Buckeyes' Back on the Top of the Only Unbiased Rankings in College Football

This is not to say one ranking system is right, or one system is wrong; they are all just different.

The AP Poll has been proven this year to be a complete joke, as the journalists who vote on it have made a complete mockery of it. They have forgotten to rank teams; they have intentionally ranked teams lower to turn it into stories and clicks for their own content; and then they unfairly rank their teams higher based on their bias.

The weekly Coaches Poll is my personal favorite because I tend to trust that those guys know the sport the best and they know the teams the best. There is also a legitimate world where they just brush it off and have their assistant fill it out so that they aren't wasting any time.

BACK ON TOP 🌰
Ohio State jumps back to No. 1 in FPI after its win over Iowa.
The Buckeyes now have an 84% chance to make the College Football Playoff 👀 pic.twitter.com/1YsPjaiWxJ

— ESPN Insights (@ESPNInsights) October 6, 2026

Lastly, there is ESPN's Football Power Index, which is probably, the most accurate poll in terms of evaluating teams and ranking them based on the competition that they have played and the way that they have won or lost those games.

Basically, the FPI ranking is a formula that spits out a plus or minus number that indicates what that team would do against an "average" opponent at a neutral site.

An "average opponent" would have an FPI of 0, or close to it. Some of the teams that are floating around that mark are North Texas (0.1), Toledo (-0.2), and Syracuse (0.2).

Ohio State checks the box as the top team according to ESPN's FPI with a score of 28.8. That number means that if Ohio State were to play Toledo, these rankings would project that the Buckeyes would win by 29 points.

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This week's opponent, the Maryland Terrapins, have an FPI ranking of -2.5, meaning that the Buckeyes are 31.3-point favorites according to this metric.

You get the point.

Slotting in behind the Buckeyes are the Georgia Bulldogs (28.2), Notre Dame (27.8), and the Texas Longhorns (27.5).

I like this format because it tries its best to remove bias from the conversation. Now, it isn't a perfect formula because it is an ESPN tool, and with an ESPN tool, there is an inherent SEC bias to it, but the fact remains that there is a formula to it all that factors in wins, performances, and several other variables that get left out elsewhere.

The truth is that there is no perfect formula for any of this. This is largely a crapshoot from many angles and will never be even as long as these teams are playing in a division of football that has 136 members to it.

Whatever the poll, the Buckeyes are in first place and that is the important part. Ohio State is playing really clean and solid football right now. They look like a team that is going to be very hard to beat and they are proving that weekly.