ALTOONA, Pa. -- We're about to enter the final year of Big Ten football as we know it, because next year will bring about massive changes to the league and college football in general.
Big Ten media days get under way Wednesday in Indianapolis, and the league's future is certain to be a major talking point, with USC and UCLA getting set to join next year.
Yes, there's plenty of stuff to talk about for this upcoming season, but this is still a good time to take a look ahead at what might happen in the Big Ten going forward.
Here are my 10 bold predictions.
1. UCLA is gonna have lots of problems
UCLA will struggle in the Big Ten, and I don't see the Bruins being much of a factor in the league most years. Sure, they could have a big season every now and then, but there's no reason whatsoever to think they'll be a consistent threat to the top teams in the league.
Honestly, I feel more confident about this prediction than anything else on this list. Simply because, most years, UCLA hasn't really even a big force in the Pac-12, and that league has generally been far inferior to the Big Ten.
The Bruins had a nice season in 2022, going 9-4 and losing to Pitt in the Sun Bowl to finish 21st in the final AP poll. That was their first postseason AP top 25 ranking since 2014, when they finished 10th.
UCLA finished ranked No. 16 in 2013 and No. 16 in 2005. That's it. That's the entirety of the program's top 25 finishes this century -- a grand total of four times.
Furthermore, there have only been eight top 25 finishes since 1988, a span of 35 years.
The Bruins play a soft brand of football -- many teams in the Pac-12 do -- their defense often struggles big time and they always have trouble with tough, physical teams.
Sure, there's excitement about UCLA joining the Big Ten as a sidekick to USC, but let's be clear here: The Bruins rarely have a strong team, and they're gonna face tremendous obstacles trying to adapt to play rugged Big Ten competition.
2. Notre Dame will join the Big Ten ... eventually
OK, so I gave you my sure-fire prediction at No. 1. This one I'm not quite as certain about, although I do believe it will happen at some point.
It might take 5-10 more years. It might take 25 more years.
But I do believe there will come a day when Notre Dame will have no other reasonable choice but to join a conference, or else run the risk of losing out financially to teams in leagues such as the Big Ten and SEC.
The Big Ten is much more of a natural fit for the Fighting Irish than the SEC, so I feel pretty confident this will happen ... someday.
3. The Big Ten will never kick out a member school just for being bad.
Let's call this the Rutgers question. I've been asked it numerous times over the past year or two.
Let's say Rutgers continues to be really bad and the Big Ten wants to expand. Would the league boot Rutgers to the sideline in order to add say, Notre Dame or somebody else?
I just don't see it happening.
Never is a long time, and I'm always hesitant to use this word. But the Big Ten is a pompous, arrogant league, one that prides itself on tradition and academics and all that jazz. If it were to kick out Rutgers or anybody else based only on football struggles, the conference would be proving that it cares only about sports success -- which is more true than the league would like to admit, but still.
4. Nobody will miss divisions once they're gone
Having Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Michigan State in one ridiculously loaded division has been a big problem for the Big Ten.
While the East has been terrific, the West Division almost always pales badly in comparison, featuring a bunch of merely mediocre to pretty good teams most years. Wisconsin has been an occasional exception, but the Badgers still haven't measured up to the East's best.
The league will do away with divisions once it adds USC and UCLA, then the top two teams overall will play in the conference championship game. Yeah, we might see an Ohio State and Michigan repeat some years, with the two teams playing back-to-back games at the end of the year, but if those truly are the two best teams, then so be it.
Doing away with divisions will allow for more flexible scheduling parameters and get rid of the nonsense of force feeding some mediocre team from the West into the conference title game.
5. The physicality issue will be problematic for USC
The Trojans will recruit good talent. They always have and always will, simply because of the location, resources and tradition.
But USC is going to have to learn to play a whole new style of football in the Big Ten, and there will be growing pains. No, not as much growing pains as for UCLA, but there's long been a gap between those two programs anyway.
When Penn State was an independent, it could load up its schedule in a way to where it was always as prepared as possible to face the strongest opponents. Once the Nittany Lions joined the Big Ten, yes, there was great success in 1994, but also a lot of years since then where the conference's physical style of play has taken a toll.
Even 30 years later, Penn State has never made it back to the elite level of college football that it once enjoyed as an independent from the late 1960s to early '90s.
