NC State Football and ESPN's FPI Rankings

NC State's Situation

Again, the ranking itself came as no surprise to anyone. The CBS poll had NC State ranked 55th, just one spot below North Carolina. Interestingly, the Wolfpack ranked about Florida State and Syracuse on the FPI.

ESPN's exact verbiage describing how the system works makes sense and helps put the Wolfpack's ranking into perspective.

"FPI is a predictive rating system designed to measure team strength and project performance going forward. The ultimate goal of FPI is not to rank teams 1 through 128; rather, it is to correctly predict games and season outcomes," the company wrote.

Essentially, the system pegged the Wolfpack as a competitive team but not necessarily one it trusts to win games consistently. Given the 2024 season, that's a fair outlook for the team headed into 2025, as the Wolfpack gave away several potential wins a year ago.

The Controversy

The Wolfpack were far from the source of the controversy when it came to the FPI rankings. The latest iteration of the rankings saw nine programs from the SEC in the top 13 teams. The first team from the ACC, Clemson, did not appear until No. 16.

This sparked some college football pundits, specifically CBS's Danny Kanell, to address the fairness, or lack thereof, when it comes to FPI.

Kanell explained that Clemson and Miami were ranked in the top 12 teams back in June, but now have dropped several spots. While he's not known for being reasonable when it comes to criticism of the SEC, he made some fair points about how the SEC promoted its strength of schedule all throughout the offseason.

Given ESPN's connection to the SEC, the reasons for concern amongst ACC coaches, fans and analysts are valid but not grounded in actual proof. Clemson and Miami, the other top ACC program, will just have to win to improve their standing and hope the FPI has no bearing on the actual polls by the end of the season.

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