By Cameron Teague Robinson, Jesse Temple, Scott Dochterman, Austin Meek, Mitch Sherman and Antonio Morales

This weekend’s Big Ten slate includes No. 20 Illinois at No. 1 Oregon and a flurry of other intriguing matchups. How is your fan base feeling? How many teams can the conference really get into the College Football Playoff?

Let’s get into this week’s Big Ten mailbag.

(Note: Submitted questions have been lightly edited for length and clarity.) 

Who is regretting their move to the Big Ten more? USC currently or Nebraska going on a decade-plus of irrelevance and unranked seasons? Oklahoma is another team regretting their realignment move. I’m sure they would like to have a chat with Nebraska to talk about the old days of the Big Eight when they were the only two teams around. — Jason S. 

The landscape of college sports has shifted drastically since Nebraska and Oklahoma ran the Big Eight. If those two schools had a choice to undo three decades of change since they entered the world of conference realignment and expansion, they’d take it.

But no such choice ever existed.

The window of time for Nebraska to regret its move to the Big Ten has long closed. Remember, when Nebraska decided to switch leagues in 2010, the future of its conference was in doubt. The only conversation about relevance involved the viability of the Big 12 — and the possibility for Nebraska to find itself on the outside of the group of programs capable of competing at the highest level.

While Nebraska has struggled to win over the past eight years, its place among the top tier of resourced athletic departments nationally is secure. As long as the Big Ten structure remains, Nebraska has a chance in football to find its footing. Meanwhile, many of its other programs are thriving.

Perhaps fans of USC and some leaders at the school are regretting this move to the Big Ten in the short term. But the Trojans, like the Huskers, surely recognize that a jump into one of the two power leagues nationally will better secure possibilities to win championships ahead. — Sherman

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Which remaining regular-season opponent is most likely to knock off Oregon? — John K. 

Playing at Camp Randall Stadium in mid-November is a rite of passage in the Big Ten. If there’s a game that could trip up the Ducks before the Big Ten Championship Game, it’s at Wisconsin on Nov. 16. I wouldn’t have said that a few weeks ago — after Tyler Van Dyke went down, the Badgers lost back-to-back games against Alabama and USC — but Wisconsin has re-energized its season by beating Purdue, Rutgers and Northwestern by a combined score of 117-16.

We’ll find out if Wisconsin’s turnaround is for real Saturday when the Badgers play Penn State. No matter what, Madison in November is a tough trip. If the Ducks make it through that game undefeated, a home game against rival Washington will be the only thing separating them from a perfect regular season. The Huskies have won three in a row in that series, but if the Ducks make it to 11-0, they’re not going to blow it against their rival. Oregon plays 6-1 Illinois on Saturday and travels to Michigan a week later, but the most impressive part of the Michigan-Illinois game last week was the replica leather helmets. — Meek

Certainly, my MSU Spartans aren’t a great team, but Stewart Mandel had them winning only one Big Ten game this season. With Michigan, Purdue and Rutgers (the last two at home!) still on the schedule, the Spartans have a real shot at a bowl. Has MSU exceeded expectations? Is my excitement about the future of the program justified? — Jason M.

I’ve been surprised by how quickly Michigan State has turned things around. Jonathan Smith is doing a great job in his first year, and last weekend’s win over Iowa should spark confidence in everybody.

A bowl should be the expectation now, with just two more wins needed for eligibility, but the schedule isn’t easy.

The Spartans play at Michigan this week, host Indiana and then go to Illinois. Even as bad as Michigan is, that’s a tough three-game stretch. On the back end is a home game against Purdue and then they host Rutgers to end the season. Those are winnable, but I wouldn’t write off a win against Michigan, either.

A bowl game would be a big boost, but even if things stall out at five wins, this is a program on the rise. Smith is a smart coach and he has his quarterback of the future, Aidan Chiles.

I was down on Chiles to start the year, when he threw four touchdowns and seven interceptions in the first four games. Since then, though, he’s been great. In a three-game stretch against Ohio State, Oregon and Iowa, three of the most talented defenses in the Big Ten, he has thrown for 577 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions, which includes the 256-yard day he had last weekend against the Hawkeyes. He and freshman Nick Marsh could be a lethal combo in the conference for a long time.

