It’s never too early for ESPN to release its Football Power Index ratings for the 2025 college football season.
A month ago, ESPN writer Mark Schlabach shared his way-too-early top 25. He currently has Penn State ranked as the No. 1 team in the country. Clearly, he’s very confident Drew Allar will lead the program back to the College Football Playoff.
Interestingly enough, ESPN’s FPI doesn’t have Penn State ranked inside the top three.
“Just to refresh our memories, the FPI is a predictive rating system that estimates each FBS team’s strength (in points per game relative to the national average) on offense, defense and special teams, making adjustments for starters lost, recruiting talent and other personnel changes,” ESPN’s Neil Paine wrote. “Those numbers are then plugged into the schedule, and everything is simulated 20,000 times to track each team’s odds of winning its conference, making the playoff and advancing through to the national title.”
As of this week, Texas is No. 1 in the FPI rankings. There’s plenty of firepower returning to Steve Sarkisian’s roster, especially with Arch Manning at quarterback.
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The FPI also values Georgia and Ohio State over most teams in college football. That makes sense considering both programs are always in contention.
Here are the top 10 teams, per ESPN’s FPI:
TexasGeorgiaOhio StateAlabamaPenn StateOregonClemsonMiamiNotre DameTexas A&M
Tennessee and LSU just missed the top 10, but that could change depending on how these two programs perform at the start of the season.
Ole Miss, Auburn, Michigan and South Carolina also have respectable FPI scores heading into the summer.
The full rankings from ESPN’s FPI can be seen here.
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