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The new 18-team Big Ten Conference delivered on sky-high expectations in its first season in 2024.
The regular-season race came down to the final weeks, decided by high-profile games, including Oregon’s Week 12 home win over Ohio State. For fans of the Big Ten East who grew tired of watching the West’s Wisconsin, Iowa, or Northwestern lose in the title game every season, 2024 provided a long-awaited result with Oregon’s championship win over top-ranked Penn State.
Related: Power ranking all 18 Big Ten football programs after the 2024 season
The Big Ten’s postseason performance went on to further define what was an impressive season from the conference. Ohio State hoisted the national title trophy, its first since 2014, while Penn State made an impressive run to the College Football Playoff semifinal. Oregon and Indiana also each made the field, though both dropped the first game they played — Oregon the quarterfinal to Ohio State and Indiana the first round to Notre Dame.
Those results weren’t the only headline-grabbing postseason final scores. Michigan and Illinois’ bowl wins over Alabama and South Carolina, respectively, further bolstered the Big Ten’s argument over the SEC for conference supremacy. It’s now hard to argue against the Big Ten’s place atop the conference hierarchy after one year of the post-realignment era.
Those results all inform our outlook for 2025. There is some precedent for what is to come, although the conference and broader sport still exist in mostly uncharted waters. As we prepare for spring practice and that upcoming 2025 season, we’re taking a way-too-early stab at record predictions for every team in the conference. The teams are listed by projected record:
Northwestern Wildcats
Sep 21, 2024; Seattle, Washington, USA; Northwestern Wildcats head coach David Braun watches pregame warmups against…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/way-too-early-record-predictions-113056814.html
Author : Badgers Wire
Publish date : 2025-02-16 11:30:00
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