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Sep 23, 2026
Michigan FB
The wider view

Michigan drew five of the Big Ten's other ranked teams. Penn State drew two.

Seven Big Ten teams are in this week's AP Top 25, and Michigan is sixth of them at 18th. The ranked teams on its conference schedule hold 4,657 poll points, more than three times the 1,339 on Penn State's. Indiana and Penn State are 6-0 between them without playing a team from the four conferences whose champions get automatic playoff bids. The selection committee's first ranking arrives November 3, and by then Michigan will have played three of its five.

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Wes FerrySep 23, 20266 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Kyle Whittingham at a lectern marked Big Ten Football at the conference's media days in Chicago in July 2026, white-haired, in a navy suit and navy tie, in front of a navy backdrop repeating the Big Ten wordmark and Michigan's maize block M.

Michigan's best win has left the poll.

Oklahoma was 11th in the country when it came to Michigan Stadium on September 12 and lost 17-10. On Saturday it beat New Mexico 14-6 at home, and on Sunday the Associated Press voters took it out of the Top 25 altogether. The coaches still have it 24th. That is the whole of the ranked-win column Michigan built in September, and it has lost most of its value in a week when Michigan was beating UTEP by 35.

Michigan moved up one place, to 18th, and gained 50 poll points, to 432. It was 16th with 718 points in the preseason ballot. Three wins later it holds 60% of the support it started with.

Nonconference play is finished. Nine Big Ten games are left, and the useful question about Michigan's place in the sport now is less about Michigan than about the other 17 teams in its conference, and which of them it drew.

Michigan drew almost everybody#

The Big Ten has 18 teams and no divisions. Each plays nine conference games, which means each misses eight of the other 17, and the two teams with the best conference records meet in Indianapolis on December 5. Which eight you miss is the difference between a conference race and a conference schedule, and this year the draw has been very uneven at the top.

Seven Big Ten teams are in this week's AP Top 25. Here is how many of the other six each one plays, and what those opponents are worth in poll points today.

TeamAP rankRanked Big Ten opponentsTheir AP pointsRanked teams it misses
Indiana5Ohio State, Michigan, USC2,754Iowa, Penn State, Oregon
Ohio State7Indiana, USC, Iowa, Oregon, Michigan3,731Penn State
USC12Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon4,096Iowa, Michigan
Penn State13USC, Michigan1,339Indiana, Ohio State, Iowa, Oregon
Iowa17Michigan, Ohio State1,847Indiana, USC, Penn State, Oregon
Michigan18Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Iowa, Oregon4,657USC
Oregon20Ohio State, USC, Michigan2,754Indiana, Penn State, Iowa

Michigan plays five of the six and misses only USC. Ohio State also plays five, but it cannot play itself. In place of Ohio State and Penn State it has USC and Michigan, and its total comes out 926 points lighter. The ranked teams on Michigan's conference schedule are worth more than those on any other ranked Big Ten team's. The only team in the conference that drew the same five is Northwestern, which is 2-0 and unranked.

Penn State sits at the other end. It plays USC and Michigan and nobody else in the table, and those two are worth 1,339 points, a little under 29% of Michigan's figure. Iowa, Saturday's opponent, plays two ranked conference teams, Michigan and Ohio State. Indiana, fifth in the country, avoids Iowa, Penn State and Oregon.

Michigan does get three of its five at home. Iowa comes to Ann Arbor on Saturday, Penn State on October 17 and Indiana on October 24. Oregon and Ohio State are on the road, in Eugene on November 14 and in Columbus on November 28.

What a September poll is measuring#

Those point totals are September points, and a September poll is still mostly a preseason poll with three results attached. The Big Ten portion of it shows the pattern clearly.

In the preseason ballot the conference's order was Ohio State 1st, Oregon 2nd, Indiana 6th, USC 14th, Michigan 16th, Penn State 18th and Iowa 22nd. The two teams that have lost a game have fallen, Ohio State to 7th and Oregon to 20th. Every ranked Big Ten team that is still unbeaten has climbed, except Michigan. Penn State has gone from 18th to 13th and Iowa from 22nd to 17th. Of the five unbeaten Big Ten teams in the AP poll, Michigan is the only one ranked lower now than in August, and it is the one with the best win.

The reason is visible in the scores. Michigan won its opener 13-12 on the final play, which cost it its place in the poll for a week, and it has been climbing back since. Penn State and Indiana have been winning by a lot against opposition that proves very little.

The College Football Playoff gives automatic bids to the champions of four conferences, the ACC, the Big Ten, the Big 12 and the SEC. Indiana and Penn State are 6-0 between them and neither has played a team from any of those four. Indiana has beaten North Texas 52-16, Howard 55-0 and Western Kentucky 38-0. Penn State has beaten Marshall 45-0, Temple 27-9 and Buffalo 55-13.

