2025 College Football Analysis, Part Two: A Deep Dive into MSU's Schedule

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 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, 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 which 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.

Projected Point Spreads

Figure 1 provides a qualitative look at the schedule for Michigan State this fall. Figure 2 below provides the projected point spreads and the odds for the Spartans to win each of the 12 regular season games in 2025.

Figure 2: Projected point spreads and victory probabilities for all 12 games for the 2025 Michigan State Spartans. The odds are calculated in two ways: a) assuming that the preseason rankings are accurate and b) using the results of the 50,000 cycle Monte Carlo simulation, which accounts for the known, average uncertainty of the preseason rankings.

Figure 2 contains two sets of data. The white-and-red-checked bars are the odds generated using the uncorrected preseason rankings. I use the preseason rankings to project preseason power rankings, point spreads, and win probabilities for any potential match-up. 

The solid green bars are the odds derived from the 50,000-cycle Monte Carlo simulation of the full season with the uncertainty of the preseason rankings taken into account. Each simulation cycle is a series of digital dice throws to determine the winner of every game based on those modified probabilities.

Note that the point spreads derived from the simulation (shown on each bar) are in close agreement with the early point spreads for Michigan State's home games against Western Michigan (+18.5) and Michigan (-8.5).

Overall, my simulation projects that the Spartans will be favored in five total games this year: the home games against Western Michigan, Boston College, Youngstown State, UCLA, and Maryland. Of those five contests, only in the Western Michigan and Youngstown State games are the Spartans projected to be favored by more than four points.

In the remaining games, my simulation projects that Michigan State will be a at least a nine-point underdog in six of the games and a 6.5-point underdog in the game at Minnesota.

Win Distribution

Figure 2 shows the odds that Michigan State will win or lose each of the 12 games on the schedule. But what does this tell us about total wins and losses? There are over 4,000 different ways for the season to play out for the Spartans. Michigan State could win anywhere from zero to all 12 games. Figure 3 gives the odds for each of those 13 potential outcomes.

Figure 3: Win distributions for the 2025 Michigan State Spartans calculated in two ways: a) using the preseason rankings as is and b) using the results of the 50,000 cycle Monte Carlo simulation which accounts for the uncertainty of the preseason rankings.

Similar to Figure 2, the results in Figure 3 are calculated using two different methods. One method (the blue striped bars) assumes that the preseason rankings are accurate and the other method (the solid green bars) takes into account the known and quantifiably uncertainty in the preseason rankings.

At a first glance, the two sets of data tell the same story. The Spartans will most likely win around five games. This is consistent with what the oddsmakers in Las Vegas have set the win total (over/under) line for Michigan State (5.5 wins). The money lines suggest that a value just over five wins is more likely (5.76). My simulations give an overall expected win total of 5.26. The math checks out.

According to the striped bar bars in Figure 3, there is a 94% chance that Michigan State will win somewhere between three and seven games. Every other college football preseason analysis that attempts to make this type of calculation yields a similar result.

But this result is not statistically accurate.

If Michigan State truly is the No. 58 best team in the country, and if the Spartans' 12 opponents are also exactly as good as the preseason experts believe, then the estimated point spreads in Figure 2 and the distribution shown in Figure 3 in the striped blue bars are both correct.

But I already explained in part one of this series that the preseason rankings vary on average by 25 positions. The data shown in the green bars shows the more accurate prediction after the preseason uncertainty is taken into account.

For Michigan State (and for every other team) this means that a wider range of possible season outcomes are likely. It is still true that the Spartans will most likely win between three and seven games. But, the real odds are closer to 77% than 95%.

There are two ways to look at this. From a glass-half-empty point of view, there is a chance that Michigan State is actually worse that the experts currently believe. My simulation suggests that there is a 21% chance of a final record no better than 3-9. Those are double the odds compared to the scenario where the preseason rankings are accurate.

From a more optimistic point of view, my simulation gives the Spartans a 15% chance to win at least eight regular season games. In these scenarios, either Michigan State is a lot better than the experts currently believe, some of the Spartans' opponents are a lot worse than expected, the Spartans will be a bit lucky in 2025, or some combination of these three effects.

