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Let what go?  I think that Ohio State will beat Penn State....but let's see it.  Every cranked on the Gophers over "not playing anyone" and even after beating PSU, we're still seeing a similar trend for some.  If you want to play the 'well who did you actually beat' game....then don't whine when your team comes into play.  I thought the Penn State game was supposed to quiet some of the skepticism.

Guess it is what it is.  The Gophers could very well lose to Iowa this weekend.  Penn State could beat OSU.  What if that happened?  I'd guess that the Gophers win over PSU would still be considered a mirage?  Quite a few posters still do.  Ranked #7 in the AP and #8 in the CFP ranking yet #5 in the Big Ten according to some here.

All I am saying is that it will work itself out in the end. The way they look right now, I think Minn is as good as any team in the league outside of Ohio State. But that is simply my opinion and could very well prove to be wrong. Minn could be worse than those teams or better than Ohio State.

But as I said, the next 3 or 4 weeks will give us a better indication one way or another. And when it is all said and done, I trust that the people that post on this forum will put them where they honestly believe them to be in relation to the other teams in the B1G. 

Winning on the road in November is hard, and upsets happen.

If Iowa beats Minnesota by one score, I'll probably keep Minnesota at 5 and Iowa at 6. If Minnesota beats Iowa by 14+, I'll likely move them up a couple spots.

Yep. Road games anywhere are hard. I'm not taking for granted a UW win in Lincoln this weekend either.

Results posted, votes through The Loon, 16 voters.  Sorry to be a little later than usual posting results this week.  

There were some pretty substantial changes this week:

• Minnesota was up three spots to #2 from #5.  
• PSU, UW, and M were each down a spot after being passed by Minnesota.  
• Michigan State was down two spots to #9 from #7.  
• Indiana and Illinois were each up one spot passing MSU.  
• Northwestern and Maryland traded 12th/13th again so now Northwestern is back to 12th and Maryland is back to 13th.  

Minnesota becomes the fourth team this year to hold the #2 spot:

• Michigan was tied for 1/2 in the preseason then dropped to #2 after week 1, then lost the #2 spot to:
• Wisconsin was #2 from week-2 through week-7 when they lost the #2 spot to:
• Penn State spent the last three weeks at #2 before losing the #2 spot to Minnesota.  

Personally, I think that the voters here are overrating Minnesota and Indiana but I can see why.  The Gophers and Hoosiers have the two highest standard deviations.  The reason, I think, is that they and Ohio State are the only B1G teams to have only played one of the top-6 teams in the league so far.  

In spite of only playing one of the top-6, the Buckeyes are a near-unanimous #1 for several reasons:

• They demolished the one top-6 opponent that they played (Wisconsin)
• The Buckeyes have either the biggest or one of the biggest wins so far this year against all six of their conference opponents, see below:

• Ohio State's 31 point win over #4 Wisconsin is by far the best anyone has done against Wisconsin with Illinois' one point win a distant second.  
• Ohio State's 41 point win over #7 Indiana is by far the best anyone has done against Indiana with MSU's nine point (it was closer than that) win a distant second.  
• Ohio State's 24 point win over MSU is the second biggest so far this year behind only Wisconsin's 38 point win over the Spartans.  
• Ohio State's 41 point win over Nebraska is the best anyone has done against Nebraska with Minnesota's 27 point win being next best.  
• Ohio State's 49 point win over Northwestern is by far the best anyone has done against Northwestern with Indiana's 31 point win being next best.  
• Ohio State's 59 point win over Maryland is equal to PSU's margin (to be fair, PSU did it on the road while tOSU did it at home) with Minnesota (42), Michigan (31), and Purdue (26) also having blowout wins over the Terps.  

Indiana:
The Hoosiers are 4-2 in conference and 7-2 overall which is great.  Now for the problems:

• The Hoosiers' three OOC opponents were awful.  Ball State is a midling MAC team, EIU is an FCS and a bad FCS team at that and UCONN is quite possibly the worst team in the entire FBS.  
• The Hoosiers' four B1G wins were against the four teams that we currently have ranked 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th in the league.  
• Worse, only two of those wins against the worst four teams in the B1G were by more than one score.  

At this point I see the Hoosiers as being not substantially better than the worst four teams in the league.  Their remaining games are at #3, vs #5, and at #10 and if Indiana beats any of them, that win will be their best of the year.  Maybe they will, but until it happens . . .

Minnesota:
The Gophers have an even gaudier record than the Hoosiers at 9-0/6-0 which is great.  Now for the problems:

• Minnesota's OOC was certainly better than Indiana's but not by all that much.  
• Four of Minnesota's B1G wins came against four of the worst five teams in the B1G.  
• Five of Minnesota's six B1G wins came against teams ranked in the bottom half of the conference (#8, #10, #11, #13, and #14).  

I've always been leery of putting too much stock in any one game because we all know that upsets happen.  I say that, and I can prove it.  Illinois beat Wisconsin.  We all know that.  In spite of that nobody here has Illinois ranked higher than Wisconsin.  In fact, nobody here has Illinois ranked higher than #6 nor Wisconsin lower than #5.  Only one person has Illinois 6th and they have Wisconsin 2nd and only one person has Wisconsin 5th and they have Illinois 7th.  

Nobody here has Illinois ranked closer than two spots behind Wisconsin and on average the 16 of us who voted have Illinois more than four spots behind Wisconsin.  

My point is that literally every single one of us thinks that the better team failed to win the Illinois/Wisconsin game.  There are games like this every year.  Now back to Minnesota.  Maybe the better team won the Minnesota/Penn State game.  If so then Minnesota is likely the second best team in the league.  If not then what?  

