Big Ten Football Power Rankings: Week 2

You better drink this in now while you can before I decide to test the structural integrity of my tube socks.

Look, we all knew this year was going to be tough, following our likely misguided efforts to #LetThemPlay, but I don’t think anyone expected it to be outright torturous. There is no pain like waking up on a Sunday morning and seeing Indiana, Ohio State, Northwestern, and Purdue all tied for first place in their disrespective divisions. There is no instruction manual for how to talk to your kids about that.

And there is no instruction manual on how do to talk to yourself in the mirror following the consumption of an entire Jet’s pizza while rewatching Iowa’s game. But I heard there is a support group.

1. Ohio State (2-0)

The Buckeyes are just about the only team that looks like it hasn’t missed any sort of beat from the Normal Times, and Penn State didn’t have enough Jahan Dotson’s to flip the scales in this one.

2. Indiana (2-0)

While Indiana returned to its role of CHAOSTEAM last week, the Hoosiers trounced Rutgers in what is normally a relatively predictable outcome, even for Indiana.

I’d just like to point out Indiana’s two leading receivers are named Whop and Ty, and I think we might just have to adopt Indiana this year.

3. Purdue (2-0)

Another week without Rondale Moore didn’t matter for Purdue, which once again used Zander Horvath and David Bell to keep its opponent at arms length for the afternoon. It’s worth noting Illinois was without its starting QB, who possibly maybe perhaps likely contracted COVID after getting batted around like a side of beef by the Wisconsin defense.

The year is 2020 and a faction that wears red is using biological warfare to sow chaos in our perfectly constructed utopia of a football conference. Makes u think.

4. Northwestern (2-0)

Northwestern used brilliant scheme, superior athletes, creative blitzes, a gameplan unique to Iowa’s tenured coaching staff merely competent coaching to take down a lackluster Iowa team and just about stop this intrepid blogger from caring about anything besides where the money for his next Jet’s Pizza is going to come from.

5. Michigan State (1-1)

While it was fun to criticize the Michigan State program at large last week following its loss to Rutgers, it’s now fun to criticize how ridiculous Don Brown looked last week:

I can’t find a picture of his face shield paper-clipped to the visor of a baseball cap, just take my word for it.

6. Rutgers (1-1)

I mean it’s Indiana, what can you expect a team like Rutgers to do against a team with such a rich history of success and football dominance?

7. Michigan (1-1)

There was a moment in the Michigan-Michigan State game where Joe Milton was looking how people envisioned Shea Patterson to look, then he passed the ball about 17 more times and then we remembered the only quarterback whispering Jim Harbaugh has done of late is when he demands his change from the milk counter.

8. Maryland (1-1)

I can’t believe I shut off this game Friday night, missing yet another opportunity to deny myself the pleasure of relishing a Minnesota loss for an entire 60 minutes.

The Minnesota defense is hot garbage, and Maryland isn’t really that much better! Let’s all just agree to refer to Tua’s brother as Tua’s Brother from here on out because, like a large part of my mom’s side of the family, I can’t be bothered to correctly pronounce a name that contains more than three vowels despite hearing and reading it multiple times in a single day.

9. Penn State (0-2)

Fuck Penn State.

10-12. Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota (0-2)

Do you think Iowa would be favored against any of these teams? Will you have any confidence in your Hawkeyes for these upcoming games? We can feel bad for ourselves all we want, but just remember: rock bottom always has a basement.

13. Nebraska (0-1)

Congrats to Nebraska for demanding things, getting their way, and then demanding more things after getting mad that a totally predictable thing happened. Actions have consequences, and I’m afraid that Fogo De Chãu outside the Big Ten offices has closed.

14. Wisconsin (1-0)

While I don’t want to blame any youths for going out and living their lives during a pandemic after the masses decided they need to do just that, I am sort of changing my position that I don’t think Wisconsin should be penalized for not playing games.

While getting to the six-game threshold is definitely in jeopardy now, the Badgers need to be a bit more worried about the overall safety of their team. Twenty-two cases is not insignificant, and typically, that number uhhhh goes up.

So while we monitor the situation in Madison, we’re forced to keep them at the bottom rung.

Because while you can’t rank what you can’t see, you can still believe it exists.