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The Big Ten West was a funny creature. I think we can all agree on that. Honestly, seeing it play out made the Legends and Leaders divisions make a lot more sense, even if those names are still one of God’s goofiest creations. The Big Ten West spent its ten-year history mostly providing blowout fodder for the Big Ten East champion, a nice “closing argument” as the conference tried to avoid the indignity of missing the College Football Playoff. Wisconsin propped the division up for a long time. But the Big Ten West started with a 59–0 Badger loss in the Big Ten Championship, and it ended with a 26–0 Hawkeye loss, and in between it won the conference title exactly zero times.
Eventually, maybe the Big Ten West identity will fade. But thanks to its contiguity—both geographic and stylistic, I’m not sure those of us who followed late-2010’s college football can ever really forget what the Big Ten West meant, or who made it mean so much. Wisconsin. Iowa. Nebraska. Northwestern. Minnesota. Illinois. Purdue. These were our warriors in the three-and-out arena. On their punters’ faces still lingers the dust and sweat and blood.
Tonight, the Big Ten West enjoys a little renaissance. Illinois’s playing Nebraska, both are ranked in the AP Top 25, and both are 3–0. Illinois edged Kansas in Champaign two weeks ago. Nebraska effectively ended the Deion Sanders era when Colorado came to Lincoln. Both hold high hopes for the future—Nebraska’s pinned to Matt Rhule and Dylan Raiola, Illinois’s more Big Ten West-ian as Bret Bielema tries to power the Illini to greatness through defense and physicality—and the winner will hold high hopes for this season as well. Illinois faces three of the New Big Ten’s marquee programs over its next four games. Nebraska doesn’t, and that means it’s got a realistic chance to open this season 7–0.
The Huskers are the favorite. Raiola has looked sharp, and while the Illini secondary has looked sharp as well, Nebraska’s defense is legitimately ferocious. This isn’t Bielema’s first rodeo, and the Illini will probably try to coax Nebraska’s redshirt freshman into trying to make too many plays, but Rhule should see that coming. He coached both sides of the ball as he rose through the ranks, but it was his offensive work which earned him the Temple job. He should know what to expect from Bielema’s program.
Accordingly, there are different standards when it comes to each team proving itself to be “for real.”
For Illinois, “for real” probably means being Bielema’s best team in Champaign so far, a title which would constitute a 9–4 final record. They’re a long way from that projection right now—they drew that tough schedule—but win on the road against Nebraska and they’ll start approaching that sort of status.
For Nebraska, “for real” doesn’t quite mean Big Ten contention, but it means true top 25 membership. Movelor, our model’s rating system, still has the Huskers only 40th in the country, while ESPN’s SP+ and FPI barely have Nebraska in the top 25 themselves. Beat Illinois handily, and the flavor and degree of hype will change. Right now, Nebraska looks like a program Matt Rhule is turning around. Beat Illinois by 20, and we’ll be asking whether Nebraska’s a program Matt Rhule has already turned around. Again, we’re not expecting Big Ten contention, and I’m not sure there’s any path to Nebraska being anything but a hearty underdog against Ohio State. But can Nebraska be better this year than Michigan? Can they finish in the top three or four in the Big Ten? Can they keep themselves in the playoff conversation for a while? Those are the sorts of highs the Huskers are chasing. They come with more risk—Illinois has less to lose tonight than Nebraska does—but risk is a good thing. Nebraska hasn’t been in the position much lately of having a whole lot to lose.
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I don’t know that Appalachian State’s performance was as bad last night as it looks today. On offense. On defense, yes, absolutely terrible. But on offense, part of what happened to App State is that they made their bad plays at bad times. They also kept playing to win, even when facing a major deficit, and that dug the hole deeper.
Still, it was a brutal performance from App State, bad enough to start worrying about the state of the program under Shawn Clark. The Sun Belt’s gotten tougher since the days of Satterfield and Drinkwitz, but a second 6–6 season in three years would sting. It’s analogous to what happened at Boise State under Andy Avalos. The results weren’t that bad for Avalos, and it was always puzzling why they had previously been so good. But the fact he struggled when his predecessors didn’t was concerning.
What happened to South Alabama is and isn’t perplexing. The team went from losing to North Texas and Ohio to beating the crap out of App State. This is a surprising swing. After last night’s result, Movelor would have the Jaguars favored by 14 against the Mean Green and four against the Bobcats. They lost those games by 14 and seven. Really, only the UNT performance is outside the norms, and the quick explanation there is that South Alabama isn’t much defensively. Their offense is high-powered, and they might be the Sun Belt’s best team, but if they are it’s because they’re capable of outrunning everybody else. Not because they’re locking them down.
So, in that light, I guess the whole App State performance was pretty bad last night. The offense wasn’t as impotent as the scoreboard indicated, but even its fine performance came against a USA defense it should have torn up.
In the meantime, the Sun Belt’s playoff chances take another marginal hit.
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In tonight’s non-B1G action, Stanford visits Syracuse and San Jose State goes to Washington State. We’ve written a lot about Washington State’s playoff chances, and we’ve mentioned SJSU a little as a Mountain West sleeper. Turning, then, to the ACC…
Syracuse is 2–0. They beat that Ohio team comfortably, and they held off Georgia Tech behind some big numbers by Kyle McCord. The ACC’s is an open race, and the Orange don’t play Clemson, Florida State, or Louisville. They get Miami and Virginia Tech at home.
We’re not anointing Syracuse an ACC contender or saying you should watch for them making the playoff if they win this game. But Fran Brown might have been a pretty darn good hire, and McCord might have been a pretty darn good pickup in the transfer portal. Maybe tonight’s the night Stanford starts taking steps forward. They did hang pretty tough with TCU. I’m curious, though, about Syracuse.
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More from us as the day goes on and into tomorrow morning. If you missed it earlier this week, or if you want fresh links:
- Our Week 4 preview
- This week’s futures bets
- Our model’s College Football Playoff probabilities
- Our model’s College Football Playoff bracketology
- Movelor’s Week 4 picks
Bark.
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