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.
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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