CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Four => Big Ten => Topic started by: ManHawk on November 30, 2025, 07:55:36 AM
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What does everybody think? My Rankings are in a post below.
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1. Ohio State - has dominated in every conference game they have played. Both the defense and offense look elite. Best wins are against Texas, Michigan, Wash, Illinois and Penn St
2. Indiana - probably the 2nd best team in the country. Indiana has many dominant blow out victories. Plus a couple of last minute escapes over Iowa & Penn St. But i give Indiana credit for consistently coming through in the 4Q when they have to, especially at Oregon. Best wins are against @Ore, @Iowa, ILL and @Penn St
3. Oregon
4. USC
5. Iowa
6. Michigan
7. Washington
8. Penn St
9. Illinois
10. Northwestern
11. Minnesota
12. Nebraska
13. Rutgers
14. Wisconsin
15. UCLA
16. Mich St
17. Maryland
18. Purdue
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You are what your record says you are:
Contenders:
1) Ohio State--solidly exorcised the demons.
2) Indiana--enjoyed their in-state scrimmage.
3) Oregon--good win, but they are a few steps behind the top two.
Top 25-ish:
4) USC--did what it was supposed to. Quality wins against Michigan and Iowa.
5) Iowa--impressive win on the road over Nebraska. Above Michigan based on the quality of their losses (Indiana, Oregon), which is weird.
6) Michigan--can't ding them too much for losing to a better team. But best wins are Washington and Northwestern.
Not Ready for Prime Time:
7) Penn State--still not sure what to do with this team. Saturday's result wasn't one to write home about, but the talent still has a high ceiling.
8) Washington--here because of the H2H over Illinois.
9) Illinois--decent win over Northwestern, quality win over USC, highly suspect loss to the Badgers.
10) Northwestern--worst loss is Nebraska, solid win over Penn State, Illinois takes the H2H.
Really Not Very Good:
11) Minnesota--took advantage of a weak schedule, and vanquished their hapless border rival. Good win over Nebraska.
12) Nebraska--best win was over Northwestern, brutal losses to Minnesota, Penn State, and Iowa. Oh so close against USC.
13) Rutgers--who is to say, but playing the Badgers, I'd lay heavy odds on the State University of New Jersey.
14) UCLA--win over Penn State is worth something. But there's nothing else to get excited about.
15) Michigan State--got their first conference win against a bad Maryland team.
Pur-Don't:
16) Maryland--sure, Wisconsin has the better wins, but H2H Maryland smoked the Badgers in Madison, and Wisconsin's offense is terrible.
17) Wisconsin--decent defense, terrible offense. When I say terrible offense, you're not processing just how bad it is. Incompetent.
18) Purdue--sigh. Indiana wasn't a good way to end their season.
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You are what your record says you are:
Contenders:
1) Ohio State--solidly exorcised the demons.
2) Indiana--enjoyed their in-state scrimmage.
3) Oregon--good win, but they are a few steps behind the top two.
Top 25-ish:
4) USC--did what it was supposed to. Quality wins against Michigan and Iowa.
5) Iowa--impressive win on the road over Nebraska. Above Michigan based on the quality of their losses (Indiana, Oregon), which is weird.
6) Michigan--can't ding them too much for losing to a better team. But best wins are Washington and Northwestern.
I also had Iowa rated higher than Michigan, but I think we all know who is gonna get the better bowl. Mich looks like a lock for the Citrus to me. Which is fine. Iowa I am guessing will go to the Reliaquest Bowl in Tampa
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Michael doesn't simply count losses
(https://i.imgur.com/VO6cvwu.jpeg)
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Medina's completely objective Power Rankings:
First the rules:
- Each team's nine opponents are ranked against each other based on how they did against that team.
- HFA is used to break ties.
- OT games are considered closer than games decided in regulation. Ie, winning by 1 in regulation is better than winning by 8 in OT.
- The rankings are then averaged.
