One week.
That's all that stands between right now and the Big Ten's first spring game of the 2016 season. Naturally, it will be the conference's most talked-about team that will first take the field for its annual exhibition, with Michigan set to host its second spring game under Jim Harbaugh on April 1.
With spring games set to come and go in the coming weeks, activity in the league is picking up, and before you know it, the dead period of May and June will be upon us.
With that in mind, let's dive into this week's Big Ten Q&A, where we'll tackle coaches on the hot seat, the league's potential surprise contenders and...RGIII?
As always, you can send your questions each week to me on Twitter @BenAxelrod.
Let's get started.
After Illinois' offseason firing of Bill Cubit and subsequent hiring of Lovie Smith, there's really only one answer that makes sense here.
In fact, I'm surprised Darrell Hazell reached his fourth year at Purdue in the first place.
While one could certainly argue that Penn State's James Franklin also belongs in this category, the reality is that even with the higher standards that are held in Happy Valley, the Boilermakers are in the midst of a nearly unprecedented run of awfulness on the football field under their current head coach.
In the three seasons with Hazell at the helm, Purdue has accumulated a 6-30 record, including a dreadful 2-22 mark in Big Ten play.
Purdue, which is coming off a 2-10 season in 2015, wasn't the only bad team in the Big Ten this past year. But both Maryland (3-9) and Rutgers (4-8) opted for fresh starts with new head coaches, while disappointments like Minnesota and Nebraska have the built-in excuses of breaking in new head coaches.
Meanwhile in West Lafayette, 2015 was a season where the Boilermakers were supposed to show progress. Instead, they took a step backwards and as a result find themselves replacing both of their coordinators entering 2016.
That's not a promising sign for Hazell's future, as it only appears to be a matter of time until it's his head that's on the chopping block.
I was optimistic for Purdue when it hired Hazell at the end of 2012, but so far, both his recruiting and on-field production have been nothing short of lackluster.
Unless the Boilermakers are near or eclipse .500 this season, it's hard to imagine Hazell making it to a fifth year. Then again, I didn't think he'd make it this far, so what do I know?
Another relatively easy question—it's been a long week, so what?—in my opinion.
Between the three teams listed, there's only one of them that I could realistically see contending as soon as 2016.
First, let's start with the non-contenders.
As much as I love Smith's hiring in Champaign, the Fighting Illini face a brutal schedule in the coming year. In the out-of-conference portion of its slate, Illinois takes on a North Carolina team that was in contention for the College Football Playoff through the final week of the 2015 season, and its Big Ten schedule only gets tougher from there.
With cross-divisional games against Michigan and Michigan State, it's just hard to imagine the Illini making the jump from 5-7 to the 9-3/10-2 record it would probably take to contend in the Big Ten West.
I like Smith's future at his new job—just not his immediate future.
In the case of Penn State, in a year when Franklin may need to save his job—or at least to stay off the hot seat—it's similarly tough to figure the Nittany Lions will be taking a step forward in 2016.
Between the loss of quarterback Christian Hackenberg and Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Carl Nassib, and the fact that it plays in the ultra-competitive Big Ten East, 2016 is shaping up to be a rebuilding year of sorts in State College.
That would put all eyes on 2017 in what could very well be a make-or-break season for Franklin's Penn State regime.
That leaves us with Nebraska, which many have already targeted as a potential sleeper team in the Big Ten West for the coming year.
Sure, the Cornhuskers' 5-7 regular-season debut under Mike Riley left a lot to be desired, but their Foster Farms Bowl win over UCLA showed promise and the advanced numbers (via SBNation's Bill Connelly) actually show that Nebraska was better than its sub-500 record indicated.
Add in an Iowa team I don't totally trust to pick up where it left off and a Wisconsin team facing a brutal schedule, and the Big Ten West is there for the taking for the Huskers.
Whether they'll make good on the opportunity or not is another story, but Riley's team is much further ahead in its progress than Illinois or Penn State at this point.
For all of the talk about what Harbaugh or even Urban Meyer have said, to me, one of the more interesting quotes of this offseason came when Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio was discussing the race to replace Connor Cook as the Spartans' starting quarterback.
Talking about early enrollee freshman quarterback Messiah deWeaver, Dantonio didn't deny that the 4-star prospect would be right in the thick of what many have perceived to be a two-man race between Tyler O'Connor and Damion Terry.
"You've got to not only play the game, but you have to develop your leadership as a person," Dantonio said. "So having [deWeaver] here for an additional semester early on gives him an outstanding advantage to compete."
Pressed on the subject, Dantonio said the upperclassmen had an advantage due to their experience, but again, he didn't rule out deWeaver taking the reins.
"The work has been impressive, looking forward to seeing Messiah compete, and I think it will be interesting to watch," he said.
It would be very un-Dantonio-like to start a true freshman at quarterback, but if deWeaver's the best man for the job, his status as an early enrollee could help negate his experience disadvantage.
Ultimately, I'd expect O'Connor to win the job and run a two-quarterback system with Terry, but if this year takes on the form of a rebuilding season—as it very well could—it may be wise for Michigan State to start looking toward the future.
Due to my unfortunate Cleveland Browns fandom, a significant portion of my Twitter following is made up of similarly miserable NFL fans from Northeast Ohio.
And while that often makes for a less painful way to enjoy each NFL season, it came back to bite me on Thursday when I sought out mailbag questions and was inundated with questions about Robert Griffin III. Unbeknownst to me, he had just signed with my favorite football team.
The questions ranged from serious to hilarious, with most of them being some variation of "What would RG3 look like in a Big Ten/Ohio State's offense?" I opted to settle for a question that had an actual answer that I could dive into—plus I've always enjoyed looking at current NFL players' recruiting bios.
In the case of RG3, who was a 4-star prospect and the nation's No. 5-ranked dual-threat quarterback in 2008, the eventual 2012 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year possessed an offer from just one Big Ten team (Nebraska, according to Rivals.com), which wouldn't even become a Big Ten team until his Heisman Trophy-winning senior season at Baylor.
That's not all that surprising, considering Ohio State didn't build its pipeline into Texas until Meyer arrived in 2012, but one can't help but think Griffin would've been a perfect fit for Rich Rodriguez's tenure in Ann Arbor.
As for what RG3 would've looked like in the conference, it's hard to imagine him posting the eye-popping numbers that he did with the Bears, although it's worth noting that the Big Ten wasn't as strong back then as it is now.
Ultimately, Griffin would've been good, possibly even good enough to still become the No. 2 overall pick of the 2012 draft, but I don't think he would've become the Heisman-winner he did by staying in Texas.
Besides, I'm much more interested in how Griffin will fare as a Brown than how he would've as a Buckeye. Unfortunately.
Ben Axelrod is Bleacher Report's Big Ten lead writer. You can follow him on Twitter @BenAxelrod. Unless noted otherwise, all quotes were obtained firsthand. All statistics courtesy of cfbstats.com. Recruiting rankings courtesy of 247Sports.
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