Michigan State vs. A Deaf Team and Other Obscure Big Ten Games

As much as we all love football, the game had some goofy beginnings. Sure, it's always been a tough-guy sport, but some of the early decisions for the sport were downright goofy.

Thankfully things have evolved in a positive sense, especially from an entertainment standpoint. However, one thing that still persists to this day, particularly in college football, is woefully uneven matchups.

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Naturally, 150 years ago, many football teams weren't aware of the blatant skill gaps that can exist in football. Unlike baseball where a significantly less athletic team can still find ways to compete with technique and instinct, football has long had a clear divide in talent and potential.

But even back then, things were a tad bit closer. The forward pass in many cases hadn't even been invented yet, virtually every player was white and most coaches and players were just winging it out there anyway. As a result, some of the games listed below were won by a team that hasn't played football in over a century.

Today, things are more balanced, but big programs still play below their weight class once or twice per season. In 2024, the Big Ten has seen Ohio State play two MAC schools, Michigan played Arkansas State from the Sun Belt and Oregon played an FCS program, Idaho.

Each of those scenarios saw one of the 10-best teams in all of college football play a team not remotely on their level. There are a variety of largely excusable reasons for why college football still schedules this way today, but at the very least we can appreciate that all the schools are, for better or worse, "Division-1" schools.

Way back when, that didn't matter. Whether a program played a school of deaf students, a JV squad or even a high school, every Big Ten team has an absurd former opponent from 100 years ago when we just didn't know any better. The Texas Football Life X account shared every FBS conference's most obscure matchups, and no team is absolved from the hilarity.

Each current Big Ten team's most obscure football game based on the post is listed below.