The Big Ten Is Great Again, and Not Just at the Top

Following the first week of the 2014 season, after Ohio State lost to Virginia Tech and Michigan State lost to Oregon, FOX writer and noted SEC fan Clay Travis sent a now infamous tweet that the Big Ten had been eliminated from the College Football Playoff.

The Big Ten is officially eliminated from placing a team in the playoff. It is September 6th.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravisBGID)September 7, 2014

Of course, that wasn't true: Ohio State ended up winning the national championship, and Travis's proclamation was dug up for Twitter mockery in December and January. Still, when he wrote it, there weren't a lot of people who thought it was dead wrong. After all, the Big Ten sucks.

Right?

Even as Ohio State advanced toward last season's playoff, the Buckeyes didn't attract many believers. The computers, which are unfeeling machines and therefore incapable of anti-Big Ten bias, kept telling us that OSU had the best team in the country—but almost no one bought in until the Buckeyes proved it on the field, pummeling both No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Oregon.

Many people opined that all the Big Ten needed to get back to national relevance was a national championship team, which it had failed to produce since 2002. This ended up being half-true. Yes, Ohio State earned a lot of respect, but the narrative surrounding the rest of the conference coming into the 2015 season didn't change. In fact, the biggest topic of debate surrounding the Big Ten was whether a potentially undefeated OSU would deserve to be the No. 1 seed in this year's playoff because of how "weak" its schedule would be.

Over the first half of the season, however, the Big Ten has impressed—particularly by the numbers, which, again, are free of bias and have no idea why you cry. The conference has four teams—the most among all conferences—in the top 16 of the Football Outsiders F/+ ratings, the most respected statistical rankings. Over the past three weeks, the Big Ten has gone from being ranked the fifth-best conference in the country to No. 2. Even real live human beings are starting to take notice, as the Big Ten has tied the SEC with four teams in the top 15 of the AP Poll.

What's lifting the Big Ten? The same thing that makes the SEC so presumptively strong, year in and year out: depth.

There's an old adage that says when [insert team] is good, [insert league/sport] is better. Often, that's not particularly true, but the fact that Iowa and Michigan are both good at the same time has been a major factor in the Big Ten's resurgence.

Everyone knew that Michigan was going to be successful under coach Jim Harbaugh, but the success has come earlier than most imagined, as the Wolverines are one crazy-ass play away from the driver's seat in the Big Ten East. This team is not only a legitimate Big Ten East title contender; it's still a legitimate national championship threat, and one the country has been forced to acknowledge alongside OSU and Michigan State.

Iowa's story is a bit different. The Hawkeyes don't have the flash of a new coach, or really much flash in anything they do, but they do own impressive wins against No. 25 Pitt and at Wisconsin and Northwestern, and they're pounding opponents into the ground. The Big Ten West remains one of the weakest divisions in college football, but a resurgent Iowa gives it some legitimacy.

The Big Ten can now claim a number of Playoff contenders, which means multiple quality wins for its eventual champion. More important, its newfound success appears sustainable, thanks to a recent coaching and facility overhaul. Harbaugh and Urban Meyer are two of the top coaches anywhere; Penn State has become a recruiting powerhouse; Michigan State is now a perennial winner; and Iowa's mix of young talent and a new, recruit-friendly state-of-the-art practice facility augur well for its immediate and long-term future. Oh, and all of this fails to mention traditional powers Wisconsin and Nebraska, which will always be contenders in the Big Ten West, and figure to be national contenders every few years.

The next step for the Big Ten? Making people believe, inside and outside the conference. To wit: advanced statistics would favor Iowa over Florida, TCU, Florida State, Ole Miss, and others, but the common fan sentiment around those potential bowl game matchups—even from my perch in Chicago, sitting firmly in Big Ten country—is that the Hawkeyes would be blown out. The Big Ten's past has conditioned college football fans to think that way, perhaps rightfully so: the SEC is 17-9 against the Big Ten this decade, with an average victory margin of nearly 10 points per contest.

Still, as they say in financial product disclaimers, past performance does not guarantee future results. Ask Travis. Or just open your eyes to the here and now. Last January, it looked like the Big Ten East was back, with the Big Ten West still trailing far behind. Halfway through the 2015 season, the East is even better than expected, and the West isn't as bad. There's strength in numbers, and right now the numbers increasingly are on the Big Ten's side.