Now that the Big Ten is back in the game, the number crunchers at ESPN have even less faith in the 2020 edition of Oklahoma football than they had a week ago.
A week ago in this same space, I railed about the Sooners’ No. 8 ranking in the ESPN College Football Power Index and the projection that the Texas Longhorns had a 51 percent chance of winning the Big 12 this season compared to 25 percent for Oklahoma.
What upsets me about this is not so much that ESPN has sided with Texas as its pick to unseat the Sooners and their five-year championship reign in Big 12 football — we all know that Texas is expected to pose a significant challenge to OU in this most unusual college season — but rather the startling 25-percent difference in the percentage chances of the two archrivals to capture the league crown .
It’s bad enough that the ESPN computer seems to believe that Texas will beat Oklahoma not once, but probably twice (which it may have to do to win the Big 12), but at the very least, the difference between the two teams should be closer to 50/50.
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- Oklahoma football: Sooners’ stock rising fast in ESPN prospective rankings
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O.K., now that I have that bit of smoldering frustration off my chest, I have a new bone to pick with ESPN and its Football Power Index this week.
The Sooners are inexplicably down to No. 13 in the FPI this week, a decline of five spots from the No. 8 position they held just a week ago. Texas remains ahead of Oklahoma, at No. 10, although the Longhorns fell four spots from last week’s ranking.
As a refresher, the FPI projects a team’s performance going forward for the remainder of the season. One difference from last week to this week is that the Big Ten teams are now factored into the analysis.
According to the current FPI, Wisconsin, Penn State, Central Florida and Auburn, in addition to Texas, are are some of the teams ESPN’s computer model views as stronger this season than Oklahoma.
If you take a deeper dive into the FPI data, however, you find that the Sooners’ remaining strength of schedule is 35th out of the 91 teams evaluated (nine better than Texas’ remaining schedule, by the way) and OU’s offensive, defensive and special teams efficiencies rank second, fourth and eighth best among teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).
So how is it that when all the numbers are crunched together Oklahoma shakes out as the 13th best team playing football this fall?
Oh, and did I mention that Oklahoma remains No. 3 this week in both the Associated Press Poll and the Coaches Poll.
They say numbers don’t lie, but in the case of the Football Power Index I strongly beg to differ.