Paul Finebaum calls out quality of Big Ten after Ohio State loss to Michigan

With what took place in The Shoe on Saturday, Paul Finebaum is bringing question to the Big Ten.

Finebaum did so while on ‘McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning’ on Monday. It came after Greg McElroy had prefaced that question with a take that the Big Ten is being overvalued as a conference going into the College Football Playoff.

“My biggest struggle right now is the Big Ten,” said McElroy. “I personally believe that the Big Ten is vastly overrated as far as depth, quality, personnel – kind of across the board.”

Finebaum agreed with McElroy, especially in comparison of how the Big Ten is seen next to the SEC. To him, their league has just three quality teams with only one that in consistent consideration among the very best in college football.

“Yeah, you laid it out,” said Finebaum. “I mean, it was open season on the SEC over the weekend, which is fine. I mean, who cares? People are going to say whatever they want. But there’s no way you can defend the Big Ten.

“I mean, they have – I was about to say two elite teams and I’m taking that off. I mean, I think they have one elite team in Oregon and then two next-level in Ohio State and Penn State, even though I still think Ohio State is capable of beating anybody in the country because of the amount of talent that they have gone out and bought.”

Again, this goes back to the 13-10 loss for No. 2 Ohio State to Michigan this past weekend in Columbus. It was already bad enough for the Buckeyes with it being their fourth-straight loss in The Game. However, Finebaum says it’s also a bad look for the Big Ten, and, in turn, a fault of the CFP, that they’ll almost certainly still be in the field despite that loss to the Wolverines.

“You know, I want to say one more thing about what happened,” Finebaum added. “In any other year, that’s a disqualifier for anything. But the fact that, you know, Ohio State loses the biggest game of the year, doesn’t show up at home and, you know, they still get a ticket into this? It says a lot of things. But it mainly says that it’s hard identifying this many good teams in a college football season.”

The Big Ten is a few days away from likely having the most teams in the playoff with four overall. Still, Finebaum wonders about the validity of those berths considering his thoughts on their conference.