How ESPN's FPI views South Carolina football ahead of this Saturday's game vs. Akron

Last Saturday, South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer and his team lost a controversial game to the LSU Tigers. The defeat moved the Gamecocks to 2-1 on the young season, but even with the blemish on their record, many around college football have a higher opinion of USC than they had before the game began.

ESPN's FPI (Football Power Index) is a predictive model that provides rankings and projections for each team across the country. The Gamecocks have been a bit up and down in the FPI, but that trend of movement in the projection model ceased this week.

Despite losing to LSU on Saturday, the Gamecocks slid just two spots from last week, moving down from tied for 32nd to 34th in this week's FPI ranking system.

However, some of the other predictive natures of the FPI have shifted in a negative way. The Gamecocks' chances of reaching the 6-win threshold (and bowl eligibility) moved from 78% to just 60.6%, and the team's College Football Playoff chances shifted from a hopeful 6.7% to a paltry 1.3%. USC is still given a 6.2-win projection, but that number is a half-win lower than it was last week.

This weekend, South Carolina is given around a 95% chance of victory as they take on the Akron Zips, and because they are facing an opponent who should be far outmatched, barring an outright disaster, next week's FPI ranking shouldn't shift much.

In front of another sold-out crowd in Williams-Brice Stadium, the Gamecocks and Zips will take the field for a 7:30 PM ET kickoff. The game will be broadcast on ESPNU and will be streamed on the ESPN app, and the South Carolina football team will be rocking throwback uniforms that will pay homage to the 1980 team and George Rogers' Heisman Trophy-winning campaign.