Ohio State‘s 2022 ended in dramatic heartbreak in the College Football Playoff, but immediate redemption could be on the horizon. The Buckeyes are the best team in the nation and the favorites to win the national championship, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index and the Allstate Playoff Predictor.
The Buckeyes have a 37% chance to win the title — well ahead of Alabama at 20% and defending champion Georgia at 19% — according to the models.
Before we dive too far into the Buckeyes, other title contenders and the rest of the forecasted college football landscape, a quick refresher: What is FPI, and how do we project the season and College Football Playoff race?
FPI is our season-long ratings and projections system. In the preseason it relies on past performance on offense and defense, returning and transfer production and past recruiting data for players on the roster to form a rating. We then use those ratings to simulate the season 20,000 times, resulting in our projections.
In addition, the Allstate Playoff Predictor uses those simulations to forecast the playoff committee’s selection process, based on the committee’s past behavior. All of which combined allows us to forecast a team’s projected win total, chance to win its conference, reach the CFP and win the national championship.
Let’s break down some of the top storylines emerging out of FPI’s numbers ahead of the 2023 season.
A three-team top tier
So what makes the Buckeyes so dangerous in 2023, even relative to SEC powerhouses Alabama and Georgia? For starters, the best non-QB offensive returning production in the nation. That’s most notable in the receiving game, where the Buckeyes return Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka — who recorded 1,263 and 1,151 receiving yards in 2022, respectively — along with tight end Cade Stover.
The model ranks Ohio State No. 1 in offensive performance in recent seasons (it ranked No. 1 in offensive efficiency in 2022) and second in offensive talent (based on cumulative recruiting ranks on that side of the ball). Quarterback aside (we’ll get to that), we can see why FPI makes the Buckeyes the best offense in the nation by a decent margin. Defensively, the Buckeyes rank third — they don’t quite boast the talent levels that FPI sees in Georgia or Alabama — but the margin is smaller and thus the Buckeyes are the best team overall. Georgia’s defense ranks No. 1 in FPI rating, driven more by the historical performance of the unit than anything else.
What’s also interesting here is just how far behind everyone else is from the top three. More than five points per game separates Georgia (No. 3) from LSU (No. 4) in FPI’s ratings. Each of the top three teams has at least a 19% chance to win the national championship, while no other team is over 6%. And there is a cumulative 76% chance — in April! — that one of the three wins the national title.
In addition, there is a 26% chance that all three of the Buckeyes, Crimson Tide and Bulldogs make the playoff, and the top six most likely combinations feature all three of those teams.
In other words: It’s a crystal-clear top tier. And what’s somewhat amazing is this is happening in a year when none of the three are returning their starting quarterbacks. C.J. Stroud, Bryce Young and Stetson Bennett are all NFL-bound, and yet the model still has confidence in these squads.
It means that the model has less confidence in each of their QBs than it does for, say, USC with Caleb Williams. Though in the case of Ohio State, for example, the fact that Kyle McCord (the most likely starter, in the model’s mind) had an 87 grade as a recruit gives the model some confidence in him despite the lack of track record.
A QB with a track record of success is ideal, but as evidenced by FPI’s ratings for Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia, it’s not a prerequisite.
Our annual ‘Texas is back (or is it?)’ conversation
Sitting at No. 5 in FPI’s rankings and No. 4 in terms of chance to win the national championship: Texas. It’s a somewhat familiar place for the model, though. FPI was bullish on the Longhorns starting last year (rank: No. 7) and it finished bullish on them, too (rank: No. 7).
But now it’s really in on them, with a 34% chance to reach the playoff and its first top-5 preseason FPI rank since 2012. They’ve got strong talent, based on recruiting grades, on both sides of the ball (fourth on offense, sixth on defense). And, despite losing running back Bijan Robinson to the NFL, the Longhorns return quite a bit of production on offense, led by wide receiver Xavier Worthy.
Quinn Ewers, the incumbent at quarterback facing competition from Arch Manning and Maalik Murphy, didn’t have a great season last year (65.6 QBR, which ranked 50th) but does have a year of experience. And, as we saw with the teams at the top, a good situation around a quarterback can yield a high FPI rating.
The Longhorns also benefit from their conference: There are fewer tough foes and no divisions in the Big 12, and that leads to a more straightforward path to a conference title than they will have in the SEC next season (Texas’ 54% chance to win the Big 12 is higher than Georgia’s 49% or Alabama’s 41% chance to win the SEC). That doesn’t mean Texas has an easy schedule, though. With a road game at Alabama on Texas’ slate, the Longhorns have the toughest schedule of any of the FPI’s top 10 teams.
