In our debut episode of “Big Ten Elite” on Tuesday night, we profiled Michigan’s most recent national championship football team. Lloyd Carr was entering his third season as Michigan head man and took what had been an underachieving Michigan squad the previous two seasons to the pinnacle of college football.

This week’s schedule is loaded with three good games, the headliner being Nebraska’s trip to Ohio State. Each could be the top team in their respective division. The subplots are thick, with great quarterback and head coaching battles leading the way. Oh, and Bo Pelini, a Youngstown, Ohio, native returns to Ohio State, where he was a defensive back from 1987-90.

Five weeks are in the books, and the bowl picture is coming into a bit sharper focus … a bit. To review: The Big Ten has tie-ins with eight bowls—but it has only 10 bowl-eligible schools, as Penn State and Ohio State are on NCAA and banned from the postseason in 2012.

Ohio State solidified its case for the top spot in my Week 6 Power Rankings, this after going into East Lansing at knocking off Michigan State. But what about the rest of my list? See my latest rankings in this post. Disagree? Leave your thoughts in the comment box below or tweet me (@BTNTomDienhart).

Chelsea Armstrong, Northwestern’s all-time leading scorer, capped her hat trick just 12 seconds into overtime as the 10th-ranked Wildcats rallied from two goals down to defeat No. 6 Penn State 5-4 Friday afternoon. Watch the highlights now and dive inside this post for more highlights from around the conference.

Earlier this week I helped take a look at who might land in the 2012 Big Ten Football Championship game. Well, the road to that big game starts Saturday as Big Ten teams put a rocky non-conference run behind them and focus on pounding on each other. In this post, I take a close look at all six games, and then I’m headed to East Lansing to cover Ohio State and Michigan State on Saturday.