Can someone explain ESPN's FPI to me?

[uofkFTW18]

I recently saw that ESPN's FPI has Kentucky ranked at 68th. For comparison, South Carolina is 69th, Vanderbilt is 60th, Missouri is 59th, and Mississippi State is 49th. Obviously these rankings seem a little strange considering we've beaten all of these teams yet they still manage to be ranked the same or higher than us.

So can someone explain to me how FPI calculates these rankings and why it should be taken seriously?

For those who want to check the rankings themselves, here's the link.

 

[ukgrad83]

Looks like a pile of crap to me.

 

[Dallas-Wild]

[poop][poop][poop][poop][poop]

 

[sambowieshin_rivals]

FPI stands for Forgettable Piece of (useless) Information

 

[CB3UK]

Cant explain it nor should it be taken seriously. I assume we are playing catchup from wherever we started. They dont matter nor affext our play or postseason. They obviously suck.

 

[WildCard]

Power rankings (i.e., math driven rankings of all teams) are based in whole or in great part on cumulative stats and not head to head or "trend" results. Naturally you get outliers with this approach. Power rankings are generally built to project a point difference between 2 teams on a neutral field. It is always best to look at the actual difference and not the ranking. Often times there is little point differential between 10-15 spots in the rank.

FWIW, UK has moved up 3.3 points in the past 3 weeks (i.e., #81 at -1.7 three games ago). ESPN's approach is a bit unique in that it compares and projects how much any team would fair against a "theoretical" team (so the point difference between 2 real teams is the projected spread if they were to play each other)

Peace

 

[Dakota25]

ESPN also has a BPI for basketball too and all this started about five years ago. ESPN pushes both a lot but both are meaningless.

 

[gossie21_rivals69805]

CBS has us ranked 57th which is probably closer to where we should be. It has us considerably higher than Vandy (78), USC (82), MSU (89), and Mizzou (103). And even 10 spots higher than Georgia.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/rankings/cbs/128