USC leads a Pac-12 with a chance
A year ago at this time, FPI gave the Pac-12 a mere 8% chance to put a team into the playoff. We were artificially low on USC — the Lincoln Riley effect wasn’t fully accounted for — but the point remained: The Pac-12 was a long shot. That ended up panning out, as the conference did not put a team in the playoff.
But the conference boasts the seventh-best team in the nation in USC, according to FPI. The Trojans alone have a 25% shot at the playoff, and the conference has a 34% chance overall at putting at least one team in the playoff thanks mostly to Oregon (5%) and Utah (4%). (This might be bittersweet for the conference, knowing it will soon lose USC to the Big Ten, but that’s a next-year problem for the Pac-12).
With Williams — who finished fifth in QBR last season and is a potential No. 1 overall pick in 2024 — leading the way, USC enters the season with clearly the best quarterback room in the nation, according to FPI. That they have Williams back after he led the Trojans to a No. 3 rank in offensive efficiency only bolsters the model’s confidence, and is part of why it considers USC to be the second-best offense entering the year only behind Ohio State.
The difference between USC and the top contenders mentioned earlier: The Trojans are elite only on one side of the ball. FPI sees them as the 36th-best defense, which is actually a huge forecasted improvement. The defensive unit ranked 82nd in defensive efficiency last season.
All of this gives USC a strong chance — 50%, a true coin flip — to win the Pac-12. And with an easier but not too easy schedule, a 1-in-4 shot at the playoff.
After finishing 10-3 with strong quarterback play from Jordan Travis (QBR: 85.3, which ranked seventh), the Seminoles are getting some heavy buzz. FPI likes Florida State … but maybe not as much as everyone else. The Seminoles rank 14th in FPI, though they are just two-tenths of a point away from 12th.
The model is mostly buying the offense (rank: No. 10) but is less confident in the defense, which it ranks 26th. In general, Florida State has lower talent rankings (based on the recruiting ranks of players on the roster) than the teams above it in FPI. The Seminoles rank 17th in offensive talent and 24th in defensive talent. There’s a lot to like here — just not quite as a top-10 team yet.
It’s in part due to the talent gap that FPI still likes Clemson (FPI rank: eighth) more in the ACC. The Tigers, who have higher talent ratings on both sides of the ball, have a 45% chance to win the ACC, while the model gives Florida State just a 17% chance.
Considering the hype around Colorado with Deion Sanders now the Buffaloes’ head coach, as well as a slew of transfers in to play for him, it’s a bit of a shock to see Colorado all the way down at … 95th in FPI’s rankings — the lowest-ranked Power 5 team.
The model has somewhat of a handle on the transfers. They’re recognized in Colorado’s “talent” and returning production portions of the calculation, and the Buffaloes do have higher talent scores on both offense and defense than virtually all of the teams around them in the overall rankings. From the model’s perspective, though, that isn’t enough to overcome the recent poor play. The Buffaloes ranked fourth worst and 11th worst in offensive and defensive efficiency last season. So FPI actually is predicting a decent step up this year.
That being said, 95th is still rough. It’s probably reasonable to think this is an unusual circumstance of roster turnover — one-win teams don’t usually transfer in high-end players — that FPI might not be able to perfectly capture.
Conference playoff race
The SEC and Big Ten are each extremely likely (97% and 94%, respectively) to put a team in the playoff. But what about two teams, like the Big Ten had last year?
The SEC is the favorite to pull off that maneuver in 2023 with a 51% chance to put multiple teams in the playoff, while the Big Ten is at 25% (every other conference is under 1%).
The SEC has two major things going for it:
• While Ohio State is the best team in the nation, FPI believes the SEC boasts teams Nos. 2, 3 and 4 in Alabama, Georgia and LSU. By contrast, Michigan and Penn State — the Big Ten’s next-best teams — come in at No. 6 and No. 10.
• The conference’s top two teams are in separate divisions and aren’t scheduled to play each other. That means Alabama and Georgia won’t beat up on each other until the conference championship game at the latest, while only one of Ohio State, Michigan or Penn State can reach the Big Ten championship game.
Lauren Poe and Mitchell Wesson contributed to this article.
The opening weekend of the 2025 MLB season was taken over by a surprise star — torpedo bats.
