After about two decades of SEC dominance, the Big Ten has won the last two national championships, with Michigan and Ohio State reigning supreme. Jim Harbaugh and Ryan Day built their programs into champions with in-house development and transfer portal supplementation. Now, James Franklin and Dan Lanning are looking to follow that recipe to lift Penn State and Oregon to the 2026 national title.
Much of college football’s roster shuffle occurs during the winter transfer portal window. So, while Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, and Indiana were still battling in the College Football Playoff, their head coaches were building for next year’s CFP run, but the spring portal window is beginning to loom large, especially after some major movement in this year’s cycle.
The spring portal provides leverage for the players in NIL re-negotiations with their programs. That dynamic led to former five-star quarterback Nico Iamaleava’s split with Tennessee and ACC receptions leader Trebor Pena's departure from Syracuse, and both players found their way to the Big Ten.
The spring portal further shifted the balance of power in the coast-to-coast 18-team conference, and now that it has closed and the major movement has settled, let’s dive into the reshuffled Big Ten power rankings.
This has to be the year for James Franklin to finally get over the hump with the Nittany Lions. You could say he did it last season with a run to the College Football Playoff Semifinal, but wins over SMU and Boise State don’t outweigh a 1-11 record against Ohio State.
While losing Abdul Carter and Tyler Warren to the first round of the NFL Draft is significant, Franklin did an incredible job of retaining talent. Drew Allar has a talented offensive group around him. Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen make up the best backfield tandem in the country, and the rebuilt wide receiver group with Kyron Hudson, Devonte Ross, and Trebor Pena should be a big upgrade. On the other side of the ball, Jim Knowles is a big upgrade over Tom Allen at defensive coordinator, and Knowles’s unit has more than enough talent to be a top-five group in the country. It’s national title or bust for the Nittany Lions.
The defending national champs slip to No. 2 because it’ll be almost an entirely new roster in Columbus with two new coordinators. Former five-star Julian Sayin projects to be Ryan Day’s starting quarterback, and though the Buckeyes shed a ton of NFL talent, Sayin will have the benefit of throwing to Jeremiah Smith.
Depth could be an issue, especially along the defensive line, which prompted Day to add UNC transfer Beau Atkinson in the spring window. However, with Jeremiah Smith and Caleb Downs back, the Buckeyes could have the best offensive and defensive players in the country, and that’s a pretty good foundation to build a young team around.
Dan Lanning has been an elite recruiter since taking over at Oregon in 2022, and this year, his home-grown talent will finally get put to the test. Lanning took some big portal swings in the winter, adding Bear Alexander to his defensive line and replacing Jordan James with Tulane transfer Makhi Hughes, but instead of leaning on veteran transfers, the Ducks will lean on their consecutive top-five recruiting classes and a young transfer QB.
Dante Moore got starting experience as a freshman five-star at UCLA under Chip Kelly, but it didn’t go well, so he transferred to Eugene to sit behind Dillon Gabriel. Now, he’ll get the keys to Will Stein’s offense as a redshirt sophomore with Big Ten title expectations.
Luke Altmyer isn’t just one of the top returning quarterbacks in the Big Ten, he’s one of the best in the entire country. However, Altmyer lost his top two wide receivers, Pat Bryant and Zakhari Franklin, to the NFL, but Bret Bielema did his best to replace them with Justin Bowick and Hudson Clement in the transfer portal. You can trust that Illinois will have a high-level defense year in and year out, so if Altmyer can have an elite season with his new receiving corps, the Fighting Illini will be a dark horse CFP contender.
Year 3 is always the season that a Matt Rhule-led program arrives as a contender. At Temple and Baylor, Rhule won double-digit games in Year 3, and after ending a seven-year bowl game drought at Nebraska last season, Rhule has the roster to take that next step. After taking his lumps as a freshman, Dylan Raiola should improve in his sophomore year, and Rhule made sure to support him by upgrading his weapons and his offensive line in the transfer portal. Nebraska added Dane Key, Nyziah Hunter, and Hardley Gilmore IV on the outside and Rocco Spindler and Elijah Pritchett up front.
Last year, Michigan was a quarterback away from competing for the College Football Playoff. Now, the Wolverines have a promising one in five-star freshman Bryce Underwood, but the rest of the roster won’t be quite as elite with Mason Graham, Kenneth Grant, Will Johnson, and Colston Loveland all heading to the NFL. Underwood will show flashes if he beats out Mikey Keene, but very few freshmen are ready to carry an incomplete roster in a league as competitive as the Big Ten.
Now it’s time for Curt Cignetti’s encore, and he kept a lot of talent in Bloomington for it. Indiana’s schedule won’t be quite as favorable, but Cignetti had a 23-player transfer portal haul that included talented QB Fernando Mendoza, who starred at Cal a year ago. Mendoza will get to throw to Elijah Sarratt, who nearly posted a 1,000-yard season for the Hoosiers after following Cignetti from James Madison, and that duo should be supported by an excellent defense. More importantly than the portal additions, Indiana kept threw of its best defensive players on the roster, D’Angelo Ponds, Aiden Fisher, and Mikail Kamara.
