Wisconsin Football's FPI Rating Conveys Clear Message About Where Badgers Stand in Big Ten

First, the elephant in the room — ESPN's FPI ratings are notoriously controversial.

Even looking past the clear conflict of interest, with the network broadcasting (and clearly favoring) more SEC teams, the metric has made some questionable takes over the years.

Last season, ESPN's preseason FPI didn't feature the eventual national champion, Indiana, in its top 25. The No. 1 team, Texas, was one of the biggest disappointments in the country last fall.

Still, the metric — which ESPN says "is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team's performance going forward for the rest of the season," represented by how many points above or below average a team is — is something of a necessary evil.

Lots of metrics used to evaluate team's resumes come playoff time, such as strength of schedule, are calculated using ESPN's FPI. Thus, as controversial and oftentimes, downright erroneous as FPI can be, it's worth taking note of, even 50-plus days out from kickoff.

The network recently dropped its FPI ratings, and Wisconsin checks in at No. 11 in the Big Ten (No. 43 nationally) with a 4.8.

Here's how the rest of the Big Ten stacks up:

Program	ESPN FPI Rating	National Rank
Ohio State	28.7	1
Oregon	25.3	4
Indiana	23.1	6
USC	17.0	13
Michigan	15.9	15
Penn State	13.7	17
Iowa	10.6	25
Washington	9.9	26
Nebraska	8.8	30
Illinois	6.3	39
Wisconsin	4.8	43
Northwestern	1.4	60
Maryland	1.0	61
Minnesota	0.6	63
UCLA	0.5	64
Michigan State	0.2	65
Rutgers	-0.3	67
Purdue	-0.9	71

Another day, another lukewarm outlook on the Badgers' chances in 2026. Still, that's better than where the Badgers finished last year, when their FPI was 2.5 by season's end and they checked in at No. 12 in the conference.

Quick takeaways from ESPN's initial FPI

Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

One of the main tenants of FPI is that it's an exceedingly complicated, in-house metric that isn't meant to be easily digestible in its raw data form. That value of 4.8 assigned to Wisconsin is a completely abstract number that doesn't correlate to anything tangible in real life.

But where ESPN's preseason FPI is valuable is what it tells us about where the Badgers stand — or where ESPN's computer thinks they stand — in relation to the rest of the Big Ten.

Wisconsin is clearly in the conference's third or fourth tier. But checking in at No. 43 nationally, it's also clearly above what's projected to be the conference bottom feeders that all rank in the 60s nationally.

Essentially, ESPN thinks the Badgers are the last (worst) mediocre team in the Big Ten.

Ultimately, I think Wisconsin could be ranked anywhere from one to three spots higher; I certainly think 11th in the conference is the floor. In terms of teams the Badgers could be ranked higher than, I look at Nebraska and Illinois as programs getting a little too much credit ahead of the 2026 campaign after recent resurgences.

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