ESPN: Way-too-early 2016 Big Ten power rankings (#9. Minnesota, 5th in West)

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per ESPN:

9. Minnesota Golden Gophers: Tracy Claeys enters his first full year as head coach, and he will have a senior quarterback in Mitch Leidner and some talented young running backs in Shannon Brooks and Rodney Smith. The schedule eases up, and Minnesota can't have much worse injury luck than it experienced in 2015. A team to watch.

http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/129558/way-too-early-2016-big-ten-power-rankings

Go Gophers!!
 

Only beef I have is Penn State, who was never very good and lost Hackenburg. The 4-8 slots after personally reMoving PSU could really be ordered any way and there'd be no argument strong enough to sway things
 

upnorthkid said:
Only beef I have is Penn State, who was never very good and lost Hackenburg. The 4-8 slots after personally reMoving PSU could really be ordered any way and there'd be no argument strong enough to sway things
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Another headache for Franklin is that he lost his OL Coach to Auburn yesterday.
 

upnorthkid said:
Only beef I have is Penn State, who was never very good and lost Hackenburg. The 4-8 slots after personally reMoving PSU could really be ordered any way and there'd be no argument strong enough to sway things
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Agree. I was going to say that there's not much I can argue with. But Penn State ... they never seemed that good to me this year, and they seem to lose a lot. Probably sour grapes, but I didn't think they were any better than the Gophers, and seeing them play on Jan. 1 bothered me. But they have them at 8, so it's not a big deal.

Easier schedule for us to be sure. But We still have to play four teams in our division that beat us this year, with three of those games decisive. Absolutely have to fix the offensive line.
 

It's going to boil down to winning close games. We won them in 2013 and 2014. We lost them in 2015.
 


Basically after reading that here is what I came away with. Ohio State, Michigan, and Michigan State should all be really good again. The West is a massive jumble with pretty much every team having significant question marks heading into the season.
 

Where doss they have Iowa last year? 5th?

I'm ok with this
 

It's embarrassing to be behind jNWU - other than that, we are in our place.
 

I don't see anyway we don't win the West next year. I don't see a loss on the schedule.
 




Spoofin said:
I don't see anyway we don't win the West next year. I don't see a loss on the schedule.
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Quite optimistic, I see a solid 7-5 regular season record. 4-5 in big ten games.
 


Spoofin said:
I don't see anyway we don't win the West next year. I don't see a loss on the schedule.
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:rolleyes: Settle down. I think we'll be nice and improved but that's absolute nonsense. I think 5-4 or 6-3 in conference is a fair projection of where we should be next year.
 






MNVCGUY said:
Basically after reading that here is what I came away with. Ohio State, Michigan, and Michigan State should all be really good again. The West is a massive jumble with pretty much every team having significant question marks heading into the season.
Click to expand...

Except Iowa. They have as many known quantities coming back as anyone in the league, and should definitely be ranked ahead of MSU.
 

GoUgophers said:
Except Iowa. They have as many known quantities coming back as anyone in the league, and should definitely be ranked ahead of MSU.
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Your first post since Jan 1st. Hmm.

Definitely ranked ahead of MSU. Definitely? You couldn't beat MSU on a neutral field with a crippled qb spraying passes all over the building. Then that performance in Pasadena. It would be wise to go sit in the corner for awhile.
 

GoUgophers said:
Except Iowa. They have as many known quantities coming back as anyone in the league, and should definitely be ranked ahead of MSU.
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Given the QB situations at the two schools I think a case could be made for Iowa in the 3 spot and MSU in the 4 but I don't think the split is massive. Iowa would certainly seem like the favorite to repeat in the West but I don't think there is much of a gap between them and the rest of the pack in the West. There is definitely not the top/bottom split that you have in the East where you have some really good teams and some really bad teams.
 

Pompous Elitist said:
Your first post since Jan 1st. Hmm.

Definitely ranked ahead of MSU. Definitely? You couldn't beat MSU on a neutral field with a crippled qb spraying passes all over the building. Then that performance in Pasadena. It would be wise to go sit in the corn for awhile.
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FIFY
 

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