Where is Ohio State in ESPN’s newly released Football Power Index for 2021?

ESPN has released its newest set of FPI Rankings for the 2021 college football season and Ohio State has checked in pretty high on the list.

The folks at ESPN are at it again. The worldwide leader in sports programming just released its latest Football Power Index — or FPI for short — and we know you are curious where Ohio State falls.

The Buckeyes have continuously been at or near the top of this predictive formula that takes into account a lot of analytics we know nothing about. But we can regurgitate what ESPN says about them on the interweb. Apparently, they deal with metrics and numbers that are “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.” Or, in this case, before the season.

Anyhow. You’ll be happy (maybe) to know that once all the sausage was made with this ESPN formula, Ohio State checks in at No. 5, behind Alabama (1), Oklahoma (2), Clemson (3), and — wait for it — Iowa State (4). Yep, the Cyclones are “predicted” to be better than the Buckeyes this year.

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Oh well. OSU does have to replace a lot, so we’ll see how it all plays out. In the meantime, you can get a look at the rest of the ESPN FPI rankings by visiting ESPN.com and playing around with all the different stats and expected results.

ESPN predictive FPI for every team on Ohio State football’s schedule in 2021

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Wisconsin football’s ESPN FPI rating compared to the rest of the Big Ten

ESPN released their complete 2021 Football Power Index rankings this week, signaling another step towards college football kicking off this

ESPN released their complete 2021 Football Power Index rankings this week, signaling another step towards college football kicking off this fall.

The rankings work to compare each team against what is considered an average opponent, using those numbers then to quantify each program’s chances to win out, win six games, win their division, win their conference, reach the College Football Playoff and win the national championship.

Specifically, each FPI ranking boils down to a team’s expected point margin vs. an average opponent on a neutral field. As an example, Alabama’s power index of 28 means they are expected to beat an average opponent by 28 points on a neutral field.

Here is where Wisconsin stands among the rest of the Big Ten in ESPN’s newly-released rankings:

(Note: each team is listed by where they rank nationally and their FPI rating)

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