It wasn't planned this way, but...."LIVE FROM THE BETMGM SPORTSBOOK IN LAS VEGAS", it's our ACC, SEC and Independents preview!

Over the next five days, we will review each of the FBS conferences and Independents, starting with our Boston College Eagles and the rest of the ACC, along with the nation's strongest conference, home of the current national champion Georgia Bulldogs, the SEC.

This season, I am going to post everything to a Google docs page, rather than trying to fit it all in here.

As you look at each tab, you will see the conference, then a heat map of the conference prediction for the season, showing where each team will face, the number of wins out of 8 (for the ACC and SEC) that team will get and the likelihood of winning a particular number of games.

Each team then has a forecast, which will show: the last ten seasons of preseason ratings and their rating nationally. How the team fared in comparison to last season's preseason prediction and where that placed them nationally. Each game on the schedule with our projected line, location, opponent, national rank of each team, expected win pct, moneyline based on that point spread and cumulative (Boolean) record. That record solely looks at who is favored and assigns wins based on that.

For any FCS game, the lines and probabilities are taken from Jeff Sagarin, which will not line up exactly with my probabilities.

You will also see realistic expectations for the season both in conference and overall...these are in line with the traditional win totals you see at sportsbooks. Another heat map per team showing the likelihood of finishing with an exact record or at least so many wins, which then leads to the odds of going 6-6 to reach a bowl game.

Keep in mind, it is not unlikely at all, to see a team with a different Boolean record, expected record and bowl probability based on record. They all measure slightly different things.

Lastly, the various strength of schedule components (among all FBS teams, among the power five or group of five, conference and non conference).

So with all that behind us, what about Boston College?

We have the Eagles to finish 12th in the ACC and 75th nationally, with a projected record of 5.8 wins and 6.2 losses overall, 2.9-5.1 in the ACC. Despite not quite getting to 6 wins, with the total being greater than 5.5, we have BC with a 55.55% chance to go bowling this season.

BC is favored against Northern Illinois, Holy Cross, Virginia, Connecticut and Virginia Tech and sub 5 points underdogs at Army, at Georgia Tech and vs Miami...so a lot of toss up games that will decide the fate of the season.

One of the reasons behind a chance at a bowl, the schedule. The Eagles play the 69th ranked schedule in the country, that's last in the Power Five and have the 108th ranked non conference schedule, which includes both Power Five and Group of Five teams.

It should also be noted that BC finished 116th out of 131 teams based on their preseason prediction for 2022. The Eagles went 2.82 wins under their expected total. Generally, when teams are that far under, there is a bounce back the next season.

I wanted to give credit to The Kelley Ford Ratings, which although I created all the data, the format it is in, was based on that site.

Link to my site: FBS Ratings and Team Outlooks Pre-Season 2023

Tomorrow, The Big 10 and Big 12

Enjoy and Go Eagles!