2025 College Football Analysis, Part Two: A Deep Dive into MSU's Schedule
We conduct a deep dive on the Spartans' schedule, projected point spreads, win probabilities and possible paths to six wins or more.
In part one of this year's math-based preseason analysis of the college football season, we looked back at the 2024 season. Through that analysis, we learned about the historical accuracy of preseason polls (plus-or-minus 25 positions) and regular season win totals (plus-or-minus 2.5 wins). We also explored the impact of changes in ability, schedule and luck.
Now it is now time to shift focus to the 2025 season. Over the years I have developed and refined a way to simulate the entire college football season using schedule information and preseason rankings as the only inputs. I will soon go through the full details of what I learned from this exercise.
For today, I will focus exclusively on what it says about the Michigan State Spartans. We will take a close look at the Spartans' 2025 schedule from three different points of view.
Opponent and Schedule Overview
The best place to start this analysis is with the simulation's inputs. Figure 1 below summarizes the preseason rankings (which correlate to team strengths) for Michigan State and the Spartans' 11 FBS-level opponents.
Figure 1: Summary of the teams on the Michigan State football schedule in 2025, sorted by average preseason rankings.
The bars give the preseason rankings for each team from five publications: Phil Steele, Athlon Sports, Lindy's Sports, ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) and Bill Connelly's SP+. The final labeled bar in each cluster is the consensus average of the five rankings. This is the number that I use to set the power rankings for my full-season simulation.
The Spartans' preseason rankings vary. Athlon is the most optimistic, ranking Michigan State as the No. 53 team in the nation, while SP+ has the Spartans down at No. 64. Phil Steele (No. 54), the FPI (No. 59) and Lindy's (No. 59) are somewhere in-between. As a result, I have assigned Michigan State with a consensus ranking of No. 58.
This ranking is slightly better than the 2024 preseason consensus ranking of No. 66, and there is more of a consensus on the Spartans' strength in 2025 relative to last year.
As for the Spartans' opponents and schedule, No. 2 Penn State is expected to be the toughest team that Michigan State will face. No. 12 Michigan is the only other opponent in the preseason top-20. This is a pleasant change from last year when the Spartans drew three preseason top-10 opponents (Oregon, Ohio State and Michigan), not to mention Illinois and Indiana squads that both overachieved significantly.
Moving from left to right, the next set of opponents includes four teams that are all borderline preseason top-25 members: No. 22 Indiana, No. 25 USC, No. 30 Nebraska and No. 32 Iowa. I will also add No. 42 Minnesota to this tier. All five of those teams are projected to be more talented than Michigan State in 2025.
The next tier of opponents for Michigan State includes two teams with a very similar ranking to the Spartans: No. 53 UCLA and No. 56 Boston College. Then comes No. 73 Maryland, which is expected to be slightly worse than the Spartans.
Finally, Michigan State opens the season with the weakest FBS team on the schedule: No. 117 Western Michigan. The Spartans also host one FCS team, Youngstown State. The Penguins finished last season 4-8 overall and in a tie for sixth place in the Missouri Valley Conference. Youngstown State should be the weakest opponent on the Spartans' 2025 schedule.
Opponent and Schedule Overview
The best place to start this analysis is with the simulation's inputs. Figure 1 below summarizes the preseason rankings (which correlate to team strengths) for Michigan State and the Spartans' 11 FBS-level opponents.
