Big Ten Power Poll - Week 13

Here we are. It’s the last week of the regular season and we’re at the next-to-last poll of the 2018 season. If you remember WAAAYYY back, this is how Corn Nation voted after the first game of the year.

We overvalued Maryland, but in our defense they had just beat Texas and none of the really bad stuff about DJ Durkin had come out yet. Credit Jon, Jill, Greg, and Rick for seeing that Northwestern would be good. We all expected Ohio State and Wisconsin to be in the conference championship game. We whiffed on Wisconsin there, and barring something bizarre happening in the Ohio State - Michigan game, our pick for Michigan to finish fourth in the East will look pretty bad. We picked Nebraska seventh. 6 weeks ago that looked like a wildly homerish pick, but it’s probably where Nebraska will be at the end of the year. None of us expected Purdue to blow out OSU, but other than that we did pick the bottom five pretty well.

On to this week’s poll.

Paul: Well, we’re a full season into the shit show that is (as always) ranking the Big Ten. And after 13 weeks, my ratings are pretty close to how I voted in Week 1.

Patrick: Bring back that weird trophy from Iowa!!!!

Rick: Since Salt isn’t here to spread the Northwestern love, I’ll do it for him. Maryland and Purdue get credit for effort. Penn State and Ohio State get no credit for underachieving. Iowa gets some grudging credit for scoring many points against an inferior team.

Mike: I’m keeping most everything as-is, except bumping Iowa for blasting Illinois this past weekend. Doesn’t matter, though. We’ll find out on the field this weekend who’s better.

Jon: I am really looking forward to this week’s rivalry games. Ours, of course, but Michigan - Ohio State as well. And Minnesota - Wisconsin.

Jill: I really didn’t know what to do with Nebraska-Iowa-Wisconsin. I could flip a coin and go with just about any order in those right now. I’m looking forward to seeing what this rejuvenated Husker team can do against the Hawkeyes. Iowa doesn’t do anything fancy, but they do it well - usually (LOL! Let’s punt to DPE again!)