Big Ten Football Power Rankings: Week Six

Here’s the biggest problem I’m having in my evaluations of the Big Ten:

Everyone stinks! And if you don’t stink, another team that does stink prevents you proving that you do not in fact stink. Sometimes, teams that don’t even stink prevent themselves from proving their fresh-as-roses scent! All because there eventual opponent really stinks!

Another problem in this scenario is the fact that teams, ostensibly, can hide their on-field musk because another rancid stench overpowers that one. It’s all very much a Charlie Kelly situation.

Is the dog crap a 1:1 comparison to Nebraska* football? Why yes, yes it is.

1. Ohio State (4-0)

Ohio State got its second game canceled in three weeks due to COVID, and its postseason hopes remain in serious doubt because 1. an additional abandonment renders them ineligible for the Big Ten Championship and 2. Cincinnati and BYU have each played at least 8 games and are a combined 17-0.

With back-to-back games against teams from Michigan, Ohio State just has to hope the GOP can wrap up its lawsuits in the mitten in a timely manner, take a page out of Mike Leach’s playbook, and super spread down to Key West.

It’s going to be fun when the Big Ten allows Ohio State to play an extra game while Nebraska is harrumphing the fact it doesn’t get the opportunity to lose to any team that’s not Penn State.

2. Indiana (5-1)

The Hoosiers may just get to represent the East in the Big Ten Championship by default, and it’d be all the more fitting that Indiana gets its first trip to its own capital on a technicality.

Normally, that kind of loophole would be best fit for Purdue, but Bob Diaco had other plans.

3. Northwestern (5-1)

Northwestern did everything in its power to give the game away to an inferior team, which is really how you know they belong in the Big Ten West.

It’s a hazing ceremony of sorts, best demonstrated by the fact Michigan State wore sensory overloading uniforms during the paddling ceremony.

4. Iowa (4-2)

Oh boy, Northwestern loses, Purdue loses, and another whole buncha what-ifs for this Iowa team.

What’s that you say? It’s late November and Iowa needs a small miracle and an act of creative accounting biochemistry in order to reach the Big Ten Championship?

5. Everyone named below

I have nothing clever or constructive to say about Illinois, Rutgers, Purdue, Penn State, Minnesota, Maryland or Michigan State, only because they’re all seven similar degrees of suckitude. All the above teams have exactly two (2) wins and somewhere between two (dos) and four (IV) losses.

All I have to say about Michigan is: remember last week, when I was staunch in my belief they wouldn’t hire Matt Campbell?

I take that back.

6. Nebraska

The only reason I’m sequestering Nebraska from the above group is because this sort of delusion deserves a spotlight of its own.

I will say, I’m mostly encouraged by what seems to be a majority of Nebby fans not lending any credence to a really bad case of the clap. Still, I would like to bring attention to what seems to be a developing Little Brother situation:

Ah yes, there’s nothing I enjoy more than visiting my beloved margarine blog, only to start a conversation about what butter thinks of margarine, in response to an article about margarine.

Hey, Husky McHuskerson, you know what else was a lot more popular than the alternative in the 90s? Margarine! Then we found out some fats are actually good fats and life is short and its definitely not worth spending any more time on this elaborate metaphor.

7. Wisconsin

Congrats you curd-curling bastards, you’ve played yourselves out of the thing you love the most. Actions have consequences, and anyone who has participated in the Wisconsin State Fair’s Kielbasa Casing Contest knows exactly what I’m talking about.

*The problem is: this isn’t a problem exclusive or unique to Nebraska