Top-25 you say?

Some context around Nebraska's better-than-expected initial FPI ranking

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

Since the end of the 2016 football season, Nebraska has spent four weeks in the top-25 poll of record. That’s four weeks out of a possible 131. This for a program that was once ranked in 348 consecutive AP polls¹ between—still the record, for now—and was absent for all of five polls between 1970 and 2000.

But this year’s Huskers will start the season in at least one top-25…from a statistical model. ESPN released its Football Power Index (FPI) ratings this week with Nebraska landing at No. 25. The Huskers’ initial rating of 9.3 can be read as this model views NU as 9.3 points better than the average FBS team.

It’s a nice supporting argument for the idea Nebraska is improving under Matt Rhule. Unless of course you’ve sworn off offseason “hype” or just have some skepticism of algorithms. Those are healthy responses to what we’ve seen from the Huskers over the past decade. If power rankings were perfect the games would be much less fun.

They are a tool, however, and one I reach for often because they’re fun to use. So, let’s look at a couple of things from this FPI release: 1) Does it tell us anything new about NU, 2) What’s the Huskers’ history with FPI and 3) How does the model perform?