ESPN FPI Guarantees Victory for WVU Football Against Duquesne

The ESPN FPI (Football Power Index) is basically guaranteeing WVU football claims its first win of the season this weekend.

A week after giving the Mountaineers no chance to upset Penn State, the ESPN FPI has West Virginia at a 97.2% probability for victory as they welcome Duquesne to Morgantown. ESPN’s FPI was right on the money in week 1, as WVU lost 38-15 to the Nittany Lions.

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No matter what anyone may think of this WVU team, this isn’t surprising. Duquesne is an FCS program and FBS schools usually win pretty convincingly in these matchups.

With so much talk about West Virginia’s schedule, the one benefit of the 2023 schedule compared to last year is the FCS opponent follows big the game with a rival to open the season. In 2022, WVU faced Kansas in week 2 right after the Backyard Brawl. The Mountaineers lost that game in overtime and started off a season 0-2 for the first time since 1979.

Another fact pointing to Brown avoiding history repeating itself and going into the Brawl at 1-1 is West Virginia has never lost to an FCS school. WVU football owns a 23-0 all-time record record FCS programs. Despite losing more games than he’s won overall at WVU, this has continued under Brown.

The Mountaineers have four wins over FCS teams with Brown as head coach. Those wins came over James Madison 20-13 (2019), Eastern Kentucky 56-10 (2020), Long Island 66-0 (2021), and Towson 65-7 (2022). Conversely, Duquesne does have a win to their credit against an FBS program, beating “Group of 5” Ohio in 2021. Duquesne has never beat a school out of a major conference.

But if somehow the ESPN FBI is wrong and Neal Brown’s team falls to the Dukes in one of the worst losses ever for the West Virginia program, Pat McAfee and his crew have some ideas for how that situation should be handled. They say that should be the end of Neal Brown’s tenure right there.