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College Football Rankings, Week 11: Say Adios To Top Ten, Big Ten

Expect Penn State and Michigan State to be the Big Ten's highest rated teams in the new Week 11 college football rankings.

Although this has been the consensus for a while now, Week 10's action confirmed the theory that the Big Ten is a conference with a lot of average teams. For a while this season it looked like Wisconsin could potentially be an elite team that competes for a national championship, but they lost in back-to-back weeks and nearly fell out of the top 20 last week. The Big Ten's only team still in the top 10 in last week's polls was Nebraska, but that will change after the Cornhuskers lost to Northwestern on Saturday.

The Big Ten's second highest team last week, Michigan, will also fall in the Week 11 college football rankings. The Wolverines fell to Iowa on the road, 24-16, on Saturday for their second loss of the season. Michigan had climbed all the way up to 13th in the AP Top 25 and USA Today Poll and 15th in the BCS standings, but they will likely fall to the bottom of the teens after the loss.

Depending on which poll you look at, Michigan State or Penn State was the third highest rated Big Ten team in last week's polls. Penn State was off this week, so its ranking likely won't change much. Michigan State beat Minnesota on Saturday, but the chances of the Spartans moving up a whole lot are slim. They will move ahead of Michigan and perhaps even Nebraska, but considering MSU struggled to beat Minnesota, I have a feeling pollsters won't want to move the Spartans up much.

As for the BCS standings, expect Michigan State to be one of only two top 15 teams in Week 11. SB Nation's BCS rankings projections have Penn State 12th and Michigan State 15th in the new standings.