A Heavy Hitting Big Ten Football Schedule Set For This Saturday

Another Big Ten College Football Saturday is upon us, and there are four key games in the conference that could have major implications for a Big Ten Championship and the bowl games that teams could qualify for. 4 of the Top 5 teams in the league play in head-to-head matchups. 

We’ll start here in Minnesota as The Golden Gophers play host to Perdue for Homecoming. This is a game The Gophers need for a few reasons. First, they need to cleanse the palette after the decisive loss to Ohio State 42-3 last Saturday.  

Secondly, Minnesota needs to roll out a strong performance not just for the fans, but for bowl committees. The Gophers are 3-2/1-1 while Purdue is 2-3/0-2 and struggling to get on track.  

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The passing game for each team has been more of their strength thus far; a key factor could be which team can establish the run game as well. Making the opponents defense work harder will be a feather in the cap for one squad or the other most likely. 

Both teams are scoring around 27 points per game, but the Boilermakers are allowing about 8 more points per contest. Despite the outcome last week, Minnesota seems to be more ready to trend in the right direction, and a win would keep them in the top tier of the conference at 2-1 with a win, which will be the same record as either Indiana or Oregon and possibly Ohio State at the end of the day.  

See this one starting at 6:30 on the Big Ten Network. 

Indiana (5-0/2-0) @ Oregon (5-0/2-0) 2:30 on CBS 

This may be the game of the week in all of college football. With two of the highest scoring offenses, Indiana is 4th at 47.8 points per game while Oregon is 6th with 46.6. And both teams are good on defense too. Indiana is 3rd in the NCAA, allowing 9.6 points in a contest, while Oregon is tied for 6th, allowing 12.2. 

Can one team find a way to shut down or slow down the other’s offense while still putting up gaudy numbers? This game features two very creative coaches, I expect a trick play or two in this one and special teams to be very important.  

Ohio State (5-0/2-0) @ Illinois (5-1 / 2-1) 11am on FOX 

Illinois has a chance to redeem the shellacking they suffered, 63-10, to Indian a few weeks back if they can defend their home turf and knock off the number one team in the country. The Illini have won 2 games in a row after that sizeable setback to the Hoosiers and are scoring 37 points per game, while allowing only 24.  

Ohio State’s offense worked like a well-oiled machine last week against Minnesota and will look to try and stifle any momentum that Illinois is building. The Buckeyes defense is the stingiest in the country giving up only 5 points per game; no team has scored more than 9 points on them all season. That helps, but also the fact their offense is tacking up 37 points per game is pretty darn good too.  

Illinois is perfect at home this year, and they’ll need every bit of the home cooking magic they can conjure up to knock off the top dog in college football. 

Michigan (4-1/ 2-0) @ USC (4-1 /2-1) 6:30 on NBC 

This will likely be a sneaky good game. The Trojans are having a much better year and seem to be back to the form we expect a Lincoln Riley coached team to look like. Their offense is 3rd nationally in scoring at over 48 points per game, but they're giving up over 23 points per contest.  

Michigan on the other hand is 50th in scoring at 32.8 points per game, while allowing 16.  

The winner of this one stays on the lead lap in the Big Ten with a lot of football left to play. Having a second overall loss and maybe a second conference loss will make the rest trek through what is left of the season more pressure filled to avoid a third overall loss.  

We are now at the point of the season where some teams will begin to pull away from others, so don’t be surprised if we see the tops in the country have a few wrinkles or surprises that they begin to show starting this week.