Statistics are a valuable tool for measuring and predicting just about anything, from elections to the stock market. But when it comes to sports, they definitely don’t tell the whole story. If they did, ESPN’s “best predictor of a team’s performance” would have you believe that UK football will only muster a disheartening 4 wins this season.
247Sports broke down Kentucky’s schedule game by game using the Worldwide Leader’s Football Power Index, AKA FPI, and found that the Cats were only favored to win against Central Michigan, Murray State, Vanderbilt, and Middle Tennessee. The model overall predicts that UK will pick up a fifth win somewhere, but since the odds aren’t in their favor in any other game, it won’t get specific, leaving bright minds like us to try and figure out where that upset, and hopefully a few more, will come from.