What FPI does and doesn't say about NU in 2024

ESPN's Football Power Index is quite as high on the Huskers as others. That plus a handful of midweek recruiting updates.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

In ESPN’s hypothetical football lab, Nebraska makes the 12-team College Football Playoff 980 times in 2024 over 20,000 simulations. That’s 4.9% of the time, which is where ESPN’s recently released Football Power Index (FPI) put the Huskers’ playoff chances.

Not bad, all things considered, and I’ll give FPI credit for this: It is trying to consider all things. Its 20,000 simulations make the projected win-loss records look wonky, but that’s because it’s also simulating  conference championship games, bowls and the playoff. Teams at the top of the rankings end up with more than 12 games because, well, they’re likely to play more than 12 games.

The Huskers—41st nationally in the initial rankings with a projected record of 6.5-5.5—are a solid bet to be bowl eligible (69.3%) by FPI, but that win total is a full game below what you’ll still find in most of the betting markets. If you were feeling uncomfortable with growing hype around Nebraska of late, FPI is a little lower than most on NU.

In my hierarchy of trust, however, I’ll almost always lean towards predictive markets (sportsbooks essentially) over predictive models. Both may start out as sophisticated algorithms, but the former has the advantage of incorporating real-time data (i.e., bets) and the wisdom of crowds serves as an ongoing accuracy check on the market. This is why it’s hard for any model to beat the line over any sustained period.¹

That said, I do find power ratings from the predictive models to be useful information, and I often trust them more than straight opinion. So, let’s dig into the new FPI ratings to try and understand what they’re saying and what they’re not about Nebraska, its opponents and the rest of the Big Ten.