Colin Cowherd explains how Big Ten caught up with SEC on ‘Big Noon Kickoff’

Colin Cowherd thinks he knows why the Big Ten is suddenly a legitimate threat to the SEC.

Appearing as a guest on Big Noon Kickoff from Wrigley Field on Saturday, Cowherd spent several minutes explaining why the Big Ten’s westward expansion finally led to the one thing the conference was always missing, which is an abundance of California quarterbacks.

Tom Brady went to Michigan, but we’ll allow Cowherd, who relocated from Los Angeles to Chicago earlier this year and regularly appears on Fox’s college and NFL pregame shows, to make his point.

“The Big Ten was always the tough, physical, cold-weather conference,” Cowherd said. “Point of attack, superior to the West Coast teams. But the West Coast has always been the creative coast from Silicon Valley, the first laser, the first computer, all of our iPhones — California-based.”

Cowherd cited 13 starting NFL quarterbacks from the West Coast, nine of whom hail from California. He pointed to Ohio State’s Julian Sayin, a California native who leads the nation with an 80.9% completion percentage, and Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza, who transferred from Cal, but is from Miami. Both are California quarterbacks – maybe not in the traditional sense — but now playing for traditional Big Ten programs.

“The West Coast has always been more of a fineness conference, but the creative part of our country,” Cowherd said. “So what the Big Ten lacked, they had all the toughness and the Michigan and the Ohio State, and the physicality. California, the West Coast, brought quarterbacks, passing. The GOAT, Tom Brady, California. Aaron Rodgers, California. Andrew Luck, California. John Elway, California.”

The Big Ten always had physicality and toughness, the hallmarks of Midwest football. What it didn’t have was the creative, quarterback-driven offense that’s defined West Coast football for decades. Or at least so Cowherd says.

“So when you have this mesh of the creativity of California and the West with the toughness of the Midwest, we didn’t talk about the Big Ten being better than the SEC four years ago,” Cowherd continued. “Now it’s legitimate because of the mesh.”

“We didn’t talk about the Big Ten being better than the SEC four years ago, now it’s legitimate because of the mesh of the West Coast teams.” @colincowherd breaks down the impact of the West Coast schools on the Big Ten ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/madxVsi41p

— Big Noon Kickoff (@BNKonFOX) November 15, 2025

Sure. Ohio State’s 2024 National Championship run featured Kansas State transfer Will Howard, not a West Coast quarterback. Michigan’s 2023 title came with J.J. McCarthy, a Chicago-area native. Oregon’s Dante Moore transferred from UCLA, but he hails from East Cleveland, Ohio. And the SEC has won 13 of the last 19 National Championships.

Still, Cowherd’s broader point about the conference’s evolution isn’t entirely wrong. The Big Ten’s offensive identity has shifted. The ground-and-pound philosophy that defined the conference for generations has given way to more diverse, pass-heavy attacks. Whether that’s because of West Coast influence or just how modern football works is in the eye of the beholder, but the timing roughly aligns with expansion.

The conference now stretches from New Jersey to Los Angeles, encompasses 18 schools, and features some of the nation’s most dynamic offenses. The gap between the Big Ten and SEC has closed considerably, and the Big Ten can now credibly claim to be college football’s other superpower.

If Cowherd is right about West Coast quarterback culture being the missing piece, then the Big Ten’s decision to expand westward was about more than TV markets and revenue. It was about changing what Big Ten football could be. Or maybe it’s just that college football has changed everywhere, and the Big Ten happened to expand at the same time.