The Big Ten media poll did what Big Ten media polls usually do: it put Ohio State at the top.
That part isn’t exactly a shock. The Buckeyes have been a fixture near the top of the Playoff-era conversation, and Ryan Day’s program has stacked up top-10 finishes year after year. Still, the case for Ohio State as the safest preseason answer starts to look a lot less comfortable once you zoom in on the schedule.
Indiana, not Ohio State, may actually have the cleaner road to Indianapolis.
That’s the real wrinkle here. Ohio State is sitting at +180 to win the Big Ten at FanDuel, while Indiana is at +310, which tells you plenty about where the consensus lives. It also says the idea of picking IU is still a little too spicy for the room, even after Curt Cignetti’s team ripped off a first 16-0 season since 1894 Yale and gave him a chance to clap back at the SEC.
But if we’re talking strictly about the conference race, Ohio State’s path is the harder one by a wide margin.
The Buckeyes’ over/under is 9.5 regular-season wins, and that number comes with one of the toughest schedules in the sport. The Texas game counts toward that total, but it’s not part of the Big Ten grind, so the real attention should be on what Ohio State has to survive in conference play. Road games at Iowa, Indiana and USC stand out immediately, and those three teams carry a combined regular-season over/under of 26.5 wins.
That’s projection, sure. It’s also three teams that finished in the AP Top 25 and went a combined 39-5 at home over the last two seasons. That’s not the kind of slate you breeze through.
And that’s before you get to the games in Columbus. Ohio State also has to host Oregon and Michigan, both of which beat Day’s team in the last two years. Put it all together and the Buckeyes have five Big Ten games where things could genuinely tilt against them.
Indiana doesn’t have that kind of burden.
The Hoosiers’ toughest road games are at Nebraska, Michigan and Washington. Nebraska is still hunting for its first win against a ranked opponent since the Barack Obama administration, so the real focus falls on Michigan and Washington.
Those two are 22-5 at home over the last two seasons. That’s the road challenge.
Add Ohio State coming to Bloomington, and you get three games where IU could be tested in a major way.
Three, not five.
And Bloomington matters here. Cignetti is undefeated at home, and every IU home game under him has been decided by at least two touchdowns except the 2024 game against Michigan.
Indiana also brings back multiple preseason All-Americans from a front seven that held Ohio State to 26 carries for 58 yards in the Big Ten Championship. New season, sure.
Different personnel, absolutely. But that memory doesn’t disappear.
The coordinator situation only sharpens the contrast.
Ohio State has Arthur Smith stepping in, and plenty of Buckeye fans will tell you that’s an upgrade over Brian Hartline, who took the USF head coaching job after a disappointing finish to Ohio State’s 2025 campaign. Maybe.
Maybe not. Just because Matt Patricia’s move from the NFL to college worked beautifully with a historically great Ohio State defense doesn’t mean Smith is automatically about to have Big Ten defenses on skates.
Indiana, meanwhile, brings back Bryant Haines, the Broyles Award winner, and Mike Shanahan, who called plays for an offense that averaged 41.6 points per game. That stability matters. At the very least, the Ohio State-Indiana matchup in Bloomington feels like a coin flip, and the Buckeyes are the ones making the trip.
If you want to whisper the uncomfortable part, go ahead: Ohio State hasn’t won a Big Ten Championship since 2020, and that one came in the weirdest possible season, when the conference changed the rules to get the 5-0 Buckeyes into the title game instead of Indiana. Day’s last normal, undisputed Big Ten title was all the way back in 2019. Since then, Cignetti and Dan Lanning have both won the league more recently than he has.
None of that is meant to diminish the national title Day won. That’s a separate conversation. This one is about the Big Ten, where the draw matters and the schedule can tilt the whole race.
For what it’s worth, Indiana still isn’t the team I’d pick to win the conference. I’d go with Oregon, which I believe is poised to join Indiana and Ohio State as the next Big Ten national champion. The Ducks may have fewer roster questions than IU, though that’s a conversation best saved for another day.
What does seem clear is that Ohio State’s road to Indianapolis looks brutal, and the margin for error could be razor-thin. If the Buckeyes end up proving the media right, it won’t be because the path was easy.
It’ll be because they survived a lot of land mines.
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