The Big Ten is generally regarded as one of the nation’s premier conferences. It makes perfect sense, too. In addition to boasting some of the country’s top brands, the actual football being played on the gridiron is pretty dang good as well.
In fact, ESPN’s final SP+ preseason projections rank five Big Ten teams inside the nation’s top 17 and eight teams inside the country’s top 34. Iowa checks in No. 27 nationally according to the final SP+ ratings. Suffice it to say, the predictive model expects the league to feature plenty of the nation’s top teams once more in 2022.
On the surface, those numbers sound great for the Big Ten. How does the Big Ten stack up nationally, though? Where do all of the conferences rank according to Bill Connelly’s final SP+ preseason projections?
Here’s a worst-to-first breakdown of where each conference stands in terms of overall strength per ESPN’s final SP+ rankings.