Is Michigan State a Big Ten contender this year or next? Probably not, but there’s a lot to like about Smith, and it’s time for people to hop on the Chiles bandwagon. — Teague Robinson

Illinois coach Bret Bielema has a 24-20 record with the Illini. (Dan Rainville / USA Today via Imagn Images)

With the job Bret Bielema is doing at Illinois, is there any danger of him leaving/being recruited to any other Power 4 jobs? Also, the 2025 class is not ranked very highly for the Illini right now, what is the ceiling for the program in the long term? — Brendan C.

I covered Bielema during his final two seasons at Wisconsin in 2011 and 2012 — including when he left abruptly for Arkansas just days after the Big Ten Championship Game. That move was a stunner considering he was Barry Alvarez’s handpicked successor and spent nine seasons there as either the defensive coordinator or head coach.

Sometimes in life, you just need a change. But I do think that experience demonstrated the grass isn’t necessarily greener on the other side. Bielema went 68-24 at Wisconsin and 29-34 at Arkansas before he was fired in Year 5. He’s a Midwest guy who understands the Big Ten and has stability at Illinois. At age 54 and with a family, that has to matter.

It’s possible to build a career in one place if you win enough — Bielema saw it on Kirk Ferentz’s Iowa staff and under Bill Snyder at Kansas State — and it’s not like he has to do it at a place with outrageous expectations. Illinois didn’t have a winning season for a decade before Bielema arrived. His eight wins in 2022 were the most there in 15 years.

As for the program’s immediate ceiling, we’ll find out that Saturday when No. 20 Illinois plays at No. 1 Oregon. The Illini have beaten three teams ranked in the Top 25 at the time of the game (Kansas, Nebraska and Michigan). They play physical, smart football and rank in the top 15 nationally in turnover margin.

I don’t think it’s out of the question to believe Illinois can at some point challenge for the 12-team College Football Playoff under Bielema when you consider the Big Ten could get as many as four teams in and you don’t have to reach the conference title game to have a shot. Illinois was 7-1 to begin the 2022 season, when all five of its losses were by single digits, and is off to a 6-1 start now.

Bielema’s 2025 class may not be ranked especially high at No. 58, but that’s in part because there are only 15 committed prospects. Illinois actually has the highest per-player rating (86.75) in the 247Sports Composite out of any of Bielema’s four full recruiting classes. He can recruit and develop but also needs to hit on the right transfer portal targets to keep Illinois moving in the right direction. — Temple

Does Iowa not recruit talented enough QBs or do the Hawkeyes just not develop the QBs they recruit? — Mike B. 

Oh, we’ve got a chicken-or-the-egg discussion here. To provide some context, let’s turn back the clock to the previous decades. In 2008, Iowa switched quarterbacks from Jake Christensen to Ricky Stanzi, who presided over the era known as Ferentz 2.0. That also launched a nice run of four of five quarterbacks becoming NFL Draft picks that concluded with Nate Stanley, who threw 68 touchdown passes from 2017 to 2019. In the five seasons since Stanley left, Iowa has totaled 44 touchdown passes, the lowest in the power conferences. Ohio State, for instance, has 152 touchdown passes over that span.

The downfall in quarterback selection coincides with former offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz’s elevation in 2017. Most of the recruited quarterbacks didn’t pan out from that year onward. The transfers with minimal contributions or limited success include Peyton Mansell (2017), Alex Padilla (2019), Deuce Hogan (2020), Joe Labas (2021) and Carson May (2022). Mansell played a bit at Abilene Christian (where May currently is a backup), and Padilla spent a year as a backup at SMU. Hogan left for Kentucky and now New Mexico State, where he was second team this fall but suffered a broken collarbone. Labas is the starter at Central Michigan but has completed 58.2 percent of his passes with a 7-to-7 TD-to-INT ratio.

Spencer Petras (2018) was a three-year starter from 2020 to 2022 before a torn labrum and rotator cuff knocked him out in 2023. This year, Petras transferred to Utah State. Despite an ankle injury that kept him out for two games, Petras has completed 66 percent of his passes, already posted his season best for touchdowns (11) and his 326.3 passing yards per game blows away his previous high of 196.1 in 2020. Those numbers don’t bode well for Iowa’s development.

