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We are still months away from opening kickoff for Penn State football, but according to ESPN’s latest power index rankings, the Nittany Lions could surprise some people this season. Penn State came in at No. 10 on the rankings list that was released on Tuesday.
It should come as no surprise that the defending champion Alabama Crimson Tide rank at the top of the list. Oklahoma and Clemson round out the top three.
Ohio State is the only other Big Ten program in the top 10, coming in at No. 5. Wisconsin (15th), Iowa (23rd), and Indiana (25th) finish out the rest of Big Ten teams that were put in the top 25.
You might be asking yourself, what in the world is a power index?
Developed in 2013, it was designed to “measure team strength and predict game and season outcomes going forward.” The goal of this index isn’t necessarily to rank each team, according to ESPN, but rather be used as a predictor for games and season outcomes.
According to this year’s preseason rankings, the index predicts the Nittany Lions to win 8.6 games this season and gives them a 10.5-percent chance to win the Big Ten Conference and a 7.3-percent chance to make the College Football Playoff.
ESPN acknowledges that preseason rankings can have their flaws since there’s so many components built into making the preseason list. In 2020, Penn State was ranked No. 5 on the preseason index. After a brutal 0-5 start, the Nittany Lions salvaged their season by winning their last four games and ended up finishing 24th in the FPI rankings.
If we take the total wins for Penn State from 2016-2020, the average will tell you this team could surpass that expected 8.6 game win mark. Penn State is averaging 9.2 wins over the last five seasons, which includes the outlier from last season of only four wins.
Head coach James Franklin has said that the COVID-19 pandemic played a huge factor in their struggles throughout the 2020 season, so perhaps a full offseason of spring practices and a bit more normalcy will get Penn State back on track as one of the top programs in the country.
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