Big Ten Rankings After The Regular Season

Ohio State finally gets their win over Michigan, and that secured their spot in the Big Ten Championship Game. Indiana had no problem with Purdue to secure the other spot.

There are now 6 Big Ten teams are ranked in the CFP rankings-3 are in the top 10.

• Ohio State: 1
• Indiana: 2
• Oregon: 6
• USC: 16
• Michigan: 19
• Iowa: 23

Note that there are 12 P4 teams that have a record of 8-4; Iowa is the only one of those that is in the top-25.

The full list of rankings can be found here: https://collegefootballplayoff.com/news/2025/12/2/cfp-rankings.aspx

As it stands now, it appears that 3 Big Ten teams will be in the CFP: Ohio State, Indiana, and Oregon.

Here are the ranks in the other two major polls. (AP/Coaches)

• Ohio State (1/1)
• Indiana (2/2)
• Oregon (4/4)
• USC (17/17)
• Michigan (18/18)

Iowa (#28), Illinois (#38), and Washington (#39), received votes in the AP poll. Iowa (#26), Washington (#30), and Illinois (#34) received votes in the Coaches poll.

This week the Massey Composite (https://masseyratings.com/ranks) includes 82 different rankings (as of the writing of this article), including the AP and Coaches polls. The following “Cool Chart” shows the changes since the preseason for the teams in the Big Ten.

For the last 2 months the top 3 teams have remained the same, and Ohio State has remained at the top all season long.

Purdue started at the bottom and ends at the bottom, although they are up 13 places since the preseason (progress?)

This season the bottom 7 teams in the Big Ten in the preseason are in the bottom 8. You can either look at it as Minnesota dropped into the bottom 8 or that Northwestern improved so they were no longer in the bottom 7. Northwestern is the Big Ten team that has improved the most since the preseason; they are up 20 places.

The bottom 6 teams are the ones that will not be playing in a bowl game, so they won’t have a chance to improve their final ranking.

Eight Big Ten teams dropped by 15 or more places since the preseason: UCLA (-35), Penn State (-34), Minnesota (-26), Maryland (-25), Rutgers (-24), Wisconsin (-22), Michigan State (-18), and Nebraska (-15). Indiana (+13) and Washington (+12) are the other two teams (besides Purdue and Northwestern) to go up by more than 10 places.

The table below lists the rankings for each of the Big Ten teams in 5 different advanced stats rankings: FEI, SP+, ESPN’s FPI, Kelly Ford (KFord). and SRS. The Composite Rank is included for comparison.

School

Composite

SP+

FPI

FEI

KFord

SRS

Illinois273132252825Indiana222113Iowa191520171816Maryland907573707179Michigan172619211919Michigan State818464716481Minnesota587163666265Nebraska514644444362Northwestern576459505456Ohio State111221Oregon344346Penn State362017201632Purdue989686788189Rutgers717362676166UCLA8410477747278USC151711121113Washington231822162121Wisconsin648760595768

There are 6 Big Ten teams that are in the top-25 in all of these rankings: Ohio State, Indiana, Oregon, USC, Iowa, and Washington. Notice that Michigan is not in the top-25 in SP+; they are #26.

UCLA dropped 19 places in the SP+ rankings since last week. Nebraska and Maryland dropped in all of the rankings. Iowa was the only team to go up in all of the rankings, although Michigan State went up in all but the Kelley Ford rankings (they remained the same there). Washington and Wisconsin dropped slightly in most of the rankings, but each went up in one (Washington was up 1 in FEI and Wisconsin was up 1 in SP+).

The large variability for Penn State has now been reduced after 3 straight wins. They now vary from 17 to 36.

Here’s a look at how accurate some of the predictions have been for the Big Ten games this season. (If the team that won had a 50.1% or greater win percentage and won the game, that was considered correct.)

• ESPN FPI: 84%
• Massey: 86%
• SP+: 87%
• Kelly Ford: 90%

Looking at the games where there were misses, there were 12 games that they all missed.

• New Mexico-UCLA
• Minnesota-California
• Maryland-Wisconsin
• USC-Illinois
• Penn State-UCLA
• Northwestern-Penn State
• UCLA-Michigan State
• Indiana-Oregon
• Nebraska-Minnesota
• Maryland-UCLA
• Washington-Wisconsin
• Illinois-Wisconsin

Only 2 of those games were non-conference games. Not surprisingly, many of those misses involved UCLA. In fact, all 4 sites missed on at least 4 of UCLA’s games. None of the sites missed on any of Purdue’s games. Wisconsin, Maryland, Penn State, and Minnesota were other teams where there were at least 2 misses by each site.

Looking further, SP+ missed on 5 of Maryland’s games; the rest of the sites missed on just 2 of their games. SP+ had them beating Washington, Rutgers, and Michigan State. ESPN’s FPI missed on 6 of UCLA’s games. On the other hand, SP+ only missed on 2 of Wisconsin’s games while the other sites each missed on at least 3. And ESPN’s FPI is the only site that missed on any of Ohio State’s games (they had Texas favored).

At least for this year, Kelley Ford did the best. They only missed on 2 games that the other sites did not also miss on. One of those, Oregon-Penn State, they had as a toss-up and that went to double-overtime (which hardly seems like a real miss).

ESPN’s FPI did the worst, but 84% correct is still very good. And of the games that they missed that the other sites didn’t also miss, all were expected to be close (

The projections for the game the Big Ten Championship game are mixed. SP+ and Massey have Ohio State as the slight favorite while ESPN’s FPI and Kelley Ford have Indiana as the slight favorite. Should be a very good game.

Twelve of the Big Ten teams will be playing in bowl games. The former Pac-12 teams (e.g. UW) will still be eligible for the same bowl games as last year (the old Pac-12 bowls)-assuming they aren’t in the CFP. Eight of the old Pac-12 teams are bowl-eligible:

• Oregon (11-1)
• Utah (10-2)
• USC (9-3)
• Arizona (9-3)
• Washington (8-4)
• Arizona State (8-4)
• California (7-5)
• WSU (6-6)

These are the bowl games that are tied to the old Pac-12:

• Alamo Bowl (Dec. 30)
• Holiday Bowl (Jan. 2)
• Las Vegas Bowl (Dec. 31)
• Sun Bowl (Dec. 31)
• LA Bowl (Dec. 13)
• Independence Bowl (Dec. 30)

There are more teams from the old Pac-12 that are bowl-eligible than there are bowls affiliated with the old Pac-12. But Oregon should be in the playoffs, which means 7 teams for 6 bowls. That likely leaves WSU with getting into a different bowl game; and that will depend on which conferences can’t fill all of their spots.