Examples:
Indiana went 9-0 so their nine opponents all lost to them and are ranked 1-9 based on closeness of the loss so:
- PSU lost by 3
- Iowa lost by 5
- Ore lost by 10
- UW lost by 24
- MSU lost by 25
- UMD lost by 45
- UCLA lost by 50
- IL lost by 53
- PU lost by 53
Conversely, Purdue went 0-9 so their nine opponents all beat them and are ranked 1-9 based on biggest win so:
- IU won by 53
- UDub won by 36
- tOSU won by 24
- NU won by 19
- (tie) USC won by 16 in West Lafayette
- (tie) IL won by 16 in West Lafayette
- MN won by 7
- M won by 5
- RU won by 3
When you average each teams' nine relative performance rankings here is what you get:
- 1.56 Indiana
- 1.67 Ohio State
- 3.06 Oregon
- 3.44 Iowa
- 3.72 USC
- 3.89 PSU
- 4.50 UDub
- 4.61 Michigan
- 4.67 Illinois
- 5.61 Northwestern
- 5.94 Nebraska
- 6.17 Wisconsin
- (tie) 6.33 UCLA
- (tie) 6.33 Michigan State
- (tie) 7.00 Maryland
- (tie) 7.00 Rutgers
- 7.22 Purdue
- 7.28 Minnesota
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I know it seems weird to have Minnesota ranked dead last in the league despite them finishing above .500 at 5-4 so I feel like I should explain that one:
Minnesota has the most favorable schedule I have ever seen. Six of their nine B1G opponents finished in the bottom half of my rankings with only three in the top-half. That isn't the extent of the favorability of their schedule though, it isn't just who they played but also where they played the games. @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) and I had a long discussion of this in the off-season and Minnesota is a perfect example of what we were talking about. Minnesota got their four best opponents on the road and lost all four. That is perfect for a bad team because they weren't realistically going to beat the Buckeyes, Ducks, nor Hawkeyes no matter where those games were played. By getting those games on the road, they effectively "saved" HFA for games where it may well have made the difference against the Spartans, Scarlet Knights, and Boilermakers.
Minnesota got outright obliterated in Columbus, Eugene, and Iowa City and I don't mean just that it was bad, it was worse than most or all B1G teams:
- Their 39 point loss to Ohio State was the worst any B1G team did against tOSU.
- Their 38 point loss to Iowa was the worst any B1G team did against Iowa.
- Their 29 point loss to Oregon was the second worst any B1G team did against Oregon, better only than Rutgers.
That saved HFA for three games against bottom-feeders that the Gophers barely won:
- Their OT win against MSU was the second-worst any B1G team did against MSU, better only than Maryland.
- Their 3 point win over Rutgers was the third-worst any B1G team did against RU, better only than Maryland and Purdue.
- Their 7 point win over Purdue was the third-worst any B1G team did against PU, better only than Rutgers and Michigan.
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No need to explain. We know.
Well, most of us do.
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I was just thinking the exact same thing. The Medina objective rankings seem to work if you suspected that Penn St was under-rated and Michigan was over-rated, which some of us have been arguing this point much of the 2nd half of the season.
But the objective ratings just don't seem to work for a team like Minnesota, although Medina's long explanation helps me understand how much Minnesota's schedule helped it get to 5 Big Ten wins.
But in my humble opinion, the objective rankings maybe are not capturing enough the importance of actually winning games, which is something Minn was good at, at least if iMinn could keep a game close in the 4Q. On the other hand, Penn St was not very good at winning close games, even against bad teams like UCLA.
But ultimately I agree that Minn did way over-achieve. Minn is a probably the equivalent of a 5-7 team that finished 7-5 thanks to its schedule. PSU was probably the equivalent of a 9-3 team that finished 6-6 instead. Michigan was probably the equivalent of an 8-4 team that finished 9-3 instead.
