The third-ranked Texas Longhorns earned a tough 20-10 victory over the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday in Fayetteville.
The outcome of the game wasn’t really in doubt, but it wasn’t the dominant result that many Texans fans expected from their team after the Florida loss.
As a result, the noise from rival media outlets and social media detractors about Texas’ legitimacy as a top-three College Football Playoff team will only grow louder.
The consistent criticism is that “no one is playing them.”
Obviously, the Longhorns don’t care about that noise. They control their own destiny in both the SEC Championship and the CFP. If you win, you win.
“Honestly, I don’t pay attention to anything like that,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said last week. “All I know is we’re playing the team in front of us and they’re a good team. So I don’t know if people don’t think they’re good. It’s not up to me to decide. We’ll just try to play the best football we can.”
Either way, their detractors won’t go away until they hoist the SEC Championship trophy.
That being said, the Longhorns do have one thing in their favor: ESPN.
ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI), a computer-generated model of team strength that predicts a team’s future performance, finds the Longhorns to be the favorites to win the national championship. It becomes.
FPI’s latest rankings give Texas a 93.2 percent chance of making the playoffs, a 32.3 percent chance of advancing to the finals, and a 19.8 percent chance of winning. In second place is Ohio State, which has a 94.3 percent chance of making the playoffs, a 29.3 percent chance of advancing to the title game, and a 16.3 percent chance of winning.
But ESPN also favors Texas on another factor: overall history.
While many see Texas’ 38th-ranked strength of schedule as a major flaw in CFP’s claim, ESPN disagrees, placing the Horns ahead of Oregon, Georgia, Ohio State, and Penn State. Ranked 5th overall resume in the nation, behind only state universities.
In fact, its strength of schedule ranking is higher than the nation’s No. 1 team Oregon State and significantly higher than other playoff contenders such as Indiana, BYU, Miami, Notre Dame, SMU, Boise State, and Colorado State. . .
The Horns’ remaining schedule also ranks No. 1 in the country, No. 4 in game control and No. 5 in average winning percentage.
Of course, computers can’t predict what will happen in the field. And the Longhorns have to take care of business to get to their destination.
They will play the Kentucky Wildcats in Austin this Saturday at 11 a.m.
The complete ESPN FPI Top 25 can be viewed below.
Texas Alabama Ohio Notre Dame Georgia Ole Miss Pencil State Oregon Tennessee Miami Indiana Clemson South Carolina Texas A&MSMUUSCL Louisville Tulane LSU Colorado Boise Iowa Iowa Missouri Kansas
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