Big Ten power rankings week 3: Penn State catapults to the top spot

Week 2 of the Big Ten season was headlined by Ohio State’s lopsided home loss to Oklahoma.  How far did that drop the Buckeyes in this week’s Power Rankings?

Ever since the inception of the College Football Playoffs in 2014, Power-5 conference members have been scheduling other Power-5 opponents primarily during the second week of play.  This year was no different.  In fact, some premier non-conference games of the year were played this past weekend.

Headlined by Ohio State hosting Oklahoma, other matchups included Georgia traveling to Notre Dame and Auburn versus Clemson.  Also, a Pac-12 tilt pitted Stanford against USC.  So it might be fair to say Week 2 across the college football landscape separated the pretenders from the contenders.

Now that shine has been taken off the Ohio State chrome, what will be in store for the Big Ten in Week 3?

This week’s Big Ten schedule lacks the pizzazz of many of last week’s games, but it still features some intriguing contests like Wisconsin making the trek out to Provo, Utah to take on the BYU Cougars. Check out all of the other the Big Ten games for Week 3.

If you are new, here’s how this works:  We rank each team week-to-week based on the “what have you done for me lately” premise.  We won’t look ahead, project where your favorite team will finish, or even care what players got hurt.  These rankings are based solely on the results of last week’s games.  And, if you don’t agree, feel free to let us know in the “Comments” section at the end of this post.

Alright, let’s do this!

Here are this week’s Big Ten Power Rankings in reverse order (previous week in parentheses).