The bowling pin-shaped bats became the talk of the sport after the Yankees’ home run onslaught on the first Saturday of the season put it in the spotlight and the buzz hasn’t slowed since.
What exactly is a torpedo bat? How does it help hitters? And how is it legal? Let’s dig in.
What is a torpedo bat and why is it different from a traditional MLB bat?
The idea of the torpedo bat is to take a size format — say, 34 inches and 32 ounces — and distribute the wood in a different geometric shape than the traditional form to ensure the fattest part of the bat is located where the player makes the most contact. Standard bats taper toward an end cap that is as thick diametrically as the sweet spot of the barrel. The torpedo bat moves some of the mass on the end of the bat about 6 to 7 inches lower, giving it a bowling-pin shape, with a much thinner end.
How does it help hitters?
The benefits for those who like swinging with it — and not everyone who has swung it likes it — are two-fold. Both are rooted in logic and physics. The first is that distributing more mass to the area of most frequent contact aligns with players’ swing patterns and provides greater impact when bat strikes ball. Players are perpetually seeking ways to barrel more balls, and while swings that connect on the end of the bat and toward the handle probably will have worse performance than with a traditional bat, that’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make for the additional slug. And as hitters know, slug is what pays.
The second benefit, in theory, is increased bat speed. Imagine a sledgehammer and a broomstick that both weigh 32 ounces. The sledgehammer’s weight is almost all at the end, whereas the broomstick’s is distributed evenly. Which is easier to swing fast? The broomstick, of course, because shape of the sledgehammer takes more strength and effort to move. By shedding some of the weight off the end of the torpedo bat and moving it toward the middle, hitters have found it swings very similarly to a traditional model but with slightly faster bat velocity.
Why did it become such a big story so early in the 2025 MLB season?
Because the New York Yankees hit nine home runs in a game Saturday and Michael Kay, their play-by-play announcer, pointed out that some of them came from hitters using a new bat shape. The fascination was immediate. While baseball, as an industry, has implemented forward-thinking rules in recent seasons, the modification to something so fundamental and known as the shape of a bat registered as bizarre. The initial response from many who saw it: How is this legal?
OK. How is this legal?
Major League Baseball’s bat regulations are relatively permissive. Currently, the rules allow for a maximum barrel diameter of 2.61 inches, a maximum length of 42 inches and a smooth and round shape. The lack of restrictions allows MLB’s authorized bat manufacturers to toy with bat geometry and for the results to still fall within the regulations.
Who came up with the idea of using them?
The notion of a bowling-pin-style bat has kicked around baseball for years. Some bat manufacturers made smaller versions as training tools. But the version that’s now infiltrating baseball goes back two years when a then-Yankees coach named Aaron Leanhardt started asking hitters how they should counteract the giant leaps in recent years made by pitchers.
When Yankees players responded that bigger barrels would help, Leanhardt — an MIT-educated former Michigan physics professor who left academia to work in the sports industry — recognized that as long as bats stayed within MLB parameters, he could change their geometry to make them a reality. Leanhardt, who left the Yankees to serve as major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins over the winter, worked with bat manufacturers throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons to make that a reality.
When did it first appear in MLB games?
It’s unclear specifically when. But Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat last year and went on a home run-hitting rampage in October that helped send the Yankees to the World Series. New York Mets star Francisco Lindor also used a torpedo-style bat last year and went on to finish second in National League MVP voting.
Who are some of the other notable early users of torpedo bats?
Corking bats involves drilling a hole at the end of the bat, filling it in and capping it. The use of altered bats allows players to swing faster because the material with which they replace the wood — whether it’s cork, superballs or another material — is lighter. Any sort of bat adulteration is illegal and, if found, results in suspension.
Could a rule be changed to ban them?
Could it happen? Sure. Leagues and governing bodies have put restrictions on equipment they believe fundamentally altered fairness. Stick curvature is limited in hockey. Full-body swimsuits made of polyurethane and neoprene are banned by World Aquatics. But officials at MLB have acknowledged that the game’s pendulum has swung significantly toward pitching in recent years, and if an offensive revolution comes about because of torpedo bats — and that is far from a guarantee — it could bring about more balance to the game. If that pendulum swings too far, MLB could alter its bat regulations, something it has done multiple times already this century.
So the torpedo bat is here to stay?
