The Big Ten had a nearly perfect clean sweep of week one, with some huge wins for the conference, including Ohio State's victory over the No. 1 preseason-ranked team, the Texas Longhorns. As first weeks go, there were some surprises like Purdue getting a shutout victory, Rutgers almost losing to a MAC opponent, or USC looking otherworldly against an inferior Missouri State.
The rankings has a few surprises for week one but not many.
Ohio State continues to help prove that the Big Ten is better than the SEC, no matter what ESPN says or all the narratives that the pundits want to prove. The Buckeyes exposed Arch Manning and helped secure a huge start to the season.
Not a shocking result and not much to say about Penn State. Drew Allar looks really good, and the Nittany Lions are going to be one of the best teams in the nation this season.
Hard to get a lot from the Ducks' victory over an FCS team. It may be one of the best FCS teams, but it's still an FCS opponent. They did what they were supposed to do: win big.
The Illinois Fighting Illini looked good in their win over Western Illinois. It will be interesting to see how they fare when their schedule starts to have real opponents, but for now, they get to stay at the top.
New Mexico kept it interesting and exposed some flaws for future opponents of the Wolverines, but Michigan was victorious. Not an impressive win, but a win nonetheless, and that's really all that matters in week one.
The Hoosiers' only beating Old Dominion by 13 is disappointing, and the team should be figuring out what went wrong in the win. This team has high hopes, but they may be on fraud watch after one week.
The Trojans were outstanding all across the board. Granted, it was Missouri State, but hanging 73 points on the board against any team is impressive. Could they actually be good again? Time will tell as the season goes along and the opponents get tougher.
Cincinnati may be one of the toughest opponents on the list of Big Ten opponents this week, but still, Nebraska shouldn't have let it be this close. Cornhusker fans were stressed, and while they pulled off the win, there's a lot to improve on for next week.
The defense looked like Swiss cheese, but the offense couldn't be stopped. Jonah Coleman may end up being the best running back in the Big Ten this season. He was ridiculous, and Demond Williams has a cannon for an arm and rockets for legs. This could be a scary team in the conference if they can figure out their defensive woes.
Sure, this is a Badger site, but pitching a shutout against one of the best MAC teams is impressive. Pulling off a big win with the backup quarterback is easier said than done. They deserve to be up this high after week one.
Good for Jonathan Smith and the Spartans to go into week one with a clear plan of attack. They kept Western Michigan out of the end zone and got a much-deserved week one win.
The Iowa offense had been hyping up their new quarterback, Mark Gronowski, all offseason, but he was not impressive at all in this one. Really beating Albany 34-7 is a woof. They should have been able to put up a score like USC did this week.
Beating Buffalo by 13 is not something to celebrate, and yet the cringiest coach in college football did just that. They partied afterwards as if they had won the championship. Minnesota fans should be embarrassed by that, not excited.
The Terrapins did what they were supposed to do, but no one is convinced they will be a good team this season. I'm one of the doubters they will need to prove wrong.
Yikes. Ohio won the MAC last season, so they are nothing to turn your nose up to. However, they almost lost and, in some ways, probably should have lost. Rutgers looks bad.
I wanted to put Purdue so much higher because they did what Wisconsin did and pitched a shutout. Granted, it was against Ball State, and Purdue could still not be that good. However, last year's Purdue team wouldn't have done that, so maybe they actually are a better team this year.
The Bruins are bad. That was ugly. Nothing good to say about that game against Utah.
Can we remove Northwestern from the Big Ten? Geeze. What a performance...