Honestly, we’d all be uncomfortable if Michigan State was the preseason favorite to win the Big Ten, right?
That stuff never seems to turn out well for MSU. Every year they are hyped, it seems to go bad and every year they’re under the radar, it seems to go well. Well if the preseason media poll done by Cleveland.com is any indication, Michigan State is going to be mostly overlooked this season in the conference.
MSU is picked to finish 3rd in the Big Ten East, behind Michigan and Ohio State. Michigan is the most popular pick to win the conference, with 17 of 34 polled writers picking the Wolverines to win it all. Ohio State is 2nd with 14 votes, while Nebraska got two and Northwestern somehow got one. (No offense, but Northwestern is not winning this conference.) Not a single writer picked Michigan State to win the conference or even the East Division, which isn’t a major surprise given how last season played out on the offensive side of the ball for the Spartans.
There is certainly an argument to be made for MSU to win the conference, after all they return one of if not the best defenses in the country and have won it a few times in its current iteration unlike some other schools, but the preseason hype train has never really been MSU’s thing. And that’s just fine.
Behind Michigan State is Penn State. The Nittany Lions and Spartans are separated in the poll by just a few points. After that Indiana and Maryland trail well behind with Rutgers a distant 7th.
In the West Nebraska edges out Iowa with Wisconsin and Northwestern near them. Then there’s Purdue and Minnesota in close-ish range with Illinois being the unanimous pick to finish in last place in the West. Go Fighting Illini!
Since the Big Ten did away with the conference organizing preseason polls in 2011, Cleveland.com has (thankfully) picked up the slack and been the unofficial official preseason poll source. The writers surveyed there are 2-for-8 in picking eventual winners of the conference, with the last two seasons being the only two they got right.
Preseason polls are very often wrong and don’t serve much of a purpose outside of generating content (like the post you’re reading right now!). The biggest and best thing they do is signify that college football is right around the corner and that should be the major takeaway here. College football is close and that’s good. It’s something we can all agree on.