Perhaps that lack of identification and development turns around under first-year offensive coordinator Tim Lester, who has put together a sound scheme but lacks a quarterback to run it effectively. The good news is if the Hawkeyes don’t have a quarterback they like, they can always sign one from the portal. But the track record isn’t great there, either. — Dochterman

If Michigan’s championship season played out exactly as it did, except Jim Harbaugh wasn’t suspended for the last three regular-season games, is Sherrone Moore still the coach? — Will M.

Yes, most likely. Moore was mentioned as a potential successor when Harbaugh flirted with the NFL after the 2022 season, and even before Harbaugh’s suspension, there were signs that he would be next in line. Michigan likes promoting from within, as it did with Gary Moeller and Lloyd Carr after Bo Schembechler retired. The program went off track in replacing Carr with Rich Rodriguez, and the whole Harbaugh era was a way of correcting that mistake. It would have taken a really compelling candidate to make Michigan look outside the family when Harbaugh left.

That being said, if Moore hadn’t gotten the three-game test run in November, there would have been more pressure on Michigan to conduct a full search rather than the abbreviated process that led to Moore’s promotion. Perhaps that process would have revealed a candidate who made Michigan think twice about promoting Moore. Based on who was available at that time, I’m guessing Moore would have gotten the job either way. But those wins against Penn State and Ohio State made it a much easier call. — Meek

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We all know that Oregon is the cream of ex-Pac-12s in the Big Ten, but who’s having the better season of the other three? It would not surprise me if you said UCLA since there is no team in the Big Ten playing a more difficult schedule. — Peter G.

This is all relative to expectations. USC wasn’t thought of as a Big Ten contender before the season, but it was expected to be better than 4-3. UCLA was expected to be bad. And the Bruins are, well, bad.

So, in this reporter’s opinion, the answer is Washington. The Huskies do have some ugly losses, a 24-point beatdown at Iowa and a three-point loss at Rutgers where they outgained the Scarlet Knights by more than 200 yards.

But there were a ton of questions about what Washington would look like this season after it lost essentially its entire starting lineup and coaching staff from last season’s team that reached the national championship game.

I know the win total before the season was 6.5 and the Huskies might not reach that, but winning six games and playing in a bowl with a roster that was completely made over in the offseason and a first-year coaching staff would be a success. At 4-3 with home games against USC and UCLA remaining, Washington is on track to do that. — Morales

Can the Big Ten really get four teams in the Playoff? — Michael C. 

It depends on how chalk holds up throughout November. If the favorites win the games, then absolutely. But we know there will be an upset or three before Thanksgiving weekend, which will put everyone on edge on Dec. 8. Let’s play out the scenarios.

If we’re projecting without upsets, Oregon goes unbeaten at 12-0 and Ohio State beats both Penn State and Indiana to finish 11-1. They’re your Big Ten championship participants. Then both Penn State and Indiana are 11-1 with Illinois at 10-2. The Nittany Lions’ strength-of-schedule boosts them ahead of Indiana — especially with a victory against Illinois — but all four are in the Playoff. It’s difficult to imagine a scenario where an 11-1 team in either the Big Ten or SEC gets left out.

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But we know someone will slip up somewhere on the road. Perhaps it happens to the Hoosiers if they still have to use backup quarterback Tayven Jackson at Michigan State on Nov. 2. Maybe Penn State falls this week at Wisconsin or Nov. 23 at Minnesota. Maybe Oregon has a bad day Saturday against Illinois or at Michigan on Nov. 2. Even Ohio State could suffer another setback at Penn State or against Indiana.

If Penn State ends the season 10-2, then the selection committee will place its resume alongside teams four and five from the SEC, Notre Dame and the No. 2s from the Big 12 and ACC. Then the committee will have to decide who looks more impressive among Tennessee, LSU, Notre Dame, Clemson/Miami and Iowa State/BYU for the final three at-large spots. That’s presuming the Big Ten and SEC already have three locked up.

To answer your question, the Big Ten is in line for four spots today. But that could change as soon as Saturday night. — Dochterman

(Top photo of Oregon running back Jay Harris: Marc Lebryk / Imagn Images)