• Bill Connelly, ESPN Staff WriterJul 16, 2024, 07:15 AM ET

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      Bill Connelly is a staff writer for ESPN.com.

It’s top-heavy, it’s a geographical disaster and it’s basically the richest conference in college sports. The new-look, 18-team Big Ten, spanning from Los Angeles and Seattle to New York(ish) and Washington, D.C.(ish), will make its debut this fall, whether we’re ready for it or not. It boasts both of last year’s College Football Playoff National Championship participants (Michigan and Washington) and four of the top seven or so teams in the country. Depth is as tenuous as ever, but the big games will be huge.

That’s enough small talk, though. We’ve got 18 teams to talk about. Let’s preview the very Big Ten!

Every week through the summer, Bill Connelly will preview another FBS conference exclusively for ESPN+, ultimately including all 134 FBS teams. The previews will include 2023 breakdowns, 2024 previews and team-by-team capsules. Here are the MAC, Conference USA, AAC, MWC, Sun Belt, independents, ACC.

Jump to a section:
2024 projections | Best games
Title contenders | Who’s close?
Hoping for 6-6

2023 recap

The top five teams in this new Big Ten went 6-6 against each other and 56-2 against everyone else in college football last season. Oregon lost only two devastatingly tight games to Washington; Washington was a close-game master but got thumped by Michigan in the national title game; Penn State lost only to Michigan and Ohio State, as is customary, until a bowl loss to another top-10ish team (Ole Miss) in the Peach Bowl; Ohio State lost a third straight to Michigan but ran the table until, with some key offensive pieces missing, it lost to another top-10ish team (Missouri) in the Cotton Bowl.

Iowa snared a Big Ten championship game bid in the conference’s last year with divisions, but the Hawkeyes were the only team to stand out in a glut of five- to eight-win teams.

In all, the Big Ten boasted seven of the top 11 defenses in the country and only four of the top 29 offenses. But if you watched Big Ten football last year, you had probably already sussed that one out.