Big Ten Power Poll Ballot Week 11

1. Ohio State

2. Iowa

3. Penn State

4. Wisconsin

5. Northwestern

6. Michigan State

7. Purdue

8. Minnesota

9. Illinois

10. Michigan

11. Indiana

• Pretty straightforward ballot. Ohio State is your champion, and can win the Big Ten outright with a victory at Michigan this Saturday. A loss to the Wolverines would not only be the most embarrassing of the year, but would also consign Ohio State to sharing the conference title with Iowa, despite having the head-to-head win. Before you start bitching, we were the beneficiaries of this insane rule in both 2005 and 2008, when we lost to Penn State head-to-head and still shared the title. Them's the breaks, yo.
• Heh. Michigan is a cellar-dweller. Again. I reiterate: losing this game would worse than the Purdue game, for two reasons: 1) it's Michigan, 2) Purdue's secondary might have 3 future NFLers. Michigan might have one, Brandon Warren, and he's probably gone after this year. If we limit Brandon Graham like we did Clayborn from Iowa and Crawford from Penn State, we should be alright
  
• Oy, this league is bad. Of the six teams likely to make a bowl game, I see one, maybe two, I can place any confidence in actually winning said bowl game. Not good
• Tip of the hat to Bret Bielema for living up to expectations at Wisconsin. While he'll never be Barry Alvarez, he'll go a long way in just staying out of John Clay and Montee Ball's way.
• Wag of the finger to Tim "Motivational Tourette's" Brewster for going backwards (from very little forward progress, if any) in his 3rd year; the Gophers barely put away San Dakota State this past weekend, to the further facepalming of Big Ten supporters everywhere. If Minnesota cared about football, I think they'd cut their losses, but they won't.