ESPN FPI BASHES ON UTAH STATE

Lo and behold, it’s that time of year again.

The football power index produced by ESPN is back up and in full swing, giving you their top 25, teams most likely to hit six wins, conference champion probabilities and so on among all 136 FBS teams.

If you happen to be a numbers person, it’s got enough content to keep any sports nerd entertained for at least a couple hours.

Under new Head Coach Bronco Mendenhall and on the verge of the Pac-12 era in Cache Valley, how does the ESPN Pigskin picking robot think Utah State will do in their Mountain West finale?

Well, let's look at the past to better understand the future, shall we?

Prior to Utah State’s 4-8 performance during the 2024 season, ESPN’S FPI algorithm wasn't very supportive of the Aggies, but in hindsight was a bit optimistic.

It picked the Aggies as 7^th in the conference, in which they finished 9^th.

The index put USU right around 5.7 wins on the year, just shy of being bowl eligible including a 53 percent chance of being in a bowl game.

Utah State of course would finish two games below the threshold with 4 victories snapping two consecutive seasons of having six wins.

Lastly, USU received a 3.9 % chance to win the Mountain West as a whole that season.

That 3.9 percentage was narrowly above Wyoming (3.8%), and a hair higher than Colorado State (3.2%)

It also beat out Hawaii, New Mexico and Nevada.

The Aggies would only end up ahead of San Diego State, Wyoming and Nevada when the dust settled

Point being, despite a tumultuous year with coaching changes and player uncertainty the FPI was a bit higher on Utah State than the end results justified.

So what about 2025?

Well, lets just say the FPI isn’t taking last season lightly, gifting out lower marks than what we witnessed in the previous offseason.

The 2025 FPI has the Aggies 113^th ranked overall behind teams like Rice, Western Kentucky, FIU and Sam Houston, even slotting them in a spot below Coach Mendenhall’s old squad in New Mexico.

Utah State has a higher ranking than teams such as Louisiana Tech, Charlotte, UMass and Akron to name a few, putting into perspective what the FPI expects this year.

In favor of some optimism, Utah State is still not at the bottom of the conference.

USU clocks in as the 8^th team in the Mountain West with a 0.4 % chance to win the conference, which although down more than 3 percent to last year, still isn’t non existent.

With a projected 4.7 wins and a 32.5 % chance to be bowl eligible by seasons end, USU is placed right close with San Diego State (117^th Rank) and sits in front of Wyoming (122^nd), Air Force (127^th), and Nevada (128^th).

Although one should never say never, the FPI has determined that there is a zero percent chance of Utah State making the national championship game let alone winning it.

They were however given a 0.1 % chance of a playoff berth, and no they don’t just hand out that percentage lightly as 17 teams were given a 0.0 % chance of postseason play.

Looking at you Northwestern, Purdue and Wake Forest.

The last year of the Mountain West as we currently know it will look incredibly familiar if the FPI is to be believed as Boise State and UNLV are the two darlings.

Boise State has a 45.6 % chance of winning the conference again with a 25.2 % try at making the playoffs again.

UNLV received another big chunk of the algorithm's confidence giving the Rebels a 37.7 % of hoisting the Mountain West title and an impressive 21.3 % chance of appearing in the postseason.

Surprisingly enough they do have UNLV with a projected 9.7 win total and the Broncos with a 9.6 meaning they think this could come down to the bitter end due to how schedules shake out.

But football isn’t played on paper they say, and with months to go before we kick off the 2025 college football season, there’s still reason to hope and believe that the 20,000 simulations ran are total bull.

No team is worried about what preseason projection models have to say, and neither is Utah State.

College sports are all about the underdog, the over achiever, the unexpected hero and the Aggies will hope to begin fulfilling that role when they host UTEP on August 30^th.

But until then, one thing is for sure, the analytics are not Utah State fans.