We’re still two weeks away from the end of the regular season and three weeks from the championship week bonanza, but the 2020 Big Ten Football championship is already clinched.

Your 2020 Big Ten Football Champion: Global Pandemic (7-0)

Congratulations to 2020 Big Ten champion Global Pandemic, who locked up the title with Minnesota’s cancellation against Northwestern giving GP a 7-0 record. The West division champion Northwestern Wildcats can only finish 6-1 before championship week, while East division leader Ohio State has no path to 7 wins with two games already cancelled. Indiana could still go 7-1, but that would simply tie them with Global Pandemic for wins, where GP would take the tiebreaker.

The path to the first Global Pandemic Big Ten title in 102 years started with Wisconsin’s week 2 cancellation against Nebraska and continued when the Badgers cancelled the following week’s contest with Purdue. Maryland’s cancellations against Ohio State and Michigan State provided two more wins, while Ohio State provided another by cancelling the Illinois game. The massive outbreak at Minnesota has provided the final two victories for Global Pandemic to lock up the conference title at 7-0.

After spending most of a century as an afterthought in the Big Ten title race since splitting a conference title in 1918 with Illinois, Michigan and Purdue, Global Pandemic popped up on the national radar very suddenly near the end of last season, displaying the team speed and depth needed to take advantage of some poor opposing coaching and take the college football world by storm. The offseason hype was such that Global Pandemic was on everyone’s radar by the time the 2020 season kicked off. GP appeared to have the title won by default back in August, but then in October a revised season launched that was designed to prevent Global Pandemic from winning the Big Ten...

...but to no avail.

Waking up the echoes of Influenza from the 1918 championship, Global Pandemic’s key player(s) were the one-two punch of Novel Coronavirus and COVID-19. You can’t have one without the other. Like Jabrill Peppers, Coronavirus did damage on offense, defense and special teams (and is worse than the American public would like to believe).

Good job, everybody!

Listen to our podcast recapping this ridiculous and stupid weekend of football. Drink when coronavirus comes up.