Among the seven ranked Big Ten teams, three own a win over a team from one of those four conferences. Michigan beat Oklahoma. Iowa beat Iowa State 16-13, and Iowa State has won its other two games by 28 and 48. USC beat Rutgers 42-35, and Rutgers is 0-3. Ohio State and Oregon each played one such team and lost, Ohio State 24-23 at Texas and Oregon 39-31 at Oklahoma State.

None of that makes Michigan better than the five Big Ten teams ranked above it. Three games is too few to sort anybody, and one of Michigan's three was a one-point win over a team from the Mid-American Conference. It does mean that a ranking of Indiana or Penn State ahead of Michigan today is a statement about August, and the evidence to overturn or confirm it is now scheduled rather than hypothetical. Michigan plays Penn State in 24 days and Indiana a week after that.

Saturday is the first game between two ranked teams#

Saturday is the first game this season in which Michigan and its opponent are both ranked. Iowa is 17th and Michigan 18th, 129 poll points apart.

Iowa has allowed 13 points in three games, all of them to Iowa State in a 16-13 win. It shut out Northern Illinois 40-0 and Northern Iowa 55-0. Michigan has allowed 39 points in three games, 12 to Western Michigan, 10 to Oklahoma and 17 to UTEP. Both defenses have had one real test and passed it by a field goal or a touchdown.

Under the Big Ten's published tiebreaking procedures, a two-way tie in the standings goes first to the head-to-head result. So Saturday is a game against one of the teams Michigan might need to finish ahead of in November, and the result follows both teams to the end of the regular season. The fourth step of the same procedure, if a tie gets that far, is the combined conference winning percentage of each team's conference opponents. That is the one rule in the book that rewards the schedule Michigan drew.

The committee speaks on November 3#

There is no playoff ranking yet, and there will not be one until the selection committee publishes the first of its six on Tuesday, November 3. The last comes on Selection Day, Sunday, December 6, when the 12-team field is named. The field is the champions of the ACC, the Big Ten, the Big 12 and the SEC, the highest-ranked champion from the American, Conference USA, the Mid-American, the Mountain West, the Pac-12 and the Sun Belt, and the next seven highest-ranked teams.

So Michigan has two ways in. One is to win the Big Ten, which requires finishing in the top two of the standings and then winning on December 5. The other is to be one of the seven highest-ranked teams without an automatic bid, which puts the decision in the committee's hands. Nobody can put a number on either route in September without making it up, and the committee has not said a word.

What can be stated is the calendar. By November 3, Michigan will have played Iowa, Minnesota, Penn State, Indiana and Rutgers. Three of those five are ranked. The committee's first look at Michigan will come after most of the evidence the table above describes, and before the two road trips that finish the season.

The line has not settled#

Michigan has started a different offensive line in each of its three games. Against Western Michigan the five were Blake Frazier at left tackle, Evan Link at left guard, Jake Guarnera at center, Brady Norton at right guard and Andrew Sprague at right tackle. Against Oklahoma, Link was out and Nathan Efobi started at left guard. Against UTEP, Sprague was out, Frazier moved to right tackle, Link returned at left tackle and Efobi stayed at left guard.

Only Guarnera and Norton have started all three games at the same position. Andrew Babalola, who missed all of 2025 after tearing an anterior cruciate ligament, had a setback, and Kyle Whittingham said on September 14 that he would not be available in the near future.

The Big Ten schedule is where a line that has kept changing gets tested, and it starts against an Iowa defense that has given up 13 points in September. Michigan hosts Iowa on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on CBS.

Called Shot#

Michigan appears among the 25 teams in the College Football Playoff selection committee's first rankings of the season, released Tuesday, November 3. The case for it is the schedule: by that night Michigan will have played three ranked conference teams, and a team that has gone 2-1 or better in those games, with the Oklahoma win behind it, is very hard to leave out of a list of 25. The case against it is the same schedule: five games in six weeks, three of them against ranked teams, and a line that has not started the same five twice. A 5-3 record is a realistic outcome of that stretch, and a three-loss team with its best win sitting unranked is exactly the team a committee leaves out in the first week.

Sources: AP Top 25 and Coaches Poll for the preseason and weeks 2 through 4, with points, from the CollegeFootballData rankings feed, read 2026-09-23. Scores, records, opponents' conferences and the 2026 Big Ten schedule from the CollegeFootballData games feed, read 2026-09-23. Kickoff times, networks, sites, Oklahoma's ranking at kickoff and the December 5 Big Ten championship game from Michigan Athletics' 2026 football schedule page, opened 2026-09-23. Championship game venue per the Big Ten Conference's 2026 championship game page, opened 2026-09-23. Tiebreaking steps per the Big Ten's football championship tiebreaking procedures, last updated 2025-09-17. Playoff field, automatic qualifiers, six-ranking schedule, November 3 first ranking and December 6 Selection Day per the College Football Playoff release of 2026-08-06. Starting offensive lines from Michigan Athletics' Player Participation releases for the three games. Whittingham on Babalola from his September 14 press conference, reported by Clayton Sayfie of On3.

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