Breaking down Penn State’s rank in ESPN’s FPI

ESPN’s infamous football power index has been released for the first time for the 2022 season and there are a lot of the same but also some new faces as well. Penn State did get a pretty reasonable ranking in the grand scheme of things but the FPI isn’t the end all be all, football still has to be played.

For now, the FPI can be served as a tool to show where the analytics and media see Penn State and the landscape of college football in the Spring. For those reading this who aren’t sure what the FPI index is or what makes it up, it is actually pretty simple.

The Football Power Index weighs the roster and coaching staff and then turns around with the team’s schedule and basically predicts the season’s outcome. The index predicts everything from wins and losses, chances of winning out, chances to win the conference, and of course national title chances.

By weighing all those things the Big Ten had five teams in the top 25, Penn State came in ranked 12th overall for this upcoming season.

ESPN’s FPI predicts Penn State’s record to be 8-4 in the regular season with a whopping 4.3% chance of winning the conference. Looking even deeper than the conference as a whole they are predicting the team to have a 6.6% chance to win their division. The favorite for the conference and division is of course Ohio State who you can expect to stay king until someone can knock them from the mountain top.

Other notable numbers that Penn State fans will see will be of course the National Championship odds. Those you can expect are low, 0.2% to be exact, so those numbers can’t get any worse. What should be your main takeaway from it all? Penn State should be in store for a bounce-back season compared to what we saw in 2021.

With a 97.4% chance to win six games though, at worst it seems Penn State is guaranteed to at least match the regular season from last year.

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