Fired ESPN Employee Calls Out Its ‘Crap’ System, Doesn’t Spare Alma Mater Georgia Bulldogs Either

The debate over college football predictions and the predictive models has been going on for quite a while now. And this week, it has been reignited by David Pollack. The predictive model’s high-profile analysis has never been able to close the gap between on-field performance and calculated simulations. Clemson had been among the top few teams of every predictive model’s preseason rankings, and now it hasn’t tasted a win twice. 

On a recent episode of See Ball Get Ball, David Pollack and co-host Brent Rollins were talking about playoff odds lists and win projections. The topic was specifically about PFF’s playoff prediction ranking. And that list pegged Florida State at around a 6% chance of making the playoffs, giving them an 8-win ceiling. Now, if you’ve even followed this season through highlights alone, you know what’s wrong with this assessment. Florida State, which started its season with a statement win over Alabama and has been thrashing lower-tier teams all around, was pegged at an 8-win ceiling. This is wrong on so many levels.

But this was the projection that frustrated Pollack, and what we got was his brash and unfiltered reaction to these rankings. “Those projections suck. I can’t stand those projections. FPI, like for the ESPN stuff, they suck. They’re terrible. Like, I’m not looking at that crap; like, I’ve never looked at that crap,” David Pollack said, blasting both PFF’s list and ESPN’s power index. His point was pretty simple. These models often try to mask things that are uncertain with certainty. And in FSU’s case, it’s not even about being uncertain because they are not the underdogs anymore. The Alabama upset wasn’t luck because their performances in the games that followed have been equally impressive.

That frustration also lands differently coming from Pollack because of his long and complicated history with ESPN. He became a household name on College GameDay before being laid off in 2023, after the network’s cuts. He was part of the network for more than 2 decades and had been on College Gameday for more than a decade. He has spoken at length about his departure and what the next projects are, including See Ball Get Ball with Rollins, where he leans into sharper critiques and more direct language compared to his days at ESPN.

Anyway, the big picture is not to just completely ditch the models. Models can only give a general idea, but even the best predictive rankings are only tools and not truths. ESPN’s FPI and other indexes are best treated as signposts of what might happen next, not what will happen next.

Dawgs under Pollack’s microscope

The further conversations were locked on PFF’s latest playoff-odds board. And as a part of that rundown, co-host Brent Rollins laid out the top 4 teams favored to make the playoffs: “One, two, three, and four for making the playoffs are Ohio State, Georgia, Oregon, and Miami,” he said, nodding his head in agreement with the list. But not Pollack. It is established that Pollack is not a big fan of these rankings, and what he said later would be difficult for the Dawgs fans to process.

Pollack pumped the brakes on Georgia’s high odds and made it clear that he won’t put Georgia that high, especially with those teams. “And so, out of that, are you ready to go ahead and say that Georgia’s in the playoffs? No, I’m not,” he said, adding, “Like Ohio State, feel really good about it. Miami, feel really good about it. If you think I’ve conceded in the sense that, yeah, Georgia’s in there, like nah bro, not a chance, no way.”

His substantiation can really be confirmed by any eye test of a Dawgs game, especially the Tennessee game. Georgia won that game with grit, determination, and a copious amount of luck. Tennessee did not put a foot wrong until the later part of the game, while Georgia was struggling throughout. Just an unforced error from Max Gilbert and Georgia took that game home. If we’re going with the eye test and not the predictive model, Georgia does not look like a top-4 team, at least for now anyway.