On November 11, Michigan State was soundly defeated in Columbus by the Ohio State Buckeyes for the seventh loss of the season. With only 12 total games in the regular season, the best-case scenario was that Spartans could win out to finish at 5-7.
As a rule, a team needs to have at least a .500 record to qualify for a bowl game. However, if not enough FBS-level teams finish with at least six wins to fill the 82 bowl spots, there is a process to select teams with a 5-7 record to fill those spots.
With a current record of 4-7, the Michigan State Spartans are still mathematically alive to qualify for a bowl game. Today, we will examine what needs to happen for the Spartans to reach the postseason and how likely it is to come to pass.
Step 1: Beat Penn State
The first and most important step in this process is that the Spartans need to win a fifth game of the season. For this to happen, the Spartans need to defeat the No. 12 Penn State Nittany Lions on Friday night at Ford Field in Detroit.
On Sunday afternoon, the point spread for the game opening with Penn State at a 20-point favorite. Fortunately, over the years I have developed a correlation that helps me to understand the odds of an upset given a specific Vegas line.
This correlation tells me that teams which are 20-point underdogs win straight up about 8% of the time. This is the first piece of the puzzle that we need to understand Michigan State's odds to make a bowl game. By Saturday morning, the rest of this analysis may be moot, but let's go ahead and explore the optimistic scenario where the Spartans win.
Step 2: Enough Bowl Slots are Available
If Michigan State were to beat Penn State on Friday night, Saturday will be a waiting game to determine if a bowl slot will be available for the Spartans or not.
As of Monday, November 20, there are a total of 67 teams who have qualified for a bowl game with six wins. This leaves 15 slots which will be filled by teams which are currently in one of three categories.
First, there are teams currently with five wins that will earn a sixth win this weekend to automatically qualify. Second, if slots are still available, the next two teams in line are James Madison and Jacksonville State. These two teams are in the final year of transitioning from the FCS to the FBS. They are not technically eligible for the postseason, but they can fill "unused" bowl slots if not enough teams with a winning record are available.
Third, any remaining bowl slots will be filled by teams with a final record of 5-7 based on each University's Academic Progress Rate (APR) rankings which are meant to measure "improvements and academic success." The pool of 5-7 teams will be prioritized based on the APR rankings for the 2023 season. Michigan State is ranked No. 28 on the current APR list.
Based on this process, there are currently eight additional teams that will automatically receive a bowl bid before the Spartans. James Madison and Jacksonville State are two of those teams. In addition, there are five teams that already have five wins, and that have a higher APR rank compared to Michigan State: No. 8 Minnesota, No. 15 Rice, No. 19 Mississippi State, No. 22 UCF, and No. 23 South Carolina.
Finally, the winner of Saturday's game featuring Syracuse and Wake Forest will also finish ahead of Michigan State on the bowl priority list. Either Syracuse will earn a sixth win in this contest or Wake Forest will earn a fifth win. The Demon Deacons are No. 8 in the APR rankings and thus would also take priority over the Spartans.
This leaves only seven open bowl slots. By my count there are 19 teams currently sitting with five wins who could claim one of those spots with a win this week. If seven or more of these teams win, Michigan State will be eliminated from consideration.
Weekend Watching Guide and Odds
Assume Michigan State upsets Penn State, which other games should Spartan fans focus on this weekend? Table 1 below summarizes the remaining 19 games of interest where the bowl candidate team is listed first. The opening point spread for each game is listed and that spread has been converted to the odds that the team of interest wins.
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| Table 1: Week 13 games involving teams in competition with Michigan State for a possible bowl bid. Spartan fans should root against the first team listed in each match-up. |
In all cases, Spartan fans should root against the first team listed in each match-up, starting with rooting for Buffalo to beat Eastern Michigan (+6.5) on Tuesday night.
The summation of the odds listed in Table 1 gives the expected number of teams which will before the end of the regular season. That value is 8.5, which is larger than the number of wins (six or less) necessary for Michigan State to earn a bowl bid. This suggests that it is a long shot for Spartans to qualify.
There is one other note regarding the games shown in Table 1. Navy has a record of 5-5 and has two games remaining. Navy is a heavy underdog this week at SMU and the Midshipmen will face Army (5-6) on December 9. Either Navy or Army will have a higher priority than Michigan State for a bowl big and there is a small chance that both Army and Navy will finish at 6-6 (if Navy upsets SMU and then Army upsets Navy). This further reduces the odds of the bowl game for the Spartans.
Finally, I used the data above to simulate the 19 games of interest to generate more precise odds for the Spartans to qualify for a bowl with a 5-7 record. The result of that simulation gives a value of just 7.9%, which is almost exactly equivalent to the odds of an upset over Penn State.
Therefore, the final probability that Michigan State qualifies for a bowl game in 2023 is equal to the odds for an upset over Penn State (7.8%) multiplied by the odds that enough bowl slots are available (7.9%). Simple math tells that those odds are just 0.62%.
Step 3: Would Michigan State even accept a bowl bid?
The final variable in this analysis cannot be quantified. Let's assume that the stars align, Michigan State beats Penn State, and enough teams in Table 1 lose such that the Spartans qualify for a bowl. In that scenario, would or should Michigan State accept that bid?
Based on the current injury situation and the lack of stability on the coaching staff, a compelling argument could be made that Friday night's match with Penn State should be the final game of the season regardless.
However, there is also a chance that a new (at least partial) coaching staff could be in place by the end of November. The additional bowl practices with the new staff would potentially be greatly beneficial, especially for the younger players as the program moves forward. But is that benefit worth it? That is likely a decision that athletic director Alan Haller would need to make.
Unfortunately, I have no way to calculate that.
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