Nearly two years have passed since Big Ten teams played non-conference games in the regular season.
The pandemic shortened the 2020 football season and prevented tilts like Penn State-Virginia Tech, Nebraska-Cincinnati, Michigan-Washington, Minnesota-BYU, Wisconsin-Notre Dame and Ohio State-Oregon from happening. This fall, the conference’s scheduled out-of-conference matchups – which feature several games that would’ve been played last year – should help make up for the lost games.
So, we put together a ranking of all 42 non-conference games featuring Big Ten teams. The criteria is simple: Which of them should college football fans be most looking forward to?