ESPN’s Preseason Model Gives Ole Miss Another Chance to Beat the Odds

Preseason rankings keep rolling in ahead of the 2026 college football season, and Thursday brought one of the big ones.

ESPN released its initial Football Power Index, the math-driven model that tries to predict how the year might unfold.

It’s not gospel, but it’s a good snapshot of how the numbers see things before anyone takes a snap.

Ohio State opened at No. 1, which isn’t surprising. The Buckeyes return Julian Sayin, Jeremiah Smith and a defense that blends experience with new faces. It’s the kind of roster that usually sits at the top of these models.

Ole Miss, meanwhile, sits in a familiar spot. Not at the top, not buried, but somewhere in the middle where hope and skepticism tend to meet.

ESPN gives the Rebels a 1.3 percent chance to win the national championship. That’s not a huge number, but it’s not zero either. And it’s only slightly lower than the 1.5 percent chance Ole Miss had last preseason.

We all remember how that turned out.

Ole Miss entered 2025 with a No. 13 preseason ranking, a modest title probability and a whole lot of questions. The Rebels blew past all of it. They made the College Football Playoff, pushed Miami to the brink and spent December proving that preseason math can only tell you so much.

That’s why this year’s numbers shouldn’t dampen anything. If anything, they should reinforce the idea that Ole Miss is still in the neighborhood of contention.

The model predicts the Rebels to win somewhere between four and seven games, gives them an 81 percent chance to reach six wins, a 22.8 percent chance to make the Playoff and a 3.8 percent chance to win the SEC.

Those aren’t perfect odds, but they’re close enough to last year’s that fans shouldn’t feel like the window has closed. The roster is still strong. The staff is still stable. The path is still there.

And if Ole Miss proved anything last season, it’s that the gap between “unlikely” and “possible” is smaller than people think.

So don’t let the FPI knock down any preseason optimism.

If anything, it should make that optimism feel a little more grounded. The numbers say Ole Miss is still in the mix. The program’s recent history says the Rebels know how to outperform them.

Hope isn’t just alive. It’s earned.

ESPN Full Preseason FPI Top 25

1. Ohio State
2. Texas
3. Notre Dame
4. Oregon
5. Georgia
6. Indiana
7. Miami
8. Alabama
9. LSU
10. Texas Tech
11. Texas A&M
12. Oklahoma
13. USC
14. Ole Miss
15. Michigan
16. Tennessee
17. Penn State
18. Florida
19. Clemson
20. BYU
21. Missouri
22. Auburn
23. South Carolina
24. SMU
25. Iowa