College Football Top 25 Power Rankings: ESPN vs The Hourglass

Jake Wimberly

Ross Gaskin Contributing:

ESPN just recently released their post-spring Top 25 power rankings based on their own Power Index. Well, if you have been keeping up, we also released our power rankings based on our own power index on the HG not too long ago. Below is where our ranking and ESPN’s ranking are the same, different, and not even close to agreeing on.

SAME:

We both have Texas as the highest ranked team in the country based on power rankings, and we both have Michigan as the 17th ranked team. We also had certain teams close to the same spots like Ohio State, Oregon, and Georgia being different by 1-2 spots. Shockingly, ESPN’s ranking and our ranking are not very similar with us disagreeing on a lot of teams. That does not mean one is right and the other is wrong, it just means we

DIFFERENT:

For the most part, both our ranking and ESPN’s have the same teams just in different spots. For example, Tennessee (10&14), Clemson (7&11), Alabama (3&9), and LSU (12&2). Actually we both agree on 20/25 teams on the list with only the placement of the teams being different.

NOT EVEN CLOSE:

The 5 teams we have on the Hourglass Power Rankings that ESPN does not are Florida State (16), Texas Tech (18), TCU (21), Wisconsin (24), and Rutgers (25). The 5 Teams ESPN has on their list that we do not are SMU (20), Kansas State (21), Arkansas (22), Arizona State (24), and Nebraska (25). The main reasons why we do not agree on certain teams is because we both have different ways of coming up with our power numbers and we place more importance on different things.

Again, I am not saying one list is better than the other. I am just comparing and contrasting our ranking to ESPN’s rankings.