Can Illinois keep building “buzz” in coach Bret Bielema’s second season? Will Northwestern’s recent yo-yo trend result in another division title for Pat Fitzgerald’s team.
Can Michigan make it two years in a row of winning the Big Ten — and beating Ohio State? Or will the Buckeyes return to the top of the conference heap?
Before games get underway Aug. 27 — including a Big Ten matchup in Ireland between Northwestern and Nebraska — take a tour through the conference with team-by-team season previews.
Bret Bielema offered Illinois fans a ray of hope by going 5-7 in a 2021 debut season highlighted by a nine-overtime win at Penn State and the first victory over rival Northwestern since 2014.
Getting the Illini to a bowl game is among the next challenges for a team that returns only six starters on each side of the ball.
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Indiana linebacker Cam Jones and quarterback Jack Tuttle took matters into their own hands this offseason.
They called their teammates together to discuss the goals and aspirations of the program, the need to always play with an edge and to break down precisely why things went wrong in 2021.
Now they’re using the lessons from a players-only PowerPoint session to avoid a repeat this fall.
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Iowa’s defense was one of the best in the nation at forcing turnovers and turning them into points.
With seven starters back on that side of the ball, the Hawkeyes would appear set to build on what they accomplished while reaching the Big Ten championship game.
Coach Kirk Ferentz said the defense is far from proven, especially considering Riley Moss is the only returning starter in the secondary.
“Before we announce ourselves ready to roll on defense,” Ferentz said, “we’ve still got some work to do.”
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With an experienced quarterback in Taulia Tagovailoa and a talented receiving corps, Maryland has built an exciting passing attack that has won its share of Big Ten games.
Whether the Terrapins can be anything more than an afterthought to the conference’s top teams remains to be seen.
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Jim Harbaugh’s eighth team is his first at Michigan that is coming off a win over Ohio State.
The Wolverines’ new challenge is to knock off the archrival Buckeyes on the road for the first time since 2000. Before that, though, they will try to beat Michigan State at the Big House for the first time in three tries.
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The Michigan State Spartans are openly talking about winning a national championship, confidently saying they can top last year’s 11-win season.
Mel Tucker, entering his third season with the Spartans, knows what it takes to win it all. He did it as an assistant on championship-winning coaching staffs at Alabama in 2015 and Ohio State in 2002.
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Mohamed Ibrahim started asking some of his fellow seniors near the end of last season about returning to Minnesota for one more year, a star running back unsettled by the feeling of finishing his college career because of a torn Achilles tendon.
The responses he collected made the decision clear. Once Ibrahim announced he would sign up for a sixth season, quarterback Tanner Morgan, center John Michael Schmitz and wide receiver Chris Autman-Bell followed suit soon after.
“I came back for my teammates,” Ibrahim said. “Without my teammates I wouldn’t be here, so why not give it one more shot?”
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It’s make or break for Scott Frost.
Nebraska is mired in its worst stretch of football in more than 60 years, and through four seasons Frost has failed to deliver anything close to what was expected when he made his celebrated return to his home state and the school he quarterbacked to a share of a national championship.
Athletic director Trev Alberts announced late in last year’s 3-9 season he would bring Frost back, but the 47-year-old coach had to take a $1 million pay cut and fire four offensive assistants.
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From winning the Big Ten West to crashing to the bottom of the division and then repeating the cycle, Northwestern has been following a wild pattern in recent seasons.
It’s not the way coach Pat Fitzgerald drew it up. But he would take another big jump.
The Wildcats will try to extend the trend for at least one more season and pick themselves up again after going from winning the division to finishing last in 2021.
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Nine months later, the sting of losing to Michigan is still fresh for No. 2 Ohio State.
That’s the way it is in Columbus. Don’t lose to Michigan. Doing so brings a year of pain and misery.
“It was sickening,” receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba said of the 42-27 thumping on Nov. 27 in Ann Arbor that ended an eight-game Buckeyes winning streak in the rivalry game.
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In six years at Penn State, Sean Clifford has earned two degrees, learned four offenses and even started his own player promotion company.
But the Nittany Lions quarterback came back for one reason.
“It’s all ball,” Clifford said. “That’s the main priority right now.”
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Coach Jeff Brohm’s creative offense put Purdue back in the national conversation in 2017. His defensive changes turned the Boilermakers into a Big Ten division contender last season.
Brohm enters his sixth season in West Lafayette hoping his team can use the momentum to chase even grander goals in the wide-open West Division.
“We haven’t gotten there by any means,” Brohm said. “I do think we’ve got a hungry group. We’re looking forward to trying to make strides this year and improve upon that win total, but it’s going to be a challenge.”
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It’s hard to know what to expect from Rutgers in Greg Schiano’s third season back coaching the nation’s oldest college football program.
The Scarlet Knights went to a bowl game in 2021, facing Wake Forest in the Gator Bowl — with an asterisk: Rutgers got the bid eight days before the game with a 5-7 record after Texas A&M had to withdraw because of COVID-19 issues. The 38-10 loss to the Demon Deacons was not unexpected.
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Wisconsin used to make trips to the Big Ten championship game a nearly annual excursion.
Not anymore.
After playing in five of the first seven Big Ten championship games, the Badgers have made it to Indianapolis just once in the last four years. They blew a chance to get there last year by losing at Minnesota in their regular-season finale.
