Analysis: Early impressions of the highs and lows of the Big Ten’s new football quartet

The Big Ten made its debut as an 18-team football conference three weeks ago with the addition of USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, the four teams that administrators targeted in response to the SEC flexing its muscles by adding Texas and Oklahoma.

The idea, in large part, was to bolster the Big Ten’s lineup and profile for TV rights purposes, along with increasing the number of teams the conference can land in the College Football Playoff, which features 12 teams for the first time this year.

While it’s a sample size of only two or three games played by the Big Ten’s new quartet, some early opinions can be formed on each debutant and how their seasons are progressing. Here’s a look at each:

The Bruins (1-1) look very much like a program that saw its coach, Chip Kelly, inconveniently leave in February, forcing the school to scramble to hire former standout running back DeShaun Foster after an unsuccessful pursuit of Gophers coach P.J. Fleck. UCLA opened with a 16-13 win at Hawaii before absorbing a 42-13 thrashing from Indiana at the Rose Bowl in the Bruins’ first Big Ten game.

“That’s not the standard that we were looking for,” Foster said. “We’ve got to improve.”

The problems for the Bruins are on both sides of the ball, particularly on third down. UCLA ranks last in offensive third-down conversions (28.6%) and defensive third-down stops (50%).

The road ahead doesn’t look good for the Bruins, who enter a brutal stretch of their schedule with a trip to No. 16 LSU on Saturday, a visit from No. 9 Oregon next week and a trip to No. 10 Penn State on Oct. 5. By the time the Gophers arrive at the Rose Bowl for their Oct. 12 game, the Bruins could be 1-4.

The Huskies lost to Michigan in the national championship game, then lost 20 of their 22 starters and saw coach Kalen DeBoer leave for Alabama.

Former Arizona coach Jedd Fisch inherited the rebuilding job, and the Huskies just missed a 3-0 start, falling 24-19 to Washington State when stuffed on fourth-and-goal from the 1 with 1:07 left in the fourth quarter on Saturday.

“I told our team, ‘We lost a nonconference game,’” Fisch said. “That’s what it is at this point. We lost to Washington State. It was very disappointing. We don’t have the Apple Cup. It’s very disappointing. But unlike the years before, we don’t have to wait 365 days. You wait six and go play. It’s all about the Big Ten.”

That starts Saturday with a visit from Northwestern. The schedule ramps up later with trips to Rutgers, Iowa and Indiana and visits from No. 18 Michigan and No. 11 USC in a six-week span.

If any program looked as if it could make a seamless transition to the Big Ten, it was Oregon. The Ducks are flush with NIL money, have a hard-charging young coach in Dan Lanning and have a Heisman Trophy candidate in quarterback Dillon Gabriel.

The Ducks opened with closer-than-expected wins over Idaho and Boise State, but they looked like their old selves in a 49-14 romp over Oregon State in the Civil War game on Saturday.

“We played to our standard today,” said Lanning, whose team scored on all eight of its possessions that weren’t end-of-half kneel-downs.

Oregon’s schedule is favorable for a title chase. The circle-it game comes Oct. 12 when No. 3 Ohio State visits.

“USC football” and “under the radar” aren’t often linked in a sentence, but that is the case this season with the Trojans, who were picked by conference media members to finish sixth in the Big Ten and were No. 23 in the Associated Press preseason poll.

USC (2-0) turned some heads with a 27-20 win over LSU in Las Vegas to open the season, and now the Trojans will face a prove-it game in the Big Ten opener at Michigan on Saturday.

“There’s NFL players all over the place and a lot of guys who were part of winning a national championship last year,” Trojans coach Lincoln Riley said of the Wolverines’ roster.

Should the Trojans beat Michigan, their schedule sets up well. Three of their best remaining opponents — Penn State, No. 22 Nebraska and No. 17 Notre Dame — must travel to Los Angeles.