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The preseason Football Power Index for the 2015 season was released this week. This is a listing of the strength of the team without factoring in strength of schedule or speculating on final record. WMU comes in at #62, the highest in the MAC. Offense is ranked #43, defense is #80 and special teams is #102.

The FPI is constructed by factoring in three things:

- Last year's performances using ESPN's efficiency rating
- Returning starters
- Recruiting (A four-year average recruiting ranking of four systems (ESPN, Scouts, Rivals and Phil Steele) is used to measure the talent on the roster.)

http://espn.go.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_...380/102380


#62 - Western Michigan

#71 - Northern Illinois

#72 - Toledo

#77 - Ball State

#93 - Ohio

#94 - Bowling Green

#98 - UMass

#99 - Central Michigan

#104 - Kent State

#114 - Akron

#119 - Buffalo

#122 - Miami (OH)

#128 - Eastern Michigan


2015 OOC opponents:

#1 - Ohio State

#16 - Michigan State

#63 - Georgia Southern

Interesting that WMU is 62 and GSU is 63.

Sorry but I don't buy us being top in the MAC. Can't believe we are ahead of NIU and Toledo. Don't get it.

(02-12-2015 11:24 PM)Hoekjeness Wrote:  Interesting that WMU is 62 and GSU is 63.

Sorry but I don't buy us being top in the MAC. Can't believe we are ahead of NIU and Toledo. Don't get it.

I'm sure returning starters and recruiting weighed heavily into this. Do we have a better team than NIU or Toledo right now? I don't know, but we're at least getting close.

We return almost 100% of our offensive production from last year. And we had a good offense. Also consider that we lost just 1 senior LB and 1 senior DL. Front 7 is going to be deep. Then back to back top recruiting classes and well...it's not too hard to see how we're ranked that high on paper.

After seeing this list, I was curious to see where ESPN had each MAC school in its FPI before the 2014 season. Here's the link:

http://espn.go.com/college-football/stor...ex-ratings

64 NIU, 72 TOL, 81 BG, 91 BSU, 92 CMU, 98 KSU, 100 BUF, 106 OHIO, 115 AKR, 118 WMU, 122 EMU, 123 MIA, 129 MASS

I'm impressed they had NIU rated the highest before the season. Obviously, they were wrong about us, but so was everyone else. Outside of that, their 2014 preseason FPI can be nitpicked (Ohio, Akron, and UMass finished higher; BSU, KSU, and probably Buffalo finished lower), but as a whole it was probably more accurate than not.

As for the 2015 FPI, I think BSU will be improved, but I'm not convinced they'll be as good as #77. KSU is also probably a little overrated. The real question is, which MAC team will have a WMU-like breakout year in 2015? Given the strength of the West, it will almost certainly be a team in the East. IMO Akron and UMass are the best bets to make a big jump. I think Miami will definitely be better than their FPI, but I don't think they'll be improved enough yet to make a Bronco-like jump.

UMass and Miami are going to be the rising stars in the MAC East. Except UMass won't be in the MAC after this coming season...