Iowa was kinda in the middle on the luck factor. Iowa lost 4 close games (Iowa St, Ind, Ore, USC) in the 4Q. and won 3 close games (Rut, Penn St, Mich St) in the 4Q. So its overall record is mostly fair. Maybe Iowa would be 9-3 instead of 8-4 with a little more luck..
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Michael doesn't simply count losses
(https://i.imgur.com/VO6cvwu.jpeg)
Not bad. Penn St was a good team with a bad season. The ones ranked ahead of them were decent this year. The ones ranked behind them were not very good.
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I was just thinking the exact same thing. The Medina objective rankings seem to work if you suspected that Penn St was under-rated and Michigan was over-rated, which some of us have been arguing much of the 2nd half of the season.
But the objective ratings just don't seem to work for a team like Minnesota, although Medina's long explanation helps me understand how much Minnesota's schedule helped it get to 5 Big Ten wins.
But in my humble opinion, the objective rankings maybe are not capturing enough the importance of actually winning games, which is something Minn was good at, at least if iMinn could keep a game close in the 4Q. On the other hand, Penn St was not very good at winning close games, even against bad teams like UCLA.
But ultimately I agree that Minn did way over-achieve. Minn is a probably the equivalent of a 5-7 team that finished 7-5 thanks to its schedule. PSU was probably the equivalent of a 9-3 team that finished 6-6 instead. Michigan was probably the equivalent of an 8-4 team that finished 9-3 instead.
Iowa was kinda in the middle on the luck factor. Iowa lost 4 close games (Iowa St, Ind, Ore, USC) in the 4Q. and won 3 close games (Rut, Penn St, Mich St) in the 4Q. So its overall record is mostly fair. Maybe Iowa would be 9-3 instead of 8-4 with a little more luck..
This is all fair.
The other thing that I would like to tweak but I haven't figured out a valid objective tweak is that, like most rank orderings, it is overly swayed by some VERY small differences and under-impacted by some much bigger differences. As an example, look at the teams against Indiana:
Indiana went 9-0 so their nine opponents all lost to them and are ranked 1-9 based on closeness of the loss so:
- PSU lost by 3
- Iowa lost by 5
- Ore lost by 10
- UW lost by 24
- MSU lost by 25
- UMD lost by 45
- UCLA lost by 50
- IL lost by 53
- PU lost by 53
Each one-team difference is treated the same but they aren't. PSU and Iowa each lost very close games, that is a virtual tie. Oregon's loss was two scores so bigger but still, MUCH smaller than Wisconsin's loss which was technically three scores (8*3=24) but to be fair, a "three score" 17 point loss is a LOT closer game than a "three score" 24 point loss. Then MSU is virtually tied with UW then there is another big jump down to the four teams that Indiana just ran off the field. Within those, is there really a material difference between losing by 45 (UMD) and losing by 53 (PU)? I would say no because they and the UCLA and IL games are all blowouts and usually in a blowout the final margin depends on factors like how much the winner kept their starters in and their foot on the gas and whether or not the loser scored a few garbage time points.
In my head I'd like to treat those more by grouping:
- Very close losses (PSU, IA)
- Competitive losses (Ore)
- Solid losses (UW, MSU)
- Blowout losses (UMD, UCLA, IL, PU)
I've thought about doing a ranking using a scheme something like this:
- Blowout win: 25+
- Solid win: 17-24
- Competitive win: 9-16
- One score win: 4-8
- Very close win: <4 or OT
- Very close loss: <4 or OT
- One score loss: 4-8
- Competitive loss: 9-16
- Solid loss: 17-24
- Blowout loss: 25+
I haven't done it in part because it would be even more complicated than my already over-complex system and in part because that still would miss things. The categories are unavoidably too rigid and there isn't REALLY a big difference between a 24 and a 25 point win. Additionally, a lot depends on garbage time. If you are down 31 and score a TD in the final seconds you realistically still got blown out even though the final was "only" 24. Conversely, if you are up by 3 and get a pick-6 in the closing seconds that is a very close win, not merely a 'competitive' win.