Do you see the Huskers getting to 6-4 in the new Big Ten season?
Not a surprising announcement last week from the Big Ten that the 2020 is going to be shortened to conference play only. This enables the conference to perhaps push the start back a couple weeks and build in more open weekends.
We should know more in a few weeks about whether the season will even happen. For now it’s on. The Big Ten is not clear yet on whether the nine scheduled conference games for each team will stand, or an additional nonconference game will be added to get to 10 games. Seems like the most likely scenario is every team will play all of the teams in their division as expected.
In the West, the Huskers would be expected to beat Purdue and Northwestern, and lose to Minnesota and Wisconsin, leaving Iowa and Illinois. The Huskers should beat Illinois in Lincoln, but beating Iowa away is going to be tough. Losing to Iowa would put the Huskers at 3-3 in Western Division play — 4-2 would be huge.
In the East, assuming the existing scheduled games stay on, we have the Huskers losing to strong Ohio State and Penn State teams, and beating Rutgers. This puts them at 4-5 with the wild card being the not-yet-known 10th game. Michigan would be a tough draw for the Huskers as they are already playing five of the preseason Top 20 teams in Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. That means the Huskers might instead get Michigan State, Indiana or Maryland at home for the for the must-win 10th game.
Getting any one of these losses to go the other way would be a night-and-day difference. Knowing what we know now, do you think the Huskers can get to 6-4 this year in Big Ten play?