Cleveland.com has taken the baton of administering a preseason poll for Big Ten football ever since the conference stopped managing its own. The premise is that it polls several team-specific and conference writers to determine preseason favorites when it comes to winning each division, the conference, and the offensive and defensive players of the year.
Ohio State was once again the overwhelming preseason favorite to win the East division and conference crown, but that’s not the only scarlet and gray hue to the poll results.
That’s because quarterback Justin Fields was easily identified as the preseason Offensive Player of the Year in the Big Ten according to 34 panelists asked to chime in by Cleveland.com. Of those, a whopping 33 of them picked Fields to win, meaning two things. First, Fields is expected to have a dominant season. Also, the writer that didn’t should be taken off the poll.
Fields is the only returning Heisman Finalist from last season, ran away with the Big Ten’s Offensive Player of the Year and MVP Award, and was also named the Chicago Tribune’s Silver Football Award winner that goes to the best player in the conference annually. That was all in 2019, and as long as there’s a season in 2020, there’s no way you can put together a valid argument for any other player to take home the award before all the fun starts.
Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, the Big Ten's reigning Offensive Player of the Year, is the heavy preseason favorite to win the award in 2020 per our annual poll. https://t.co/G5h9L9NgGr pic.twitter.com/2F6AwBZFzE
— Nathan Baird (@nwbaird) July 31, 2020
Purdue’s Rondale Moore finished second, but Minnesota’s Rashod Bateman — who finished third — received the other first-place vote.
Now, all that’s left to do is to play the season so we can see how accurate these are.