Golden Gophers predicted to finish fifth in Big Ten West
In the official unofficial Big Ten preseason poll, the Minnesota Golden Gophers have been picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten West.
Football is just around the corner and that means that everyone is doing a little predicting and previewing on what in the wide world of sports might go on in this upcoming season. The Big Ten doesn’t formally do their own polling before the football season, so Cleveland.com has taken that task upon themselves to poll Big Ten media and come up with a preseason prediction. It’s a middle of the pack prediction from the media for the P.J. Fleck led Minnesota Golden Gophers.
According to Cleveland.com’s poll, the Gophers are predicted to finish in fifth place in the Big Ten West division. The predicted division finish is Wisconsin, Northwestern, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Purdue and Illinois tied for last. The Big Ten East was predicted to finish in order of Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana, Maryland and Rutgers.
The poll from Cleveland.com was conducted by polling 38 voters throughout Big Ten country. The poll not only asked where the teams would finish in their divisions, but also who would make it to the Big Ten Championship Game and who would win that big game.
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The result of Ohio State over Wisconsin in the championship game was the most predicted with 22 voters thinking that would be the result. A total of 27 voters predicted that Ohio State will be the eventual conference champ. Both Wisconsin and Penn State had four voters each say that those schools, respectively, would win the Big Ten. The Michigan Wolverines got one vote as the predicted conference champion.
Cleveland.com’s poll also asked if the Big Ten would have a team in the College Football Playoff. All 38 voters agreed that at least one would get in. A total of 34 thought it would be one team representing the Big Ten, while four voters are predicting the conference will send two teams to the playoff field.
For the Gophers, the result of the poll is not shocking. There are a lot of questions surrounding Minnesota going into the 2017 campaign. Fleck will have his work cut out for himself if the team wants to be rowing the boat in the upper realms of the Big Ten this season.
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