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The Big Ten kicked off its season earlier than any other major conference, as Illinois defeated visiting Nebraska 30-22 on Saturday, the highlight of Week 0 in 2021 college football.
It was the day’s only game featuring two Power 5 teams and the only thing resembling a close game.
But it didn’t put a dent in our bowl projections.
See, we didn’t have either Nebraska or Illinois listed in our preseason B1G bowl projections. And we certainly didn’t see anything out of the Cornhuskers to make us change our minds about excluding them.
The Fighting Illini were a different case.
Under new coach Bret Bielema, Illinois made a case that perhaps it won’t be the B1G West Division doormat that it has been over the past few years. The team hung on even after losing starting quarterback Brandon Peters to injury early in the game, as Rutgers transfer Artur Sitkowski entered and threw for 124 yards and 2 touchdowns.
But Illinois is still a program that has not had a winning season or a bowl victory since 2011. The FOX game coverage pointed out that, combined with last year’s Illini win over the Cornhuskers, Illinois has defeated Big Red in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1923-24. That stat obscures the fact that the programs only met 4 times from 1925 until Nebraska joined the B1G in 2013 (still, nice to have a Red Grange throwback reference, eh?) and that the Cornhuskers won 6 of the first 7 conference meetings from 2013-19.
So no, we are not ready to have Illinois ascend into the ranks of the bowl-bound teams. The good news is, the nonconference schedule is pretty manageable and if Illinois defeats even one more division foe, we might have to reassess the pride of Champaign.
Here are the latest (but unchanged) B1G bowl projections:
Cotton Bowl (CFP semifinal): Ohio State vs. Alabama
Rose Bowl: Penn State vs. Oregon
Citrus Bowl: Iowa vs. Florida
Outback Bowl: Wisconsin vs. Auburn
Las Vegas Bowl: Indiana vs. Arizona State
Music City Bowl: Michigan vs. Tennessee
Pinstripe Bowl: Minnesota vs. Wake Forest
Guaranteed Rate Bowl: Rutgers vs. Texas Tech
Redbox Bowl: Northwestern vs. Stanford
Quick Lane Bowl: Purdue vs. Western Michigan
Longtime newspaper veteran Jim Tomlin is a writer and editor for saturdaytradition.com and saturdaydownsouth.com.