Regardless of the path, these 15% odds at a satisfying season in East Lansing are much better than the 3.3% odds that I calculate assuming that the preseason rankings are correct.

Also note that the simulation results also give the Spartans a better chance to make a bowl game at the conclusion of the 2025 season. The simulated odds for a bowl game are 43% compared to just 34% in the non-adjusted case.

Possible Michigan State Season Trajectories

If we assemble all of the information above, we can imagine several ways in which the 2025 season could unfold for the Green and White. 

As the odds above show, it may be an uphill climb to get to the six wins needed to qualify for the Spartans' first bowl game since 2021. The most likely result is a final record of 5-7 which would once again leave the Spartans at home for the holidays.

A glance back at Figure 2 shows why. Michigan State will likely only be heavily favored in the games against Western Michigan (+17) and Youngstown State (+28). These games are both very likely wins. But the next three most likely wins, the home games against Boston College (+2), UCLA (+1.5), and Maryland (+4), are closer to toss-ups. The math suggests that the odds to win all three of these games are just 19%.

That said, the fact that all three of these toss-up games are at home is encouraging. In order for Michigan State to show the kind of program growth that coaches and fans expect, the Spartans need to beat teams of comparable ability at home. If a bowl game is in the cards for 2025, these are all essentially "must-win" games.

This implies that the Week Two game against Boston College will be an important early measuring stick for the full season. If the Spartans can win this game and get to 3-0 by mid-September, a bowl bid will be more likely than not. 

If the Spartans can beat the Eagles decisively, it could be a sign that Michigan State is ready to overachieve. However, if the Spartans were to lose to Boston College in Week Two, the outlook for the remainder of the season would be grim.

If we assume that Michigan State can win the five games discussed above in which they are likely to be favored, only one additional win would be needed to qualify for a bowl game. But the remaining seven games on the schedule are daunting. That said, based on the projected point spreads, there is only about a 15% chance that the Spartans lose all seven games.

The Spartans' other two home games on the schedule are against No. 12 Michigan (+10.5) and No. 2 Penn State (+15). The Nittany Lions are expected to be one of the best teams in the country this year, but when you look across field and see James Franklin on the other sideline, you know that your team has a chance. Similarly, the Spartans always play the Wolverines tough in East Lansing.

It would not shock me if the Spartans were to pull off an upset in at least one of those two contests. The current math suggests that there is a 35% chance that Michigan State will do just that.

As for the five Big Ten road games, they all appear challenging. As Figure 1 shows, all five teams are expected to be more talented than the Spartans in 2025. To make matters worse, No. 25 USC, No. 30 Nebraska, No. 32 Iowa, and No. 42 Minnesota were all flagged in my 2024 retrospective analysis as teams suffered from bad luck in and therefore could be underrated in 2025.

The simulation says that there is only a 29% chance that Michigan State loses all four games. So, the odds of stealing a victory in this group of four games are pretty decent. Teams like USC and Nebraska have a recent tendency of underachieving even when signs point to a resurgence. But I expect all four of these teams to be strong in 2025, and I do not like the Spartans chances against any of them on the road.

The only remaining game on the schedule is the road game at No. 22 Indiana (-12.5) on October 18. While the simulation suggest that this is the second toughest game on the Spartans' schedule, I am more optimistic.

Unlike the other four road opponents, the data from 2024 suggest to me that Indiana might be coming into the season a bit overrated. Furthermore, the Hoosiers will be coming off a tough road game at Oregon the weekend before. Bloomington is also not considered to be one of the more challenging road environments in the Big Ten. I believe that this is the best chance for the Green and White to get a sorely needed upset win.

In summary, a potentially satisfying 2025 Michigan State season could be built on a series of wins as outlined below. Here I break up the schedule into five parts from easier to hardest.

• Win the two "must win" games on the schedule versus Western Michigan and Youngstown State
• Win the three toss-up home games against Boston College, UCLA, and Maryland
• Steal an upset win at Indiana
• Upset either Michigan or Penn State at home
• Steal a win or two on the road at USC, Nebraska, Minnesota, or Iowa

We have now explored Michigan State's schedule in detail, but what does this mean for the overall Big Ten race? Where are the Spartans most likely to finish? That will be the topic of the next installment of this series. Stay tuned.