On Wednesday, the Iowa Hawkeyes will join the festivities in Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium for the 2024 Big Ten Media Days.
Head coach Kirk Ferentz will be joined by linebacker Jay Higgins, tight end Luke Lachey, and defensive back Quinn Schulte. Media Days are always exciting as it's the first opportunity to hear from coaches and players how the summer training has gone and what they think of their own programs as well as the opposition. It helps serve as the unofficial start of the upcoming college football season too, so business is about to pick up.
Of course, it's also a chance for media members to have a bit of fun - not only in chasing interviews and storylines but also in making their predictions on how the 2024 season will unravel in the conference standings.
Since I won't be there, I figured I'd join in the fun and make a prediction of the media's prediction. Here's how I expect the Big Ten media to rank the Big Ten programs this season:
- Oregon
- Ohio State
- Michigan
- Penn State
- USC
- Washington
- Iowa
- Nebraska
- Wisconsin
- Maryland
- Michigan State
- Illinois
- UCLA
- Indiana
- Purdue
- Northwestern
To be clear, this isn't how I would rank the teams, though it's not too drastically different. For instance, Iowa would be my No. 5 because of their schedule compared to USC.
That said, I've worked in the media long enough to know that there are plenty of folks that will pick a team like Washington ahead of Iowa for the simple fact that Washington was in the national championship game last year and Iowa is the king of internet memes for poor offense. Those same people probably don't know that the Huskies return the fewest starters in all of FBS football and their head coach is now at Alabama.
There will be others who ignore USC's schedule, which features LSU, Michigan, Wisconsin, Penn State, and Notre Dame. The Trojans could easily lose three games in that bunch.
I also think the media will be high on Nebraska. Head coach Matt Rhule has the Huskers headed in the right direction and freshman 5-star quarterback Dylan Raiola is the most exciting player to land in Lincoln in some time.
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