Who are the Big Ten’s College Football Playoff contenders in 2025? Surprise team joins list of usual suspects

In all likelihood, there will soon be a day in which the Big Ten gets four bids to the College Football Playoff no matter what happens. Every team in the league could somehow go 6-6, but the rules would state four of those 6-6 teams deserve the right to play for a national title.

That day is not today, however. The long, illustrious history of the 12-team College Football Playoff is yet to be rewritten, so any Big Ten team that wants to reach the College Football Playoff will have to do so the old-fashioned way: by having a group of administrators deem them superior to others because of the little green boxes on their computer screens.

So as we sit here in March, with five months between us and the start of the regular season, what better time than now to figure out which five Big Ten teams are most likely to have the required number of green boxes? Now, you could say that in the Big Ten, finding five teams is easy because you already know who four of them are, but last year, you probably would’ve had Michigan and USC on the list, and instead you got Indiana.

There’s always room for a surprise, and that surprise is where our list begins … because we’re going in alphabetical order.

The Illini will enter the season in the unusual position of having lofty expectations from people across the country. They went 10-3 last season, with two road losses to Penn State and Oregon and a win over South Carolina to finish the year. Most of that team is back; Illinois ranks third in returning production. The offensive line…


Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/who-are-the-big-tens-college-football-playoff-contenders-in-2025-surprise-team-joins-list-of-usual-suspects/

Author : Tom Fornelli

Publish date : 2025-03-17 14:30:00

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