A common pastime for fans and pundits during the lead-up to a football season is to predict win-loss records and even game-by-game wins/losses.
Game-By-Game
Before the season started, I recorded the game-by-game predictions of each game for all of the Big Ten teams, and below you’ll see the results.
Note that sites like ESPN update their projections as the season goes, so they don’t necessarily keep track of their preseason predictions (but I did).
| School | CBS Sports | College Football News | Gridiron Expert | Lucas Ross Sports | Sports Illustrated | Massey | Kelley Ford | ESPN FPI | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois | 11 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 86% |
| Indiana | 8 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 76% |
| Iowa | 7 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 11 | 9 | 8 | 69% |
| Maryland | 8 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 11 | 10 | 83% |
| Michigan | 11 | 10 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 12 | 11 | 89% |
| Michigan State | 11 | 10 | 12 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 91% |
| Minnesota | 11 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 8 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 83% |
| Nebraska | 7 | 9 | 11 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 77% |
| Northwestern | 10 | 8 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 80% |
| Ohio State | 11 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 12 | 12 | 11 | 90% |
| Oregon | 10 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 81% |
| Penn State | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 58% |
| Purdue | 11 | 11 | 12 | 11 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 97% |
| Rutgers | 10 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 12 | 11 | 92% |
| UCLA | 6 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 10 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 58% |
| USC | 11 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 90% |
| Washington | 10 | 11 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 91% |
| Wisconsin | 9 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 81% |
The table shows how many games that each site predicted correctly for each team (not how many wins they predicted).
Preseason predictions for Purdue, Rutgers, and Washington were correction for over 90% of their games. Not surprisingly, predictions for Penn State and UCLA were the worst at 58%. Iowa was the only other team that was correct for less than 75% of their games.
Of these sites, College Football News was the least accurate in their game-by-game predictions at only 77%. (Last year they were also the worst, although they improved from 66%.) All of the other sites were over 80%, except CBS Sports. Here’s a summary of how accurate the sites were.
- CBS Sports: 81%
- College Football News: 79%
- Gridiron Expert: 85%
- Lucas Ross Sports: 82%
- Sports Illustrated: 85%
- Massey: 85%
- Kelley Ford: 86%
- ESPN FPI: 83%
Considering that all of the sites missed on 3 of Penn State’s games and 3 of UCLA’s games (including the one between UCLA and Penn State), all of the sites were correct on the vast majority of the rest of the games. A lot of the other games that were missed were expected to be close. There were two other games that were expected to be solid wins that weren’t:
- Maryland at Wisconsin
- Indiana at Oregon
The biggest upset of all this season was likely the UCLA win over Penn State. None of the sites picked UCLA to win before the season started, and even the week of the game places like SP+ had UCLA as having only a 2% chance of winning. Northwestern’s win over Penn State is probably a close second since most sites had Penn State with at least a 90% chance of winning even the week of that game (after Penn State had already lost to UCLA).
Win Total Projections
Predicting individual games, especially before the season starts, is difficult. What should be easier is predicting total wins. Here’s how each of the sites did with that.
| School | CBS Sports | College Football News | Gridiron Expert | Lucas Ross Sports | Sports Illustrated | Massey | Kelley Ford | ESPN FPI | Actual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois | 9 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 9 |
| Indiana | 8 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 8.1 | 12 |
| Iowa | 5 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6.6 | 8 |
| Maryland | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5.4 | 4 |
| Michigan | 8 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 11 | 9 | 8.8 | 9 |
| Michigan State | 5 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 4.8 | 4 |
| Minnesota | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 6.9 | 7 |
| Nebraska | 8 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 5 | 9 | 7.4 | 7 |
| Northwestern | 4 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4.7 | 6 |
| Ohio State | 11 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 12 | 12 | 10 | 12 |
| Oregon | 11 | 10 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 9.4 | 11 |
| Penn State | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 10.3 | 6 |
| Purdue | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2.9 | 2 |
| Rutgers | 5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 6.4 | 5 |
| UCLA | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 5.2 | 3 |
| USC | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 8.7 | 9 |
| Washington | 6 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 |
| Wisconsin | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 5.6 | 4 |
Penn State and Indiana again stand out. Every one of the sites was off in their win total by at least 2 wins.
Four other teams were had different win totals of more than 2 wins. CBS Sports had predicted Iowa to have just 5 wins and Lucas Ross Sports had them with just 4 wins; they ended up with 8. Massey and Kelley Ford had Northwestern favored in just 3 games; they ended up with 6 wins. Sports Illustrated had Wisconsin predicted to win 7 games; they won just 4. And College Football News, Lucas Ross Sports, and Massey had predicted 6 wins for UCLA; they won just 3.
UW was one of 6 teams that met or exceeded the win totals by all of the sites. The others were Indiana, Iowa, Northwestern, Ohio State, and Oregon.
Summary
None of these sites (and probably nobody in the country) expected the collapse of Penn State. And none of the sites (and probably few in the country) expected Indiana to be even better than they were in 2024. One could argue that bringing in the guy from the Transfer Portal who would eventually win the Heisman was a major reason that Indiana was better. On the other hand, maybe it is just the coaching and culture at Indiana now that has gotten Indiana to where they are this season-and that helped Mendoza win the Heisman. We’ll see what happens next year.
Before the season started, most of these sites had predicted that Washington would lose at Wisconsin. That is hardly a consolation for a loss that was not expected at the time of the game. But, despite that, Washington not only improved over 2024, but they exceeded most preseason expectations for 2025. If the coaching staff at UW remains, and if UW is able to use the Transfer Portal to improve at a position or two, then UW should be set up to have even higher expectations for the 2026 season than they had for 2025.