You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that Michigan and Ohio State are the two most successful and storied football programs in the Big Ten Conference. That point requires zero explanation. Where the conversation gets interesting, relative to the best all-time Big Ten football programs, is when we ask which school is third-best in the league. Right?
Penn State has a football history which is loaded with achievements and glories, but the Nittany Lions didn’t join the Big Ten until the early 1990s. Their amazing 25-year run from the mid-1960s through the early 1990s had just ended. Strictly in terms of football achievements that were forged while a school was a Big Ten member, Penn State doesn’t make the cut. It is similar for Nebraska, which registered all of its biggest accomplishments as a member of the Big Eight, then the Big 12, Conference. Nebraska is one of the greatest college football programs of all time, but not as a Big Ten member institution. USC and Washington aren’t two of the greatest Big Ten football schools of all time because everything they have done has been in the Pac-12 (and its previous iterations).
So, which Big Ten school — as a long-term Big Ten member — is third-best all-time behind Michigan and Ohio State? Mark Rogers breaks it down at The Voice of College Football:
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