Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Crystal clear.

I cannot do rankings this week. I did not watch a single game to have any input.

I'd probably have Michigan dead last and Ohio State first. That is all I know.

I only have 11 votes so far.  The last two weeks I had 15 each week.  Who is missing?

847badger usually votes, said above he wasn't this week.  
@iahawk15 

@NorthernOhioBuckeye 

@HawkFrenzy 

@fezzador 

@SFBadger96 

@TyphonInc 

The B1G is a B1G mess.  The top 5 teams are clearly ahead of the bottom 9.  #14 is capable of knocking off anyone from #6-13,  and the way this season is playing out, it may end up being that the only loss any of the Top 5 teams has suffered to a Bottom 9 team is Iowa dropping the season opener to Purdue (which I'm sure they'd love to have back).

I'm pretty sure your #3 just lost to your #14.  It is my #5 and #14 so not criticizing your rankings just you overlooked that.

Ty still hasn't forgiven Sparty for '15

#14??

who cares?

8-14 are pretty interchangeable

Results posted, votes through @TyphonInc , 13 voters.  

This is the strangest version that I have ever seen of our power rankings and I've been compiling it for probably close to a decade.  

Michigan is dead last and, as an Ohio State fan, I could spend time gloating about that but I will not.  Instead, I'll dig them out of it a little bit.  Half of the teams in our conference currently have votes for last place:

• 1 vote for PSU
• 1 vote for RU
• 2 votes for MN
• 1 vote for IL
• 4 votes for MSU
• 3 votes for UNL
• 1 vote for M

Only one voter ( @LittlePig ) actually voted the Wolverines at #14.  It is hardly a consensus and MSU, UNL, and MN each have more last place votes than the Wolverines.  

I don't think I've ever seen one of our Power Rankings with so little agreement at the bottom.  Two major Helmet teams (UNL and M) from back when I was in school are last and second to last but note that even combined they have less than half of the votes for the last two spots.  


If you look at the vote distribution chart you can see what is going on here.  There are only two things that at least half of us agree upon:

• 12 of 13 of us agree that tOSU is #1 (and the disagreement is from @Brutus Buckeye who basically takes quarantined teams out of his rankings so for all practical purposes it is unanimous).  
• 8 of 13 of us agree that IU is #2.  

That is it.  

The least disagreement is on #10.  No team has more than three votes and half the teams in the conference have at least one vote.  No team has more than five votes for any spot between #8 and #12.  We just don't know.  

There is very strong agreement that there is a top-5 and a bottom-9 and there is pretty strong agreement on the order of the top-4.  The bottom eight, however, are all within +/-4 of one another.  Even the gap all the way from #6 UMD to #14 M isn't all that big and would anybody be really shocked if Michigan beat Maryland?  

@bwarbiany :

You might be the only stats-minded person other than me to appreciate this.  If you look at Ohio State's column in the schedule/performance chart, it is actually exactly as it theoretically "should" be.  That almost never happens but here it is this week:

The Buckeyes:

• Beat #2 IU by 7
• Beat #8 PSU by 13
• Beat #9 RU by 22
• Beat #13 UNL by 35

In theory, each teams' column should have any losses at the top running from biggest losses down to closest losses followed by wins running from closest wins at the top to biggest wins at the bottom but, like I said, that almost never actually happens.  

Here is your team and more on that outlier question we discussed earlier:

So the Boilermakers:

• Beat #4 by 4
• Lost to #5 by 7
• Lost to #9 by 7
• Lost to #10 by 3
• Beat #11 by 7

The result against #4, Iowa is clearly the outlier.  To double-check that, here is Iowa's column:


So the Hawkeyes:

• Lost to #5 by 1
• Lost to #7 by 4
• Beat #8 by 20
• Beat #10 by 28
• Beat #12 by 42
• Beat #13 by 6

There are two outliers for Iowa.  The game against #7 Purdue looks like it should have been a win and the game against #13 Nebraska should have been a blowout not a come-from-behind dogfight that wasn't finally secured until Nebraska's QB fumbled with just over two minutes remaining.  

Each other team with outliers in bold:
#2 Indiana:

• Lost to #1 tOSU by 7
• Beat #6 UMD by 16
• Beat #8 PSU in OT
• Beat #9 RU by 16
• Beat #12 MSU by 24
• Beat #14 M by 17

Interesting that IU "underperformed" against M and PSU.  
#3 Wisconsin:

• Lost to #5 NU by 10
• Beat #11 IL by 38
• Beat #14 M by 38

No outliers but only three games so that isn't too unusual.  

#5 Northwestern:

• Beat #3 UW by 10
• Beat #4 IA by 1
• Beat #6 UMD by 40
• Beat #7 PU by 7
• Lost to #12 MSU by 9
• Beat #13 UNL by 8

There really isn't even a trend here, it is like every game is an outlier.  


#6 Maryland:

• Lost to #2 IU by 16
• Lost to #5 NU by 40
• Beat #8 PSU by 16
• Beat #10 MN in OT

Like NU, there isn't much of a trend here other than two losses then two wins but both the losses and the wins are flipped from what they theoretically should be.  

#8 Penn State:

• Lost to #1 tOSU by 13
• Lost to #2 IU in OT
• Lost to #4 IA by 20
• Lost to #6 UMD by 16
• Lost to #13 UNL by 7
• Beat #14 M by 10

It is like they were a totally different team for those first two games.  


#9 RU:

• Lost to #1 tOSU by 22
• Lost to #2 IU by 16
• Beat #7 PU by 7
• Lost to #11 IL by 3
• Beat #12 MSU by 11
• Lost to #14 M in OT

Nothing to say here.  

#10 MN:

• Lost to #4 IA by 28
• Lost to #6 UMD in OT
• Beat #7 PU by 3
• Beat #11 IL by 27
• Lost to #14 M by 25

Their loss to M is a major outlier.  In theory it "should" have been a blowout win.  

#11 IL:

• Lost to #3 UW by 38
• Lost to #7 PU by 7
• Beat #9 RU by 3
• Lost to #10 MN by 27
• Beat #13 UNL by 18

Not sure what happened to the Illini against MN.  

#12 MSU:

• Lost to #2 IU by 24
• Lost to #4 IA by 42
• Beat #5 NU by 9
• Lost to #9 RU by 11
• Beat #14 M by 3

You could make a case for either IU or IA as the outlier.  Either the IU loss "should" have been worse or the IA loss "should" have been closer.  The win over NU, however, is an outlier no matter how you slice it.  

#13 UNL:

• Lost to #1 tOSU by 35
• Lost to #4 IA by 6
• Lost to #5 NU by 8
• Beat #8 PSU by 7
• Lost to #11 IL by 18

Either the IA or NU loss it technically an outlier because in theory the NU loss should have been closer than the IA loss but that is only two points so I'm not going to quibble over it.  The IL loss is just strange though.  

#14 M:

• Lost to #2 IU by 17
• Lost to #3 UW by 38
• Lost to #8 PSU by 10
• Beat #9 RU in OT
• Beat #10 MN by 25
• Lost to #12 MSU by 3

You could argue either the IU or UW games was an outlier.  I just picked UW.  The MSU loss is just off the charts though.