Watch Jim Harbaugh’s amusing Big Ten Network commercial

Everybody on our team knew that. If the Badgers take care of business against the teams they are expected to beat and pull off a victory against the Tide or in the conference championship game likely against Ohio State or Michigan State, Wisconsin has a legitimate shot at year two of the College Football Playoff.

“It was ‘lit, ‘” linebacker Josh Perry said of the fire Wisconsin’s win ignited in the Buckeyes.

Harbaugh just hasn’t said who it is publicly. Maryland has two of the Big Ten’s best players at their respective positions, corner and field goal kicker.

Of that hub-of-the-sport distinction, he said, “You definitely can sense it around here”. “Just go out there and compete and play hard”.

November 29, 2014: Minnesota quarterback Mitch Leidner (07) looks to hand off during the first half of game action. It was the first time it finished above.

The regular-season schedule will conclude with games at Wisconsin (Feb. 28) and home against Iowa (March 5).

The traveling hardware of the Big Ten should be the envy of the other conferences. But be wary of BYU, which spoiled the UConn debut of Bob Diaco last year and followed with a 41-7 win against Texas and first-year coach Charlie Strong.

Overall Big Ten record determines the division champion, but the interdivision challenges are strikingly different.

“I was shocked with the negativity toward our conference”, Meyer said. “In the 18 years I’ve covered games since I retired from the ‘Skins, this offseason has been as exciting a time as there has been since I’ve been around the program”.

“Maybe top to bottom we’re not the SEC, but we’re getting there. There is excellent recruiting going on right now”.

Jones and Barrett are back battling for the starting job at Ohio State with Miller waiting in the wings, but the quarterback riches don’t end there for the Big Ten.

So maybe that talk about the Big Ten East soon becoming the new SEC West is more than hyperbole. Not so much Chryst, who can often hide in plain sight around Madison with his understated personality.

Minutia mania has surrounded Harbaugh since he left the NFL as San Francisco 49ers coach in December to return to his alma mater, where he starred at quarterback in the 1980s under iconic Michigan coach Bo Schembechler. What’s known is that it’s the first game for new Cornhuskers coach Mike Riley.

The Men’s Golfers to Watch List features 17 players who garnered recognition past year: Illinois’ Charlie Danielson and Thomas Detry, Iowa’s Raymond Knoll, Maryland’s Tom Harris, Michigan’s Chris O’Neill, Michigan State’s Gareth Lappin and Charlie Netzel, Minnesota’s Rúnar Arnórsson, Jon DuToit and Jose Mendez, Northwestern’s Josh Jamieson and Dylan Wu, Ohio State’s Tee-k Kelly, Penn State’s JD Dornes, Purdue’s Austin Eoff, Rutgers’ Jonathan Chang and Wisconsin’s Eddie Wajda III.

The most salient point of all might have come from that nearly preternaturally muted coach at Michigan State, Mark Dantonio.