Over the past few weeks, I have explained some of the background around my annual, math-based analysis of the upcoming college football season. In that process we have learned how accurate the preseason rankings are (plus-or-minus 25 spots, on average) and investigated what the prognosticators got right last year (Georgia), what they got wrong (Oklahoma and TCU), as well as the influence of ability, schedule and luck.
With that foundation in place, it is now time to shift focus to the 2023 season. I have now inputted the data from the preseason rankings and completed 100,000 simulations of the upcoming season. I will soon go through the full details of what I learned from these simulations.
For today, I will focus exclusively on what it says about the Michigan State Spartans. We will take a close look at the Spartans' schedule from three different points of view.
Schedule Overview
The best place to start this analysis is with the inputs to the simulation. Each year there are two main parameters needed as inputs: schedule and relative team strengths. Figure 1 below summarizes this information for Michigan State and the Spartans' opponents in 2023.
The bars give the preseason ranking for each team from four publications that were available this summer: Phil Steele, Athon Sports, Lindy's Sports and ESPN's Football Power Index. The final labeled bar in each cluster is the consensus average of the four rankings. This is the number that I use as the basis for my full-season simulation.
The Spartans' preseason ranking has a fair amount of variance this year. ESPN's FPI is the most optimistic, ranking Michigan State as the No. 31 team in the nation, while Phil Steele puts the Spartans down at No. 66. Athlon (No. 52) and Lindys (No. 44) are in the middle. As a result, I have assigned Michigan State with a consensus ranking of No. 48.
I should note the loss of quarterback Payton Thorne and wide receiver Keon Coleman in the spring is a likely source of some of the spread in this data. Phil Steele does account for these departures, but it is not clear if the other services do or do not. For this reason, it is possible that my consensus ranking of Michigan State is slightly higher than it should be.
As for Michigan State's opponents in 2023, Figure 1 starts to show why the Spartans are considered to have one of the toughest schedules in the nation. Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State are all consensus top-10 opponents, and Washington is also ranked in the top-10 by two of the four publications.
Iowa is projected to be a solid top-25 team this year, and Michigan State travels to Iowa City this year, which will be a challenge. After that, Minnesota, Maryland and Nebraska are all ranked somewhere in the 30s to the 50s. These teams are all in a similar tier to the Spartans.
Finally, Michigan State faces four teams that enter the season below Michigan State in the rankings: Rutgers, Indiana and Central Michigan are three of those four teams. The fourth team is the FCS-level Richmond Spiders. Data is harder to come by for FCS team in the preseason, but it is safe to assume that the Spiders are no better than the three lower tier teams mentioned above.
Projected Point Spreads
A glance at Figure 1 provides a qualitative look at the schedule for Michigan State this fall, but what does all this mean for the individual games? In Figure 2 below, I take the information from Figure 1 and translate it into projected point spreads and the odds that the Spartans will win each of the 12 games on the schedule.
Figure 2 contains two sets of odds. The solid green bars are the odds derived from the 100,000 Monte Carlo simulation of the full season. This simulation uses the preseason rankings to project preseason power rankings. I use these power rankings to generate point spreads and win probabilities for any potential matchup.
Each simulation cycle is a series of digital dice throws to determine the winner of every game in the full season. The unique aspect of my simulation is that I also account for the uncertainty of the preseason rankings as an input parameter.
The striped, blue bars are the odds generated using the preseason rankings with no correction for the known uncertainty. Each bar also shows a projected point spread that correlates to those odds. The point spreads from these calculations agree within a few points with the early point spreads that I see online for the Spartans' games against Washington (-12 on Draftkings), Michigan (-19), Ohio State (-25.5) and Penn State (-13).
Figure 2 brings into focus the challenge that the Spartans are facing this season. Michigan State currently projects to be a double-digit underdog in five games this year (Washington, at Iowa, Michigan, at Ohio State and versus Penn State at Ford Field) and over a touchdown underdog for the game at Minnesota. The Spartans have, at best, only a 30% chance to win each of the six toughest games on the schedule.
Of the six games where Michigan State projects to be favored, four of those games (Maryland, at Rutgers, Nebraska and at Indiana) all currently project to have spread under five points. The Spartan project to have no better than a 60% chance to win each of those four games.
The only two games on the schedule where Michigan State projects as a clear favorite are the first two games on the schedule against Central Michigan and Richmond. In addition, the actual opening line for the Spartans' Labor Day weekend home opener against the Chippewas (+14.5) is lower than my computer's projection of 19 points. Michigan State has about a one-in-six chance of a catastrophic beginning to the 2023 season.
