Big Ten Power Rankings: Week 14
By David Rouben
Taking a look at where the Big Ten stands after rivalry week, and which teams deserve to make the College Football Playoff.
All season long, the Big Ten has been staking a claim as the best conference in college football. And that was never more true than Week 13. In what has come to be known as rivalry week, Michigan vs. Ohio State stood above the rest.
People watched the Iron Bowl, Notre Dame vs. USC and Florida vs. FSU, but everyone was still talking about The Game hours after it was done. No other game had the Cleveland Cavaliers dancing on the sideline, or the same level of intensity. Almost every other game was uneven on paper, and was over by halftime.
And in truth, there’s a reason why the Big Ten has been dominating the playoff rankings. Alabama is that good, but the rest of the SEC has been that bad. Washington and Colorado are great, but they haven’t beaten anyone. Louisville looked like they could hang with Clemson all year long, then they fell off a cliff. And while Oklahoma is resurgent now, their two best opponents came during the non-conference slate, and they lost to both of them.
No other Power Five conference has four playoff-caliber teams like the Big Ten does. That was the case before rivalry week, and to some extent, it still is after the dust has settled. It’s a little backwards that the best team won’t be playing in the Championship Game, and that the conference champion will be a two-loss team.
But given how highly they rate the Big Ten, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see two representatives in the Playoff. That’s what the rest of the country should root for, since the inevitable controversy that will come out of that might be enough for the committee to overhaul their system and expand the field within the next year.
But there was more to the Big Ten than just Michigan vs. Ohio State this week. Let’s take a look at how everything unfolded.
Rutgers lost to Maryland despite scoring their first points in three weeks. Maryland may have been on a four-game slide, but Rutgers has been on a 10-game slide. And while nobody predicted them to come out on top in the East Division, the way they folded against the conference’s elite teams was sad to watch. God only knows how long it will take before this program starts to resemble a somewhat respectable team.
Illinois may own a win over Michigan State and have a better conference record than them, but it’s hard to argue that they’re the better team. They haven’t had a single close loss all year, save for an overtime loss to Purdue, and got decimated by injuries. Their 3-9 record is now the program’s worst season since 2012, but they wouldn’t have hired Lovie Smith if they weren’t going to dedicate a lot of time and money towards him. Clearly, this team had an eye towards the future.
Fresh off of almost beating Ohio State, Michigan State had a chance to do them a big favor by beating Penn State. They gave them fits in the first half, but second half Penn State is a completely different beast.
The last time the Spartans finished with three wins was 1991, but what made this year especially frustrating was that they held a lead in every single game. It’s hard to think of the last time a team went from conference champions to bottom feeders, but they still collected some moral victories during the month of November.