Sagarin has us at 30 ahead of Duke at 36

[KramerCat91]

Here are the rankings for us and all of our opponents.
13 Wisconsin
22 Stanford
27 Iowa
28 Illinois
30 Northwestern 79.96
35 Nebraska
36 Duke
38 Michigan
48 Minnesota
57 Penn State
85 Purdue
128 Ball State
170 Eastern Illinois AA = 45.63

Based on Sagarin, Duke should be favored by ~ 1.5.

While NU hasn't performed well while ranked, I think this year we won't have that issue because in the most recent past we got ranked because we were unbeaten not because we had beaten good competition. Human voters tend to overweigh the number of victories unlike the Sagarin poll, which this year doesn't use the ELO chess rating.

So Wisconsin is head and shoulders above the division. Iowa, Illinois, Northwestern and Nebraska are in the second tier. Minnesota is 6th. Purdue is 7th.

Interestingly Sagarin has the Big 10 West as 4th in the country although it lacks a top contender.

 

[FanatiCat]

Sagarin ratings are still too heavily influenced on preseason polls at this point. That's probably why B1G west is ranked highly overall, due to playing highly ranked teams like Bama and TCU.