Buckeyes Sit Atop ESPN's FPI Rankings Ahead of the 2026 Season
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The Ohio State Buckeyes land at the top of ESPN's FPI rankings to begin the 2026 season. The FPI stands for Football Power Index, and instead of this being an opinionated and subjective exercise, it is a ranking based on the numbers.
The way that these rankings are formulated with the following inputs: expected points added, any coaching changes, recruiting rankings in both transfer and high school, returning starters, and historical data. They throw a value on each, put them into a pot, and it spits out a number.
For Ohio State, their number this year is a +28.7, which signifies the expected margin of victory against an "average" FBS team on a neutral field. For example, if Ohio State were to play Michigan State (+0.3 FPI) on a neutral field, this model predicts the Buckeyes to win by 28 points.
All of that is to say, ESPN is predicting the Buckeyes to be dominant once again.
More so, the model also predicts that the Buckeyes have the second-highest number of wins in the country. Ohio State's projected record is 10.2-2.4, while the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are the only higher prediction, with a 10.7-1.3 record.
The model also projects that the Buckeyes will have a 75 percent chance to make the playoffs. Sidenote, they can't expand the playoffs to 24 teams; it would ruin the regular season.
Ohio State has the potential to be dominant once again next year in college football. If they had a schedule that was similar to what they had last year, they would be projected to go undefeated.
Unfortunately, they have a gauntlet of a calendar, and it is going to be a weekly battle for them to come out on top week after week.
In my opinion, anything 9-3 and above next year is a major success. There will be some slip-ups next year, but it is important to remember that a loss to a good football team is not the end of the world. It will happen, and it will make them better.
As we have seen in the past, Ryan Day does have the ability to make sure that his team is peaking at the right time. We saw it in 2024; we saw the opposite in 2025, so in 2026, if Day can flip that switch at the right time, Ohio State's ranking in January will match its ranking from July.
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