USC still has a long way to go on the defensive side of the ball, and Lincoln Riley has looked to address it in the spring window by adding three potential starters, Chasen Johnson, Ta’Mere Robinson, and Kennedy Urlacher. D’Anton Lynn helped that group take a step forward last season, but the Trojans know they need to take a long-term outlook, and that’s shown in their recent recruiting uptick.
Offensively, rather than taking a big swing in the portal, Lincoln Riley has decided to trust Jayden Maiava as his starting quarterback next season. Riley is still one of the best play-callers in the sport, so if he believes in Maiava, that says a lot, but the dual-threat passer isn’t quite on the tier of Allar and Altmyer as the best in the Big Ten.
Jedd Fisch had to navigate a complete roster overhaul amidst a move to the Big Ten last season, and he still managed six wins. Now, Fisch will hand the reins to Demond Williams Jr., who was very impressive as a freshman on gadget packages while backing up Will Rogers. Williams will have plenty of talent around him on offense, but with Steve Belichick leaving to join his father at North Carolina, and much of the Huskies’ defense following him out the door, the young QB will have to win plenty of shootouts.
Iowa’s offense finally made some strides in Tim Lester’s first year as the offensive coordinator, especially when Brendan Sullivan took over for Cade McNamara at quarterback and the dual-threat QB got involved in the run game. Now, enter Mark Gronowski, who threw for 23 touchdowns and ran for 10 more as he led South Dakota State to the FCS National Championship Game last season. If Gronowski hits, Kirk Ferentz’s team may finally score enough points to contend for a CFP spot, but that’s a big if.
Jonathan Smith continues to do everything he can to improve the roster in East Lansing, but if he doesn’t get better quarterback play from Aidan Chiles, who followed him from Oregon State last offseason, then the Spartans will sink back to the bottom of the Big Ten. Smith made a concerted effort to add wide receiver talent around Nick Marsh, who showed immense promise in his freshman year, and Middle Tennessee transfer Omari Kelly could be the best of the incoming transfers.
PJ Fleck always finds a way to put a competitive team on the field, and this season that effort will be spearheaded by his defense and rising sophomore defensive back Koi Perich. With question marks at QB, Fleck did his best to construct a deep backfield, adding three running back transfers, Cam Davis from Washington, AJ Turner from Marshall, and Johann Cardenas from Vanderbilt. Turner should split carries with Darius Taylor, who led the Golden Gophers in rushing last season.
Nobody made a bigger spring transfer portal splash than UCLA as Deshaun Foster welcomed former five-star Nico Iamaleava back to the LA with open arms. While Iamaleava is an upgrade over Appalachian State transfer Joey Aguilar, Iamaleava was an inconsistent deep ball thrower who relied heavily on play-action in Josh Heupel’s QB-friendly offense last season, so he may not be as big an upgrade as many would expect. The Bruins have proven they can attract big-name players, which is a big feather in Foster’s cap, but his roster is still a long way away.
Luke Fickell simply has not been able to put things together in Madison, and he could be running out of opportunities soon. His “Dairy Raid” experiment with Phil Longo ended disastrously, so now the offense will pivot to a more multiple attack under new offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes and Maryland transfer quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. The program just lacks a clear identity and may have been hurt the most by the death of the Big Ten West.
Athan Kaliakmanis outperformed expectations in his first season at Rutgers after leaving Minnesota, but with star running back Kyle Monangai leaving for the NFL, Greg Schiano’s team could struggle to score points this season. Even the defense took a hit when linebacker Mohamed Toure hit the transfer portal in the spring window after a 92-tackle season.
Mike Locksley has begun to recruit at a high level, and four-star freshman quarterback Malik Washington is worth getting excited about, but most of the strides the program has made are on the high school recruiting trail, not the transfer portal. That means it could be a few years before Locksley delivers a winner to College Park, and already entering the seventh year of his tenure, Maryland may not have that level of patience.
Former SMU quarterback Preston Stone was a major get for David Braun, but he lost his job to Kevin Jennings for a reason, and will need to return to his 2023 form for Northwestern to climb up the Big Ten standings after a four-win season in 2024. There’s even more pressure on Stone with the departures on the defensive side of the ball, with cornerback Theran Johnson heading to Oregon and safety Devin Turner transferring to Baylor.
Barry Odom will be the only first-year head coach in the Big Ten this season, and he has an uphill battle to turn the Boilermakers into a competitive program. Ryan Walters left the cupboard bare, so Odom has to hope he uncovered a few diamonds in the rough among his 50-player incoming transfer portal class.