia, Penn State, Michigan, Notre Dame and Auburn — three SEC teams in addition to mighty Alabama, mind you — are all ranked higher than the Sooners in the initial FPI of the 2019 college season, yet all are projected to have at least two losses at the end of the regular season, and Auburn projects out at close to four.
Looking at the 2019 Oklahoma schedule, it appears that the annual Red River rivaly game with Texas poses the most serious challenge to the Sooners (not to mention a probable rematch in the Big 12 title game). Yet the Longhorns are ranked as the No. 20 team in the first FPI of the new season and projected to win eight games and lose as many as four times this season.
As far as I can tell at this very early point in the season, the Sooners are being heavily dinged for playing what is perceived to be a much softer schedule than the other teams ranked ahead of them in the early September version of ESPN’s Power Index. Other than Oklahoma, Texas and Oklahoma State are the only Big 12 teams ranked among the top-30 teams.
I’m concerned we are going to hear a lot about strength of schedule when it comes down to judging the worthiness of an Oklahoma return trip to the College Football Playoff this season. Of course, that also assumes that the Sooners take care of the business in front of them and eliminate all other controversy from the conversation.
Win and your in, it’s that simple…or so they say.