Big 10 West:

Anyone think Iowa WON'T win? Let's look at their competition.

Illinois lost at home to Texas San Antonio
Minnesota lost at home to Bowling Green
Nebraska lost to Illinois
Northwestern lost 56-7!!!! to Nebraska
Purdue lost at home to Minnesota
Wisconsin is probably better than all of the five above but the last two weeks they lost 41-13 to a Notre Dame team that lost to Cincinnati and 38-17 at home to Michigan.

Iowa does go to Wisconsin and if Iowa loses to Penn State that game could be meaningful but the way Wisconsin is playing what makes anyone believe they could beat Iowa in Madison?

Meanwhile the Big Ten East still has three unbeaten teams and not one of them is Ohio State. Are the Michigan schools for real? There's a decent chance both of them will be undefeated going into Oct. 30 in East Lansing. But both still have to play both Ohio State and Penn State and OSU and PSU of course must play each other. Oct. 30 is going to be a great day of college football for the Big Ten with Mich-MSU and PSU-OSU (and if Wisconsin gets their act together, Iowa-Wisc).

Big Ten East Games:

Oct. 30: Penn State at Ohio State, Michigan at Michigan State
Nov. 13: Michigan at Penn State
Nov. 20: Michigan State at Ohio State
Nov. 27: Ohio State at Michigan, Penn State at Michigan State

Ohio State and Michigan State each have two of the three other East opponents at home while Michigan and Penn State have two of the other three on the road. Penn State also is the only one of the four to have to play Iowa (and on the road).

As for the Playoff race, Oregon and Notre Dame lost to help out Ohio State's case. Should Oregon and Ohio State finish with one loss, Oregon would have to be considered ahead of OSU. The problem is that Stanford is a Pac-12 North (divisional) loss and that's a big tiebreaker which could cost the Ducks the division and a chance to win the Pac-12 conference title. If OSU gets a 13th data point, especially against an undefeated Iowa, that might be enough to pass an 11-1 Oregon who doesn't get a chance to play for the Pac-12 title. The problem is what if Stanford loses and Oregon climbs back on top of the Pac-12? Notre Dame also probably eliminated themselves from Playoff consideration (although Cincinnati helped themselves with their win). Oklahoma cleared a major hurdle getting the Kansas State monkey off their backs. If you look at the Big Ten, Ohio State has everyone at home except Michigan and they have dominated them, even in Ann Arbor.