Five weeks into the college football season, there exists a clear divide between the top half of the Big Ten and the bottom half of the expanded conference. With 18 teams in this mega-league, only so many can legitimately contend for the conference title and a College Football Playoff berth. The sample size is still modest, especially with a handful of teams yet to play meaningful games, but an early batch of contenders and pretenders emerged from the first month of the campaign.
Breakout teams like Indiana, Illinois, Rutgers and Nebraska still have paths to the Big Ten Championship Game, as challenging as it may be to sneak past the more well-established squads up the totem pole. Newcomers Oregon and USC are top-tier programs in the new-look conference, and the familiar powers are squarely in the mix.
Among the top 10 teams in the Week 6 Big Ten power rankings, only a select few teams are unquestioned conference title contenders while a handful appear to be pretenders. The jury is still out on a couple of teams, too.
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Here are the Big Ten championship contenders and pretenders in Week 6:
