Georgia football is getting hot at the right time after beating Tennessee and UMass at home in back-to-back weeks. After two solid weeks and three SEC teams getting upset last weekend, Georgia now finds themselves in the SEC Championship game next week.
This wild turn of events really shook up various rankings, including the AP Poll and College Football Playoff rankings. However, ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) did not change as much as it maybe should have. In fact, the FPI still has one SEC team ranked above Georgia that makes no sense.
Georgia is No. 3 in ESPN’s FPI Rankings
The No. 1 team in the SEC according to ESPN’s FPI is Texas. While the Longhorns don’t have many great wins on their resume, they are the only SEC team with one loss so there isn’t a lot to be upset about with them being on top. Most would now probably assume Georgia would be next, but the Bulldogs are actually No. 3 in the SEC. So who is No. 2?
The Alabama Crimson Tide.
That’s right, a 3-loss team who just lost to 5-5 Oklahoma 24-3 is somehow ranked higher than Georgia.
No other ranking out there agrees with the FPI. The AP Poll and CFP rankings both have Georgia well ahead of Alabama, as they should. The FPI actually has Alabama as the No. 4 overall team in the country, which again just makes no sense.
To be fair, the FPI is more of a predictive model instead of a traditional ranking system, but it's still hard to fathom how it came up with this. But the worst ranking of all goes to Oregon. The consensus No. 1 team in the country is only No. 7 on the FPI.
Kirby Smart and Georgia will have their chance to prove the FPI wrong, beginning with the SEC Championship game when the potentially play Texas who the FPI likes more than Georgia.