Sporting News’ Bill Bender predicted the college football ‘National Championship’ and ‘Playoff Contenders’ for each conference. Here’s what he wrote about the B1G:
Big Ten
National title: Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan
Playoff contenders: Penn State, Michigan State
Wild cards: Northwestern, Nebraska
Why? The Big Ten has five legitimate playoff contenders, something no other conference can boast. Ohio State is the best national championship contender out of the conference, given Urban Meyer’s track record in Columbus. How do you explain the rest of those picks? Wisconsin is loaded, and if there’s a year to break through, this is it. If Michigan makes the College Football Playoff, it means everything came together for Jim Harbaugh against a brutal schedule — if Michigan can get through that, it can win it all. Penn State and Michigan State might feel slighted, but both teams are fully capable of proving us wrong if they can survive the Big Ten East. We were close to bumping both teams up a line, but we’ll make them prove it.
