Despite the finicky nature of the weather lately, the calendar does indeed say it’s spring in the Midwest. And you know what that means as a college football fan. Yep, spring games are in the air with flowers blooming, snow turning to sleet, and the occasional sunny, warm day.
It also means that ESPN has recently released its new and updated Football Power Index (FPI) rankings and ratings for all of the college football FBS teams, giving us something to talk about.
The FPI isn’t always correct of course, but it’s a formula designed by resident analytics guru Bill Connelly and is designed as “a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season.”
In this case, it’s a look ahead to try and determine how good a team will be before anything really happens on the field for 2022.
Still, we thought it’d be interesting to see what this wacky, mad-scientist formula says about the pecking order of the Big Ten, and so off we go. Here’s a look at each Big Ten football team and how it stacks up in the newest ESPN FPI rankings.
We start from the least ranked to the best.