How Does The Big Ten Rank Against Each Other?

Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

I read, as did many of you, about Oregon winning 8 conference titles in their first year in the B1G. I first wondered how the rest of the teams ranked in the sports where the Ducks won the conference. Then I wondered, “How did the conference do in the sports that Oregon competes in?”

I had to eliminate lacrosse and A&T for lack of teams. Golf, tennis, and all the track events don’t compare as cleanly as other sports, so I pared the conference comparisons down to football, men’s and women’s basketball, soccer, baseball, softball, and volleyball.

We’ll do this in reverse order of my thinking process. First, I have listed how each school placed in these seven sports, and then I averaged out the rankings to arrive at an overall placement in these sports.

I don’t really know if this says anything in and of itself. It’s interesting to see all the rankings in one table like this – I know tiny snippets of these standings and thought it was kind of neat to see this compiled together. Also, I would never have arrived at an average ranking in these sports that came out #1 UCLA, #2 Oregon, #3 Iowa, #4 Michigan, #5 Illinois, etc.

Now, back to my original thought: How did the other schools rank, on average, in the sports where Oregon won the conference title?

It would seem that our primary overall contenders here, on the average, are Iowa (2), Indiana (3), UCLA (4), Michigan (5), and so on. Whoda thunk.

Again, it’s meaningless fun with numbers. Hope you had fun as well!