We are inside of three months to the start of the 2021 football season with a “Week Zero” game between Nebraska and Illinois on the books to take place in late-August with the rest of the conference set to start action the first weekend of September.

It will be quite the return to normalcy to see 12-game schedules, non-conference opponents and most importantly the hope and knowledge that a game that has been on the schedule for months and years will not suddenly be cancelled hours before kickoff.

It got us to thinking about what the ultimate viewing schedule would be for the course of the regular season, from week one to week 13. Some weeks are going to be stronger than others with league play taking place, open weeks being accounted for and just a couple of weeks that are not all that compelling.

And then on other weeks, it really came into a coinflip situation to decide which game might mean more, does history outweigh recent success? We had to make that decision early in the season on a week with a great slate of games.

We know not everyone will agree with our picks and we know that many people in the community will have all 12 Ohio State games on their own personal list, and that is fine too.

We are now in the home stretch of November after focusing on the first five games on Tuesday and then finishing up the next four games on Wednesday. We are bringing it strong down the stretch to finish out the regular season.

The Hoosiers have won twice since the late 1960s and this make the list? Well, Indiana is being projected above Michigan according to many in the Big Ten East and this game certainly will mark the end of one’s, if not both, chance to get to Indianapolis for the Big Ten Championship Game.

We briefly considered Northwestern vs. Iowa for this week and that game could be a lot more meaningful for the West race than this one is for the East race, but on name value alone, it is hard to pass this one up.

The last time that Indiana had a two-game winning streak over Michigan goes back to 1958-59, marking the last year of Bennie Oosterbaan and the first year of Bump Elliott with the Wolverines. Indiana was led by Phil Dickens, and just to give an idea of history, this was around the time that construction was started on Memorial Stadium in Bloomington.

Fast forward back to the present, technically the future, will Indiana go into this game with the better quarterback, running back and WR1? It is quite possible, but there is a lot of time between now and then to see how things shape up within each program.

The thing to remember is that the 2020 game was not even close, with Indiana winning the game by 17 points, but Michigan had been dealing with COVID issues throughout the entire season, but would it have made a difference?

There are a couple bigger games coming out of the B1G West but here in June, it is hard to know who will be good and who will fade into obscurity on that side. Or maybe we just have a bias towards the B1G East with our familiarity of that side of the ledger. But Minnesota/Iowa and Northwestern/Wisconsin both look to be big games in their own right.

But none of those four teams can even claim to be bluebloods of college football (Minnesota has the national championships in the past, but we are talking 80-plus years ago) and regardless of how you may currently feel about Michigan and Penn State, that game is going to be on the biggest of stages, even if both teams are saddled with a loss or three by this point of the year.

Penn State has won the last two games and three of the last four. It is hard to say that any trends were really formed in 2020 with the stop-and-start nature of the season but 2019 saw the Nittany Lions edge out a seven-point win after the two teams traded blowout wins, each at home.

This game will be in State College, a place that Penn State has not lost to the Wolverines since 2015 and without Ohio State on the home schedule, could this be a ‘White Out’ for Penn State? A lot of that will be determined by television and who holds the game.

Neither of these teams have been strong finishers on the year, taking 2020 off the table as the schedule was all over the place, neither team has been great in November over the previous five years (2019-2015) with Michigan holding a 13-7 record and Penn State holding a 12-7 record. Michigan is 2-0 over that five-year span when these two teams faced off in November.

We finally make our way back into the B1G West here in the second to last week of the regular season. The Buckeyes will be playing Michigan State this week but there are not a lot of expectations that the Spartans will turn things around in 2021 as the team has needed a significant rebuild.

This game will be in the middle of a three-game run for the Badgers that will include Northwestern (home) and Minnesota (road). This will be about as telling as any stretch of games in the Big Ten for any team. Get through these three, even drop a game against an East foe along the way and you should be the last team standing in the West.

The Huskers will be coming off of an open week (will have two due to playing in the zero week) after playing the Buckeyes.

This has been a bad series for the Huskers since joining the Big Ten, with only one win since starting to play games in 2011, a 2012 win in Lincoln, by a three-point margin.

Since then?

The Badgers started the run with a 70-31 “Leaders vs. Legends” drubbing in the Big Ten championship and it has ended up being a 291-155 landslide over the course of seven games, or close to a 20-point margin in those games.

The two teams did not play in 2020, maybe the best course of action for the Huskers during a difficult season, but it’s going to be on and the Huskers likely will have fans in Evanston, Minneapolis and Iowa City for this one as the Badgers seem to be the team to beat.

Do we really need to explain this one? We thought not.

The two teams did not play last year and have not played since the rumored “hang 100 on them” comments came to the surface after a disagreement of sorts between Ryan Day and Jim Harbaugh.

Ohio State ended up missing out on a home game due to Michigan having to shut things down at the end of the season due to roster concerns with COVID and you know both sides are raring to go.

Ohio State is an early 13-point favorite, a line that may not get any smaller along the way.

There are plenty of trophies along the way in the Big Ten season for football games, many occurring this last week and we are not that far removed from this game being for a trophy, the Big Ten Championship trophy.

It is highly unlikely that this game will have any outcome on who wins the Big Ten East but if you are Ohio State, you can’t trip up and lose your chance at the College Football Playoff.

But nobody wants to be the team that Michigan finally broke through against. So, expect this one to be hotly contested even in the chilly Ann Arbor air.