My point is the same point that I made to @RestingB!tchFace in another thread:  At this point I would grade Minnesota as "incomplete".  With only one game against a team in the top half of the league there just isn't much to go on.  

This week's games:

• #1 Ohio State at #14 Rutgers
• #2 Minnesota at #6 Iowa
• #3 Penn State vs #7 Indiana
• #4 Wisconsin at #11 Nebraska
• #5 Michigan vs #9 Michigan State
• #8 Illinois is off
• #10 Purdue is off
• #12 Northwestern has an OOC game
• #13 Maryland is off

Overall that is a pretty uninteresting slate.  In theory MSU could spring an upset in their rivalry game with Michigan or Nebraska could topple Wisconsin at home but I see those both as pretty unlikely.  The most interesting games are the two in which the teams are separated by "only" four spots in the rankings:  MN/IA and PSU/IU.  Both have rather significant B1GCG implications and for both the Hoosiers and Gophers this is only their second game all year against a team currently ranked in the top half of the league.  


After this weekend, in the last two weeks of the season we have a slew of intriguing games:

• #1 Ohio State has potentially loseable games against #3 and #5.  The game against #3 will likely be for a spot in the B1GCG.  
• #2 Minnesota has a potentially loseable game against #4.  That could potentially be for the other spot in the B1GCG.  
• #3 Penn State has a game at #1.  
• #4 Wisconsin travels to #2.  
• #5 Michigan travels to #7 and hosts #1.  
• #6 Iowa hosts #8 and travels to #11.  
• #7 Indiana hosts #5 and travels to #10.  
• #8 Illinois hosts #6 and #12.  
• #9 Michigan State plays the two worst teams in the league.  
• #10 Purdue travels to #4 and hosts #7 (they need to win both to get to 6-6).  
• #11 Nebraska hosts #6 and travels to #13.  
• #12 Northwestern hosts #2 and travels to #8.  
• #13 Maryland hosts #11 and travels to #9.  
• #14 Rutgers hosts #9 and travels to #3.  

Interesting to me is that except for Michigan being at home, all of the lower ranked teams are at home. This weekend is ripe for upsets, in my opinion.

Also note, for the first time all year, more than half of us agree on each of the teams.

we have enough data to dissuade illogical thinking

It's tricky.  Since the Gophers haven't played a very good schedule....it's hard to rank them.  The Penn State game was supposed to be the 'real/not real' game.  A lot of people....including the AP and the committee agreed that this...along with the destruction of multiple teams prior deservered a top ten ranking.

I agree with the first paragraph which is pretty much what I said above.  It is tricky to rank Minnesota because they haven't played a very good schedule which makes it hard to rank them.  That is undoubtedly why, as I pointed out above, their ranking has the highest standard deviation in the whole conference.  The vote distribution is also interesting, Minnesota's votes:

• They have one vote for #1, yours.  
• The majority (10 of 16) voted them #2.  
• Nobody voted them #3.  
• Nobody voted them #4.  
• Four of us (including me) voted them #5.  
• Nobody voted them #6
• Nobody voted them #7.  
• One person voted them #8.  

I've been doing this compilation for a long time and it is fairly unusual for teams to have voids between groups of votes.  Voids between the group and an outlier (like Minnesota's void between #5 and #8 aren't terribly unusual.  However, if you throw out the outliers (as I do when I drop the high and low) you are still left with 10 votes for #2 then a two spot void (no votes for #3 or #4), then four votes for #5.  

That happens because, as you said, it is tricky.  We are all making assumptions.  You and, to a lesser extent, the 10 people who voted the Gophers #2 have implicitly assumed that Minnesota has put their early season struggles completely behind them and they are now the best or second best team in the league.  The Loon who voted them #8 and, to a lesser extent, the four of us (including me) who voted them #5 have implicitly assumed that those too-close early season games aren't necessarily completely behind the Gophers and that they are vulnerable and could or would lose at a neutral site to the rest of the teams in that group (PSU, UW, M, and IA).  

I guess medina is bitter that the OSU/PSU game isn't going to be a clash of the unbeatens?  There's something there....where the Gophers have the best win in the conference....but he just doesn't like it.  But losses to Illinois he likes.

First, this entire paragraph is just completely unnecessary.  You agreed that ranking Minnesota at this point is tricky, why make a personal attack over it?  

Second, I could care less whether or not Ohio State's game with Penn State is a showdown of unbeatens.  At this point Ohio State is #2 in all three rankings while Penn State is #9, #9, and #11.  It is still a big game and in two out of three polls it is still a top-10 matchup.  Furthermore, the tOSU/PSU game is still very likely to get Gameday because as of the current rankings the only other game between ranked teams is Baylor/Texas and both of those teams are ranked lower than Penn State.  There is, of course, a possibility that tOSU/PSU could lose Gameday to Baylor/Texas but I would guess probably only if Baylor beats Oklahoma and Texas beats Iowa State and even then I think the tOSU/PSU game would feature higher ranked teams.  In addition to all of that, whether or not Ohio State gets to host Gameday on 11/23 isn't THAT big of a deal to me anyway.  

No, I don't like losses to Illinois.  Wisconsin's loss to Illinois gives me pause, but the Badgers also:

• Ran the Wolverines off the field in a 35-14 romp that wasn't even as close as the score makes it look, and
• Beat Michigan State more soundly than any other team this year including Ohio State, and
• Beat Iowa (albeit by one score and at home)

So yes, the Illinois loss is an issue, but Wisconsin has other results on their resume that offset that issue.  

The tricky part about ranking Minnesota is that there isn't a whole lot on their resume because they have played a remarkably easy schedule so far.