Saturday Blitz Conference Power Rankings Week 3
5. Big Ten
It would have seemed impossible, but things got even worse for the Big Ten this past weekend. Much worse.
After embarrassing themselves in big games two weekends ago with Ohio State, Michigan State, and Michigan all losing big non-conference games, this week the Big Ten had a chance to show that it is at least a deep conference with so many good middle of the pack teams. But they all lost Saturday.
Maryland started the trend by losing to West Virginia in the afternoon. Then Indiana, which is trying to get to a bowl this year, had a bad 45-42 loss to Bowling Green, a MAC team. If that wasn’t enough, Iowa lost to Iowa State, who was 0-2 and lost to FCS team North Dakota State by 20 two weeks ago, and TCU blew out Minnesota. Add in the fact that Washington blew out Illinois and Purdue was beat by Notre Dame ( although that should have happened), and there is no silver lining for this conference right now.
Ohio State and Michigan may have rebounded against bad teams, but that doesn’t mean anything given how bad the conference has looked. At least Nebraska looked pretty good in their blowout win over Fresno State as well after Struggling last week, and Penn State looks like it could be the team to win the Big Ten now after a 3-0 start.
The Big Ten conference is simply terrible no matter how you slice it, and it’s now becoming hard to sell it even as a Power Five conference.