How many playoff teams will come out of the Big 10 in 2024?

We have one obvious contender, another really strong one, the defending National Champions...how is this going to sort out?

My expectation for the coming season is that the SEC and Big 10 conferences are each likely to get four teams into the new, 12-team playoff.

There are variables in a given year and the chance either the SEC or Big 10 could get five teams in if they had a particularly strong season and another conference came up dry. Particularly given unbalanced scheduling which can sometimes vault multiple teams from the same conference. I took a stab at picking the order of finish for the SEC at the SEC Media Days and found Tennessee, Texas, and Ole Miss were all well set-up with favorable schedules and each dodged the other.

The ACC is fairly strong as well this year and could theoretically cut into the Big 10’s presumed “four teams in” if our Midwestern lords don’t show up for this coming year. So, how many teams within this league meet the bar for realistically producing playoff squads?

Let’s take a deeper look.