This the week was not a week where the Big Ten covered itself in glory. The league was involved in the two largest upsets of the opening weekend with UMass beating Rutgers and Western Michigan stunning Michigan in the Big House (more on that later). We have some actual data now on every team in the conference, so why not rank the league on where everyone is after a game (or in USC’s case, two games).<\/p>\n
Ohio State (1-0, beat Ball State 56-3) \u2013 As expected, the Cardinals were a mere speed bump. At least my former pastor got to see his kid play in the horseshoe since his son is a junior safety for Ball State.<\/p>\n
Indiana (1-0, beat North Texas 52-16) \u2013 There was a brief moment there in the third quarter where North Texas was threatening to make it a game. They had it at 24-13, then IU pulled away.<\/p>\n
Oregon (1-0, beat Boise State 34-27) \u2013 Though it was much closer than expected, should we really be surprised that Boise can hang with Oregon in Autzen? They’ve been doing it for a long time now. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Iowa (1-0, beat Northern Illinois 40-0) \u2013A Kirk Ferentz offense scored 20 points in the first quarter of a game. That’s probably weirder than Indiana currently being a national power.<\/p>\n
Penn State (1-0, beat Marshall 45-0) \u2013 Another team that had a light week and was never seriously threatened. A solid debut for Matt Campbell.<\/p>\n
USC (2-0, beat Fresno State 39-0) \u2013 I really expected more from Fresno here, but it appears that USC might be playoff worthy. They are going to be a problem for other teams.<\/p>\n
Northwestern (1-0, beat South Dakota State 34-18) \u2013 This was my surprise team of the week, as I expected them to lose to an always tough South Dakota State team. They blew open a close game late with a couple of big plays.<\/p>\n
Nebraska (1-0, beat Ohio 49-21) \u2013 Another team that blew things open late. The Huskers only led 14-13 at the half, but got four touchdowns from Anthony Colandrea.<\/p>\n
UCLA (1-0, beat California 45-24) \u2013 Bob Chesney gets a big road win at a power conference opponent in year one after UCLA wasn’t great for a while? Great, we have another Cignetti in the conference.<\/p>\n
Minnesota (1-0, beat Eastern Illinois 59-7) \u2013 Javon Tracy returned two punts for a TD in the same game. As a result, no one should punt to him the rest of the year.<\/p>\n
Washington (1-0, beat Washington State 24-10) \u2013 It has to be hard to begin a season with a rivalry game. The Cougars kept this much closer than expected, but two missed field goals played a big difference.<\/p>\n
Illinois (1-0, beat UAB 42-23) \u2013 What a Hail Mary catch to end the half for the Illini! It helped them pull away from a game that was pretty close beforehand.<\/p>\n
Maryland (1-0, beat Hampton 62-0) \u2013 I swear every year Maryland beats Hampton, Howard, or Towson 62-0.<\/p>\n
Wisconsin (0-1, Lost to Notre Dame 41-13) \u2013 I will give the Badgers credit for hanging around for a half. It gave me some hope under the weird transitive logic of “if Purdue is expected to be somewhat close to Wisconsin’s level this year, maybe it can push Notre Dame like this.” The thought was fleeting.<\/p>\n
Michigan State (1-0, beat Toledo 30-20) \u2013 The MAC almost got another Big Ten pelt as the Rockets did lead in the fourth quarter 20-19.<\/p>\n
Purdue (1-0, beat Indiana State 44-19) \u2013 Purdue did its job and got the only win that was a virtual guarantee. For one Saturday, at least, we can be happy.<\/p>\n
Rutgers (0-1, lost to UMass 37-21) \u2013 UMass broke a 16-game losing streak and it really wasn’t even this close. Rutgers got absolutely embarrassed.<\/p>\n
Michigan (0-1, lost to Western Michigan 12-7) \u2013 I know what happened. I refuse to recognize it. A complete and utter screwjob among the worst I have ever seen in sports. I am mad on behalf of WMU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This the week was not a week where the Big Ten covered itself in glory. The league was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":993940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[130435,130436,130434,130437,953,130432,2741,7,4589,4664,5629,11854,18169,1346,1347,1682,932,957,1401,1446,984,4729,2500,6445,130433,517,43448,9653,6093],"class_list":["post-993939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-24-10","tag-24-13","tag-34-18","tag-34-27","tag-ball-state","tag-bobby-goddin","tag-boise","tag-football","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-state","tag-getty-images","tag-hail-mary","tag-half","tag-hampton","tag-howard","tag-illinois","tag-indiana","tag-michigan","tag-notre-dame","tag-ohio-state","tag-purdue","tag-purdue-boilermakers","tag-rutgers","tag-south-dakota-state","tag-this-the-week","tag-ucla","tag-umass","tag-usc","tag-washington-state"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117227610724031613","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=993939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/993940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=993939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=993939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=993939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}