Five bold, crazy, stupid, daring, wacky Big Ten college football predictions for the 2019 season.
5 (Potentially) Stupid Big Ten Predictions
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What if you were told last year at this time that Northwestern was going to win the Big Ten West?
What if you were told last year at this time that Ohio State would go 12-1 with a Big Ten title and miss out on the College Football Playoff?
What if you were told last year at this time that Nebraska would start the season 0-6?
They’re the wild and wacky curveballs that make each season fun. Enough safe and sane, it’s time for dumb and dangerous with five (potentially) stupid predictions thrown at the wall to see if they stick.
– 5 (Potentially) Stupid SEC Predictions
5. It’s going to be a huge non-conference run for the Big Ten
38-4. That’s what the Big Ten will be in non-conference play.
But it’s the Big Ten and it’s supposed to destroy everyone outside of its league play, right?
Not last year. The conference went an ugly 29-13.
The losses included Wisconsin’s bizarre performance against BYU, Michigan’s misfire against Notre Dame, the Nebraska games that mattered, and the strange issues against the MAC, with Northwestern (Akron), Purdue (Eastern Michigan) and Rutgers (Buffalo) all getting punched in the gut.
Not this year.
TCU is going to get by Purdue, Northwestern will start out with a loss at Stanford, Nebraska will drop the Colorado games in Boulder, and Rutgers won’t be able to get by Boston College. That will be it.
– CFN Big Ten Team-By-Team Predictions
Before you start assuming the Big Ten will only have a gaudy record because the schedule is loaded with a delightful box of cream-puffs, you’re sort of right.
Ohio State isn’t exactly pushing itself, and Wisconsin going to USF and Minnesota’s date against Fresno State don’t really qualify as killers for teams that are supposed to be good this season at college football.
However, unlike last year, Michigan will get the win over Notre Dame, and Michigan State will get by Arizona State.
There are are a few decent calls in here, like Maryland beating Syracuse, Purdue getting by Vanderbilt, and Iowa winning at Iowa State, and …
Okay. The Big Ten non-conference schedule isn’t that big a deal. So to put it another way, the conference had better go 38-4.
NEXT: The Big Ten West will come down to …
4. The Wisconsin vs. Minnesota game will be for the West
Oh sure, everyone loves Nebraska this year.
All of sudden, the Big Red Machine is back, the Huskers are going to dominate the world, and Scott Frost will bring 2017 UCF fun to the program on the way to a national champio … pump the brakes a wee bit.
The Huskers have a nasty schedule, a questionable defense, and likely won’t have the consistency needed to do a whole lot more than have a much, much better season and go bowling.
Oh sure, everyone sort of forgot about Northwestern so much that’s it’s become hipster-cool to say that everyone sort of forgot about Northwestern.
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Almost all of the big games are at home, but Ohio State, Iowa, Michigan State, Purdue and Minnesota are all going to be a problem. And the two giant games away from Evanston? Wisconsin and Nebraska.
Purdue will be good, Iowa will be great, and Illinois will be … more on that in a moment. The Big Ten West, though, will come down to the Paul Bunyan Axe.
Minnesota went 14 seasons without beating Wisconsin, and then with bowl eligibility on the line, it rolled into Madison and left with a 37-15 win that was even more impressive than the final score.
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The Badgers have a rough Big Ten schedule with Michigan, Ohio State and Michigan State to deal with from the West. But it gets Iowa and Northwestern at home.
Without getting way too deep into it, here’s the nutty prediction for how this will all go down.
Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Wisconsin will all have four losses. After the tie-breakers shake out, if the Badgers win at Minnesota, they’ll take the West, If the Gophers win at home, they’ll take the division.
Keeping with the theme of the piece ….
Minnesota will play for the Big Ten title.
NEXT: Really … THIS team will go bowling?
3. Illinois will go bowling
Since getting obliterated 49-17 by USC to close out the 2007 season in the Rose Bowl, Illinois has been to a grand total of four bowl games in 11 years.
The 2014 Illini went to the Heart of Dallas Bowl – and got whacked by Louisiana Tech to finish with a losing season.
Before that, the previous bowl the program went to was your 2011 Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, and while it won, it did it over a UCLA team that finished 6-8.
Lovie Smith has grown a nice beard since taking over, and he’s been going with an apparent youth movement in each of his three seasons – on the way to a 9-27 record – but now there’s finally going to be a wee bit of a payoff.
Illinois is going to go bowling.
Yeah, that Illinois.
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The Illini will beat Akron. It’ll win at UConn. It’ll beat Eastern Michigan. There’s the brutal non-conference slate to deal with.
They’ll also win at home against Rutgers – that’s four wins.
Forget what the semi-official prediction really is … they’ll find a way to get two more wins.
