What we learned from Week 5 of college football in the Big Ten

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Week 5 of the 2026 college football season is now in the books! And while USC narrowly survived against Washington, there were numerous other Big Ten games played over the weekend as well.

So what did we learn from the rest of the conference? Here are a few non-USC takeaways from Week 5 in the Big Ten:

Northwestern might be pretty good?

Don’t look now, but the Wildcats are 3-1, with dominant home wins over Colorado and Penn State. Northwestern’s only loss was by six points on the road against defending national champion Indiana.

Ditto for Wisconsin

At 4-1, the Badgers have already matched last season’s win total. After dominating Michigan State, it appears as though Luke Fickell’s seat has cooled off considerably.

The state of Michigan is miserable

Meanwhile, both Michigan and Michigan State are 0-2 in Big Ten play. The Wolverines appear to have major issues at quarterback, while the Spartans’ two conference losses have come by a combined 46 points.

Penn State has major issues

On the other side of Northwestern’s latest win were the Nittany Lions, who also find themselves 0-2 in conference play. Penn State clearly has some major issues. Can USC take advantage of them this week?

Good for Purdue

Finally, prior to this past weekend, Purdue had not won a conference game in nearly three years. At long last, that finally changed on Saturday, as the Boilermakers took down Illinois.

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This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: What we learned from Week 5 of college football in the Big Ten

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