Predicting the outcomes of sporting events is always a tricky subject, but in the world of college football, that hasn't stopped many from trying. ESPN has even created a system called the "Football Power Index" (or FPI) that has been devised to take each team on its projected merit and spit out an unbiased prediction for every game on every team's schedule. For BYU football, this year's projections aren't favorable.
FPI is designed to predict football games based on preseason ratings. BYU is facing some very poor projections following a lackluster 2023 season in Big 12 play, and the preseason ratings don't look very favorably on the Cougars' odds of making a significant leap.
Preseason predictions are never perfect, and using an objective method to predict a variable competition will rarely look good towards the end of the season--heck, some of the game predictions look pretty terrible right now. However, ESPN claims their system is typically accurate when viewed from the proper perspective.
Have you ever looked at the weather report and noticed a percent chance of rain, looked up at the sky and said, "Well, it isn't raining, so the weather is wrong!" In a sense, yes, it isn't raining when you look to the sky, but at the same time, you're misunderstanding what a chance of rain actually means. Rather than a 40% chance of rain today, the prediction actually reflects that on 40% of all days like today, it will rain.
Similarly, ESPN's FPI isn't a projection of how good a team is compared to its competition, as much as it is a forecast of how comparable teams would likely perform in a certain circumstance. According to ESPN, when a team has a 70-80% chance of winning, that team wins around 73% of the time.
With that in mind, here are ESPN's preseason projections for the upcoming BYU football season:
Projected Wins
1. Southern Illinois - 89.7% chance to win
2. Wyoming - 60.9% chance to win
3. Houston - 62.6% chance to win
With only 3 projected wins on the schedule for the Cougs, we can safely say that ESPN doesn't expect BYU to secure a 6th win and bowl eligibility. As a biased party here, I think that ESPN's projections are a bit shaky for several reasons.
The Cougars always overachieve at unexpected moments in the season--often to open up the year. For example, BYU had similar expectations last season, and opened their schedule with a 5-1 record. Of course, they would go on to lose the next 6 games, but a few close calls almost brought BYU into postseason eligibility.
Put a personal bias alert up right here, but I think the Cougs are a bit underrated at this point. Do I expect the team to dominate on their way to conference title contention? No, as much as I'd love for a basketball-esque rise from the football team, I don't think it's in the stars at the moment. But with teams like SMU, Arizona State, and Baylor on the schedule, I can't ignore the gut feeling that the Cougars could steal a few extra wins.