Absolutely. Bat manufacturers are cranking them out and shipping them to interested players with great urgency. Just how widely the torpedo bat is adopted is the question that will play out over the rest of the season. But it has piqued the curiosity of nearly every hitter in the big leagues, and just as pitchers toy with new pitches to see if they can marginally improve themselves, hitters will do the same with bats.
Comfort is paramount with a bat, so hitters will test them during batting practice and in cage sessions before unleashing them during the game. As time goes on, players will find specific shapes that are most comfortable to them and best suit their swing during bat-fitting sessions — similar to how golfers seek custom clubs. But make no mistake: This is an almost-overnight alteration of the game, and “traditional or torpedo” is a question every big leaguer going forward will ask himself.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The once and possibly future home of the Tampa Bay Rays will get a new roof to replace the one shredded by Hurricane Milton with the goal of having the ballpark ready for the 2026 season, city officials decided in a vote Thursday.
The St. Petersburg City Council voted 7-1 to approve $22.5 million to begin the repairs at Tropicana Field, which will start with a membrane roof that must be in place before other work can continue. Although the Rays pulled out of a planned $1.3 billion new stadium deal, the city is still contractually obligated to fix the Trop.
“We are legally bound by an agreement. The agreement requires us to fix the stadium,” said council member Lissett Hanewicz, who is an attorney. “We need to go forward with the roof repair so we can do the other repairs.”
The hurricane damage forced the Rays to play home games this season at Steinbrenner Field across the bay in Tampa, the spring training home of the New York Yankees. The Rays went 4-2 on their first homestand ever at an open-air ballpark, which seats around 11,000 fans.
Under the current agreement with the city, the Rays owe three more seasons at the Trop once it’s ready again for baseball, through 2028. It’s unclear if the Rays will maintain a long-term commitment to the city or look to Tampa or someplace else for a new stadium. Major League Baseball has said keeping the team in the Tampa Bay region is a priority. The Rays have played at the Trop since their inception in 1998.
The team said it would have a statement on the vote later Thursday.
The overall cost of Tropicana Field repairs is estimated at $56 million, said city architect Raul Quintana. After the roof, the work includes fixing the playing surface, ensuring audio and visual electronics are working, installing flooring and drywall, getting concession stands running and other issues.
“This is a very complex project. We feel like we’re in a good place,” Quintana said at the council meeting Thursday.
Under the proposed timeline, the roof installation will take about 10 months. The unique membrane system is fabricated in Germany and assembled in China, Quintana said, adding that officials are examining how President Donald Trump’s new tariffs might affect the cost.
The new roof, he added, will be able to withstand hurricane winds as high as 165 mph. Hurricane Milton, one of the strongest hurricanes ever in the Atlantic basin at one point, blasted ashore Oct. 9 south of Tampa Bay with Category 3 winds of about 125 mph.
Citing mounting costs, the Rays last month pulled out of a deal with the city and Pinellas County for a new $1.3 billion ballpark to be built near the Trop site. That was part of a broader $6.5 billion project known as the Historic Gas Plant district to bring housing, retail and restaurants, arts and a Black history museum to a once-thriving Black neighborhood razed for the original stadium.
The city council plans to vote on additional Trop repair costs over the next few months.
“This is our contractual obligation. I don’t like it more than anybody else. I’d much rather be spending that money on hurricane recovery and helping residents in the most affected neighborhoods,” council member Brandi Gabbard said. “These are the cards that we’re dealt.”
College football reporter; joined ESPN in 2008. Graduate of Northwestern University.
Tulane quarterback TJ Finley has been suspended following his arrest Wednesday in New Orleans on a charge of illegal possession of stolen things worth more than $25,000.
Finley, 23, whose name is Tyler Jamal, was booked and released. Tulane said in a statement that the length of the suspension will depend on the outcome of his case. The school cited privacy laws in declining to comment further.
University police responded Wednesday to an address where a truck was blocking a driveway. After looking up the license plate, police saw it registered to a vehicle stolen in Atlanta. Finley arrived to move the car and informed the officer that he had bought the truck recently. He’s scheduled to appear in court June 1.
Finley transferred to Tulane in December after spending the 2024 season with Western Kentucky. He had been competing for the team’s starting quarterback job in spring practice alongside fellow transfers Kadin Semonza and Donovan Leary.
Finley, a native of Ponchatoula, Louisiana, started his college career at LSU before transferring to Auburn for two seasons and then Texas State in 2023. He started five games for both LSU and Auburn but had his most success with Texas State, passing for 3,439 yards and 24 touchdowns.