They could get by Northwestern at home in the regular season finale – they lost last season in a 24-16 fight.
They could have a wild offensive day like they did in the 55-31 win over Minnesota.
All it will take is two more wins for a program that’s way, way, way overdue for two breaks.
NEXT: The Buckeyes will lose …
2. THE Ohio State is going to lose three games
This can go one of two ways.
Either Ohio State is more than fine, Ryan Day does for the program what Lincoln Riley did at Oklahoma, and Justin Fields becomes another Baker Mayfield/Kyler Murray right away.
Or this season fizzles into a sad oblivion of irrelevance, like Where’d You Go, Bernadette.
Yeah, it’s probably going to be the former – this is the Big Ten’s most talented team and Day and Fields really should be that good – but you’ve come this far with the overall premise of the article, so …
Are you really that sure that Fields is great at doing this whole five-star quarterback thing?
He has all the talent in the world, but considering he didn’t play all that often in his one year at Georgia – his most famous pass was the one he didn’t throw on a fake punt in the SEC Championship, and he had a guy WIDE open – he’s being asked to come in relatively cold and be as good as Dwayne Haskins, JT Barrett and Braxton Miller.
If Fields isn’t amazing, it’s uh-oh time.
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The game against Nebraska last year was a problem – a 36-31 fight – and now it’s in Lincoln. That’s followed up by a date against a salty Michigan State team that’s going to have the exact right make-up to pull off the road upset.
The Buckeyes have to go to Northwestern. That shouldn’t be a problem coming off a two-week break, but that’s followed up by a showdown against Wisconsin.
Close it all out with Penn State at home – the Nittany Lions should be fully jelled by late-November – and (cue the dramatic music) on the road against a Michigan team that really and truly will win one of these games again someday.
The last time Ohio State lost more than two regular season games was in 2011 – the year before Urban Meyer showed up. Before that it was 2004, so it would take something historically weird for the Buckeyes to lose three.
Maybe that third will come in a bowl game.
If it doesn’t happen in this year of transition, when will it?
Speaking of that exact sentence …
NEXT: The Big Ten team that will go to the College Football Playoff will be …
1. Michigan is going to the College Football Playoff
There have been three (potentially) stupid calls made throughout the offseason that can’t be backed off now.
Texas A&M is going to beat Clemson.
Oklahoma is going to play for the national championship.
Michigan is going to win the Big Ten championship and go to the College Football Playoff.
The program is way, way, way, way overdue.
The 1992 Michigan Wolverines went 9-0-3 – back in the day when there were ties. Then came four years of blah, losing four games in each of the seasons.
As mediocre as Michigan was, it was a major thorn in Ohio State’s side. Lloyd Carr was the head coach in 1995 and 1996, and in both seasons the Wolverines ruined the national title chances of unbeaten Buckeye teams.
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And then it all came together in 1997 – Michigan rolled to 12-0 for a piece of the national championship.
Fast forward to the Jim Harbaugh era.
Has he won ten games in three of the four seasons? Yeah.
Has he turned the program around after years and years of mediocrity? Yeah.
Has he won any really big games? A few, but not enough.
Has he beaten Ohio State? (Crickets)
And now comes the season that everything has been building towards – sort of like 1997.
There might be some key losses on the defensive side, but it’ll be another killer group that should finish in the top ten in total D.
The offense is about to do a whole lot more under new coordinator Josh Gattis. He has a veteran quarterback in Shea Patterson to work with, the receiving corps that was built up over a few strong recruiting classes is great, and the line might be the best in the Big Ten.
The non-conference schedule? Army is dangerous, but come on. Michigan will win the home game over Notre Dame, too.
Going to Wisconsin and Penn State will be rough, and hosting Michigan State is going to be a bear – the Wolverines will lose one of those three.
However, they’ll win every other game on the schedule, and that includes the regular season finale in Ann Arbor against Ohio State.
No, really. If it doesn’t happen in this year of transition, when will it?
Michigan will go on to win the Big Ten title for a 12-1 record and a spot in the College Football Playoff, and then …
Alabama 47, Michigan 10.
And then, once again, Harbaugh will be dogged for a loss in a really big game.
– CFN Preview 2019: All 130 Team Previews
Big Ten Team Previews, 5 Things To Know
East Indiana | Maryland | Michigan | Michigan State
Ohio State | Penn State | Rutgers
West Illinois | Iowa | Minnesota | Nebraska
Northwestern | Purdue | Wisconsin
– 2019 CFN Big Ten Preview
– Ranking The Big Ten Coaches
– CFN All-Big Ten Team & Top 30 Players
– CFN Big Ten Team-By-Team Predictions
– Big Ten Schedules
