Predicting Which Teams Will Have The Most Fun in 2023

Projected 2023 Fun Index for every team!

Later this month, the 2023 season will officially kick off. We have made it folks! The news surrounding CFB at the moment is predominantly focused on realignment and the impeding changes that will shake up the CFB world after this season. Instead of doing that, we’re going to focus on the on field product that will be hitting our TV’s in a couple weeks.

The Fun Index is a metric that was developed for this newsletter last season (If you want to read more about it: click here). Basically the idea behind it is to take different metrics that I find exciting (explosive offense, elite QB play, havoc creating defenses etc.) and mush them together into an index. While the fun index has mainly been used in a descriptive manner (using past performance to see who has been fun that season), we are going to dip a little into the predictive world by attempting to predict which teams will be the most fun in 2023.

Small note: Switched out ESPN’s QBR with a QBs starting QBs total expected points added regardless of snap counts. QBR has a minimum snap count, which could end up excluding teams that had to start multiple QBs.

Stability

First things first, let’s see how stable the fun index is on a year to year basis. The reason we check to see if a metric is stable on a year to year basis is to see if our efforts to predict a future fun index are worthwhile. If a metric is highly unstable (which means it drastically changes every year), predictions with any sort of accuracy would be downright impossible.

In the real world, a correlation of 0.48 represents a moderate relationship between a teams fun index and their fun index in the next year. However, due to the high variance (wacky CFB moments) that we find in the game, a correlation at this level is pretty good. We can even break it down further by looking at offensive and defensive fun index on their own:

While not as strong as a teams net fun index, a teams offensive fun index is relatively stable. This isn’t surprising as its components (Success rate, a QB’s EPA/Play) have similar levels of stability, and we jammed them all together.

On its own, defense is the least stable out of the three fun index metrics. Defensive metrics are typically less stable than offensive metrics due to a reliance on high variable (luck, wacky stuff) plays like turnovers. Overall, seems like the fun index is right on line in terms of stability.

Now lets get to the good part. We’re going to attempt to predict a team’s 2023 fun index. We’re going to keep it simple, using just three variables:

• A teams prior year fun index

• 2023 Preseason Vegas Win Total

• Returning Production

2023 Projected Fun Index

Here are the projected top 25 teams in the fun index. Coming off of back to back national titles, yeah it is a pretty fun time to be a Georgia Bulldog. Following the defending champs is Michigan and Ohio State. If you ask Ohio State fans they may not feel like they’re having as much fun as of late, but Michigan fans have to feel the fun after two straight victories against the Buckeyes. Rounding out the top 4 is my Florida State Seminoles, who haven’t had this much preseason hype since the 2017 season. A team loaded with talent and expectations, the Seminoles appear to be the offseason champions this offseason.

The first group of 5 team in the top 25 is the Tulane Green Wave, who are coming off a Group of 5 championship and Cotton Bowl win over USC. While losing some offensive talent, they return star QB Michael Pratt and are still the favorites to land that coveted NY6 Bowl slot. Up next is Toledo, the reigning #MACtion champions. Expectations continue to remain high for the Rockets, who return Dequan Finn, a dual threat STUD that makes Toledo must see TV.

Projected Fun Index vs. Average

Here is the entire FBS projected fun index in 2023 vs. what their average fun index has been in the CFB playoff era. The idea here is we can see which teams are expected to be more or less fun than they have been in the past. Teams like Kansas, Oregon State, South Alabama and Tulane may not have been on your radar in past seasons, but they are must watches this season. Meanwhile, teams like Appalachian State, UAB, Houston etc. have been fun in the past, but we’re not too sure that will be the case in 2023.

Most Fun Matchups in 2023

Finally, we can use our projections to see which matchups boast the most fun teams in 2023. While things can change between now and the matchups date, this is what it looks like as of now. Sitting at the top is perhaps the best rivalry in the game, Ohio State vs. Michigan. Assuming both teams are still in the playoff race, this game should once again be filled with the pressure and drama we have come to expect. While most of these games happen in the middle or end of the season, FSU-LSU in Orlando will help finish off week 1 of the CFB season on Sunday September 3rd. Multiple Pac-12 teams are featured on this list, showing how fun this conference is expected to be in 2023. The Pac-12 is in its senior year of HS phase, where everyone is moving on to different parts of its life. After this season, each of the Pac-12 teams on this list (Washington/USC/Oregon/Utah) will join difference conferences as the Pac-12 becomes the (at the moment) Pac-4.

This was a short and sweet look at some of the potentially fun teams in 2023. It can be hard to focus on the season giving everything that is happening on the off the field side of the sport. However, we will still be kicking off in a few short weeks, which means we’re that much closer to some fun football and great memories made on the field.

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