Can North Carolina Finish the Job? Or Will the Big Ten Break Through?
The Big Ten is well represented on our rankings of college football’s top 25 teams.
Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Nebraska—Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio State, and Wisconsin all lead the way. Michigan and Nebraska have won a combined 27 games, but those teams have played only half of Big Ten conference games.
So why are these teams ranked so highly?
Well, the Big Ten is better than the AP Top 25—or the Football Championship Subdivision, for that matter. And its 14 conference games are more important than the 12 games played by the 12 non-Big Ten teams in the FCS.
The Big Ten’s 12 regular-season conference games are more important than the 13 regular-season games in the 14 FCS schools. That’s great news for our rankings.
And it’s also great news for the Big Ten in November, when the 14 FCS teams have the opportunity to play their conference rival(s).
The top-25 teams in our rankings are the same as the teams with the lowest final rankings. The rankings were the most accurate we could make at this point and we’ll update the final rankings as more information comes in.
Here’s how we ranked the Big Ten teams.
1. Iowa
2. Wisconsin
3. Michigan
4. Michigan State
5. Nebraska
6. Ohio State
7. Illinois
8. Indiana
9. Penn State
10. Maryland
11. Nebraska
12. Purdue
13. Michigan
14. Iowa
15. Minnesota
16. Indiana Tech
17. Illinois State
18. Northwestern
19. Minnesota
20. Maryland
21. Nebraska
22. Iowa
23. Indiana
24. Illinois
25. Indiana State
Ohio State has won a combined 20 games in Big Ten conference play, but it
