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ESPN ranks every FBS program based on fan happiness
Published:
This is a unique ranking system.
ESPN released a new way to rank college football teams for the 2017: basing it on fan happiness. Yeah, it’s about as wild as it sounds and it yielded some pretty interested results.
The rankings were based on six categories: program power, rivalry dominance, coaching stability, recruiting trend, revenue growth and (of course) Twitter buzz. The article goes into more detail about each factor, and what exactly the index creator, Tiffany Kelly, is looking for.
Here’s where each B1G team stacked up:
- No. 1 Ohio State
- No. 9 Northwestern
- No. 12 Penn State
- No. 14 Wisconsin
- No. 22 Michigan
- No. 55 Maryland
- No. 58 Iowa
- No. 59 Indiana
- No. 73 Rutgers
- No. 87 Nebraska
- No. 107 Minnesota
- No. 108 Purdue
- No. 111 Illinois
- No. 115 Michigan State
As you can see, there’s a significant drop from Michigan to Maryland, as now B1G team is mentioned in those 33 spots. And it’s interesting that Michigan State is at No. 115, the lowest-ranked out of the conference.
But this isn’t a scientific poll and it was meant to be a little bit more fun. It will certainly have people talking in the next few days until the season finally kicks off.
Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB