The ESPN Announces the Best Running Backs in the Nation and 3 are From the Big Ten

After an exhausting day, I decided to unwind with a root beer and read some sports news. Nothing good was going on twitter, so I decided to check out ESPN. Sadly, former Northwestern coach Ara Parseghian passed away. Then there were 12 or so stories about the SEC before finally getting to a B1G story. It was about Michigan, so I decided to scroll up and see if there was anything better to read. I found something I missed the first time, and that was “Rank’em: The best running backs in college football.”

Instead of just going with the rank of their experts that recently put out a top 50 players in college football, ESPN decided to leave it up to you, the reader, to vote the backs up or down. Barkley was ranked number 1, as he should be. Mike Weber, of Ohio State, moved up to 6 from the original list that had him 9th. Northwestern’s Justin Jackson moved up to number 7.

An interesting tidbit. Aside from Barkley, every single back had at least 500 more down votes than up votes. Either college football fans are insightful, and believe that there is talent outside of the people on ESPN’s list, or they are miserable F’s that just click down on everyone they come across. I am not sure which, but I do have my suspicions.

Overall, I thought the list was pretty accurate, though I personally would have had Nick Chubb number 2. I am not going to penalize a guy because of injury. Justin Jackson would also be higher, because he is more proven than some of the younger guys. He is sitting at over 4k yards rushing on his career, and his last time out he had a big game against a solid Pitt defense.

I can’t wait till the actual season starts and these lists aren’t just going off of what happened 10 months ago.