Yes, and those better teams have kept on winning. From 2007 to 2013, Big Ten teams turned in
losing overall records against the SEC (9-17), Pac-10/12 (17-22), and Big 12 (27-34), managing to go .500 only against the similarly marginalized ACC (11-11). Even in the context of the conference’s decline, the dearth of resonant, marquee wins in that stretch is almost startling. The Big Ten’s last regular-season win over a top-10 team — from within its ranks or without — was a little more than three years ago, on November 5, 2011, when Northwestern
upset no. 9 Nebraska in Lincoln. For the last regular-season
nonconference win over a top-10 team, we have to go all the way back to September 16, 2006, and Michigan’s
47-21 upset over no. 2 Notre Dame.
Almost startling, but not quite, because the league’s national profile has ebbed accordingly.