Fox 8 New Orleans Sports Reporter/AP Poll Voter/Friend of the Blog Garland Gillen Spoke With FTB About the Big Ten’s Place in the Rankings and the Tough Task of Picking 25 Teams When Everyone Isn’t Playing
FTB: How have you handled placing Big Ten teams in your Top 25 considering the on-off-then-on-again nature of the conference’s season?
GG: It’s been difficult. Initially, the AP preseason poll came out before the Big Ten’s decision to cancel the 2020 Fall season, so you saw a lot of Big Ten teams in the poll. To be honest, before COVID forced conferences to mess with all the schedules I had a Big Ten team, Ohio State, as preseason No. 1 in my poll that I submitted.
Then, they told us to take the Big Ten out when they decided they were going to punt on the season. So for a lot of September, I didn’t have any Big Ten teams in my rankings…not until they changed their mind and decided they’re playing again. So I have Big Ten teams in my poll right now, but there are some AP voters who are only including the teams playing on Saturdays – so no Big Ten. That’s their right. They can do that.
FTB: So if not every AP voter is including the Big Ten currently, do you expect Big Ten teams to shoot up in the polls after this Saturday?
GG: Probably. If you look at the latest AP poll, you have all these Cinderella teams – teams like BYU and Cincinnati – ranked higher than they normally are in mid-October because 2/5ths of the Power 5 conferences aren’t playing yet. Are the darlings like Coastal Carolina going to hang around in the poll once the Big Dogs start rolling this weekend?
You look at Ohio State. If they smoke Nebraska by 40, they’re probably going to catapult a team like Notre Dame who has looked shaky, and a one-loss Georgia. If Wisconsin does what they’re supposed to do against Illinois on Friday, then they probably leapfrog No. 12 BYU. The Big Ten is the new shiny thing this weekend, so you’ll see a real bump for those teams in the rankings assuming they look good.
