The Big Ten league office stopped rounding up votes and publishing a preseason football poll in 2011, leaving such all-important work to the outlets that cover conference teams. While we wait for the Cleveland.com poll — considered the league’s de facto preseason survey — to drop, the folks at 247 Sports recently canvassed their in-house writers and produced a version of their own.
There, Indiana is slotted to finish squarely in the middle of the Big Ten East standings. 247 Sports’ 11-person panel placed IU fourth in the division, behind usual suspects Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan, and ahead of Michigan State, Maryland and Rutgers, in that order.