Buck Bravo

Having reviewed the 2009 draft by conference in yesterday’s post, let’s take a look at how the teams of the Big Ten stacked up against each other in the 2009 draft.  Final conference standings are also included in the last column:

Not surprisingly, the teams with the most players drafted in the 2009 NFL draft could also be found near the top of the final 2008 Big Ten standings.  Michigan State finished third in the conference despite contributing only one fifth round pick to the draft, and Northwestern finished fifth in the conference despite having no one drafted.

Let’s look at how the teams fared once the picks are weighted by round:

Ohio State still retains the lead, and a few teams shuffle places.  The weighting system that was used works well with large numbers of players, but I’d have to disagree that Wisconsin offered a higher quality class to the NFL than Penn State.  Not a knock on Wisconsin, as four players taken in a single draft is a great feat.  It just seems that Penn State’s first round pick combined with two third round picks should legitimately give them the second best draft class in the Big Ten.