The Game is on. College football’s best rivalry matchup is here to put an exclamation point on the 2025 regular season as No. 1 Ohio State hits the road against arch-rival No. 15 Michigan.
Ohio State is basically a lock for the playoff, but would like to avoid a what would be a fifth-straight loss to its nemesis, while Michigan wants to hand the consensus top team in America another black eye, and make a case for its own postseason claim in the process.
Looking ahead to this week’s matchup, let’s check out the latest college football predictions from the Football Power Index computer prediction model.
The model simulates every NCAA college football game 20,000 times and uses key analytics from both teams and picks winners based on a projected scoring margin per game.
Michigan may have won four straight against Ohio State, but the power index model is siding very strongly with the Buckeyes in this rematch.
Ohio State came out ahead in the majority 78.2 percent of the computer simulations of the matchup.
That leaves Michigan as the presumptive winner in the remaining 21.8 percent of sims.
How does that translate into an expected margin of victory in the game?
Ohio State is projected to be 8.5 points better than Michigan on the same field in both teams’ current composition, according to the model’s latest forecast.
That would not be enough for the Buckeyes to cover the spread, as Ohio State is a 9.5 point favorite against Michigan, according to the latest odds posted to FanDuel Sportsbook.
Football Power Index (FPI) college football rankings and computer prediction model are a measure of team strength that predicts a team’s future performance.
Rankings and scores predictions are based on 20,000 simulations of a team’s season and games, using a combination of key analytics, including scores to date, quality of opponents, team talent, recruiting, and a team’s schedule.
Teams are ranked not in order of talent like in other rankings, but by a projected point margin per game against an average team on a neutral field.
How accurate was the College Football Power Index computer prediction model last Saturday?
Projecting the games a week ago, the Power Index models correctly predicted 78.3 percent of all games and hit 42 percent against the spread.
Predicting a total of 799 college football games a year ago, the Power Index computers were correct for 70.964 percent of their final picks, ranking eighth nationally out of 55 other football models.
Over the last decade, the Football Power Index has proven correct on 75 percent of FBS college football game predictions, including in 73 percent of matchups when it favored a team with at least 70 percent likelihood to win.
All odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.
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