2017 Big Ten preseason football projections
Notes:
*Running back that classic 2014 Big Ten Championship Game?
*Michigan at 7-5 jumped out at me right away. I definitely see a transition year for the Wolverines, but that still caught me off guard.
Look at the schedule, though. UM plays at Penn State and at Wisconsin. Indiana has a bye week before the Wolverines come to Bloomington, while UM plays Michigan State in the preceding week.
I admit 7-5 is very much in the worst-case scenario category for Jim Harbaugh's team, but I do think it's in play.
*I also don't consider myself all that high on Nebraska, so an 8-4 record felt strange. (That's really saying something when 8-4 is considered the upper boundary for that program.)
*Ohio St. looks like the safest bet of any team in the country to qualify for the College Football Playoff.
*I don't buy into the whole "B1G is back!" thing. Frankly, the conference as a whole took undeserved jabs for a long time, but the pendulum is swinging too far the other way.
This is a long-winded way of saying I doubt anyone will be touting the league's non-conference record at the end of the year.
*Indiana will likely be a better team than its record when all is said and done. What I consider to be 50-50 games this year all come on the road: Michigan State, Maryland, Virginia. That normally points to a team in line to suffer too many heart-breakers.