We all know that the Big Ten had a bad week. Just how bad was it? The conference lost 17.3 points in the latest ESPN conference power rankings. They equally weight the AP rankings and their own formula to try and determine the best and worst football conferences.
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Here is the full list of the ten football conferences and where they rank:
1. SEC: 96.8 points leads the way. No surprise there. What I want to know is how they gained points (1.3 this week) by playing 1-AA teams?
2. Pac 12: The Pac 12 actually dropped 0.4 points to 88.7, likely because of Colorado and Washington struggling. Washington State losing to Nevada certainly didn’t help. That said, I thought that Oregon’s win over Michigan State would have counted for more.
3. Big 12: The Big 12 dropped 2.3 points to 76.6, Why the drop? Texas getting thrashed by BYU is the likely culprit.
4. ACC: The ACC experienced a nice 7.2 point jump to 63.3. This was almost all on the shoulders of Virginia Tech’s win in Columbus. I don’t think the Tarheels struggling again, or FSU beating the Citadel really helped much.
5. Big Ten: They drop all the way to 49.7 points, but aren’t close to falling out of the top five. At least not yet. With another week like this, it is certainly possible.
6. American: They gained half a point, putting them at 25.1 points. This is the first place where the ESPN and AP rankings differ. The AP has the American at 7th.
7. Mountain West: They gained .6 points to move up to 20.8. Thank you, Nevada!
8. Conference USA: CUSA gained the most points (1.9) of any of the smaller conferences, likely because Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee State hung with Big Ten teams, and North Texas throttled SMU.
9. MAC: Gained .8 points to jump to 18.5. Can you imagine if Ball State could have hung on? Or if Toledo could have stayed with Missouri like the oddsmakers thought?
10. Sun Belt: They gained 1.4 points to 17.6. Likely on the heels of South Alabama’s win over Kent.