What ESPN's FPI thinks after the South Carolina football win over Old Dominion

South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer called his team's performance against Old Dominion on Saturday "awful." Despite being around 20-point favorites against the Monarchs inside the friendly confines of Williams-Brice Stadium, the Gamecocks were trailing in the 4th quarter before pulling out a much-closer-than-anticipated 23-19 victory.

Some fans have overreacted and declared that USC will lose every game the rest of the way, while others have adopted the mindset of, "It's just one game and no big deal." The reality is likely somewhere in the middle, but only time will tell how the 2024 version of the South Carolina football team will fare over the next three months.

The ESPN FPI (Football Power Index) seemed to side more with the sky-is-falling camp as the Gamecocks fell precipitously in the worldwide leader's ranking system. Shane Beamer's team was one of the index's biggest fallers as the Gamecocks now sit at 48th, 15 spots lower than their preseason ranking of #33.

Among Power-4 teams that won games, only the NC State Wolfpack (Dave Doeren's team barely beat Western Carolina) and the Texas Tech Red Raiders (Abilene Christian took TTU to overtime) dropped more spots than the South Carolina Gamecocks.

With the FPI update, ESPN now is predicting a tougher road to bowl eligibility for USC. The predictive model now thinks a 6-win campaign is only 44.3% likely, down nearly 20 percentage points from the team's preseason projection. The realistic win prediction sits between 5.3 and 6.7 according to the ESPN FPI, and the Gamecocks' low College Football Playoff chances lessened all the way down to 1.3%.

New data will cause the FPI to shift considerably, so South Carolina football fans can expect ESPN to be much higher on their favorite team if the Gamecocks can go out and beat the Kentucky Wildcats (currently ranked 29th in the ESPN FPI) on the road in Lexington this weekend.

The Gamecocks and Wildcats will meet on the field at Commonwealth Stadium for a 3:30 PM ET kickoff. The game will be broadcast on ABC and streamed on the ESPN app.