USC will face similar obstacles, simply by having to go up against stronger, more physical opponents on a regular basis. That's just not something the Trojans have had to deal with in the Pac-12.
We can poke fun at Iowa and its boring style of play, but the bottom line is the Hawkeyes are gonna line up and punch you in the mouth. If USC has to deal with that one week and then, say, Wisconsin the next, then perhaps Minnesota, that's a whole lot of getting punched in the mouth. The Trojans aren't used to that sort of thing, and who knows how long it will take that program to actually get used to it.
I can see USC being really good on occasion -- maybe 3-4 times a decade -- but there also could be some pretty lean years in between.
6. The Big Ten will cater to USC and UCLA as much as possible
It will be very, very interesting to see how the two LA programs fare when they have to come play games in the Midwest or East in November. Once again, those programs have generally been softer and haven't had to play many rugged opponents, so having to do that on the road in the cold will be even more challenging.
Imagine USC or UCLA having to come to Beaver Stadium on a 35-degree day in November, to face a good Penn State team. It could take years and years before the Trojans and Bruins learn how to deal with those kinds of conditions.
So, I believe the Big Ten will do what it can to ease the transition for its two new members by giving them a break with the scheduling for a honeymoon period of years. That likely will mean a lot of home games in November.
We'll see how long something like that goes on, and what kind of impact it would have on the Trojans' and Bruins' ability to compete.
7. Speaking of playing out West ... what about the jet lag?
This will be a very interesting thing to watch for Penn State and others in the Eastern time zone.
If you've ever flown out West, you know first hand that jet lag and the time differential can be real issues for some people. College athletes are used to traveling to play games, but going all the way out to LA for a regular-season game could create issues.
Everybody who follows Penn State closely knows that the Lions have long had problems with noon games on the road. No, they won't be playing at noon in LA, but the point is anything different comes with a risk.
We won't know for several years how the long trips out there will impact Big Ten teams over a long-term basis, but my guess is there will be a lot of sluggish starts to games.
8. It's gonna stink not playing Ohio State every year
Many Penn State fans will disagree with this one, since not playing the Buckeyes actually will help the Lions avoid what's become a near-certain loss.
Regardless, Penn State vs. Ohio State is always an EVENT, giving us fantastic games and often great drama.
There could be years when Penn State won't play Ohio State or Michigan. Let's hope not, but that's possible. And that will be awful ... although it will help make getting to 12-0 or 11-1 much, much easier.
9. Big Ten will have 3-4 teams in playoff each year, but non-con scheduling will suffer
The first one is an easy prediction, because history already has shown it to be true that the league is well represented in the top 12 of the annual College Football Playoff rankings.
The SEC and Big Ten are likely to dominate discussions for playoff berths most years, with each league trying to get as many as four teams into the field.
We are going to judge college football programs very differently in the future -- namely, how many playoff appearances have they earned, just like we do with basketball teams and NCAA Tournaments. In that regard, teams and coaches will do everything in their power to increase their chances to be in the final 12.
One way to do that for many teams will be to play as weak of a non-conference schedule as possible.
For many programs, there's no reason to risk losing a non-con game against a tough opponent, when beating three cupcakes will keep you in the top 12 discussion for as long as possible.
We've been over this time and again with Penn State and James Franklin. He doesn't see much value in scheduling great teams in the non-con because of the risk-reward factor. So, if you're a Penn State fan who likes to see great non-conference matchups, don't count on that happening as much in the future.
10. There will be no more expansion, save for Notre Dame
Getting back to this topic, I think the Big Ten will hold out for as long as possible with regards to Notre Dame, as opposed to going out and adding more teams such as Washington, Utah or someone else.
I'm not overly confident in this prediction at all, which is why it's way down here at No. 10. Shoot, for all we know, the Big Ten could be in negotiations right now with other schools, just like it was with USC and UCLA before anyone even knew about it.
The big deal to me is that the Big Ten already has its TV contract -- seven years for $7 billion. Each league member can make about $80-90 million annually from that deal. The only thing that adding more teams would do, right now, would be to lower the amount of money everybody will be getting.
That would be dumb.
So, unless there's some grand slam addition such as Notre Dame, or unless the TV deal can be restructured, I see the Big Ten standing pat for a long time and just waiting out the Fighting Irish.
