USC, Oregon, UCLA, Washington beefing up in anticipation of physical Big Ten play

This has always been a bullshit narrative. I'm much more scared of a team that has speed and a wide open offense that can play enough defense and run a bit than this tougher in the trenches bs, which btw, I think the SEC is better at at every level. Outside of Ohio State and the last few Michigan teams the Pac-12 teams at every level could rumble with their Big 10 counterparts.

Btw, Ohio State and Michigan to an extent got a lot better because they started going with more west coast style schemes. Oh, and they love to take players from out west too. OSU's best recent QB Stroud is historically usually a UCLA guy, Michigan's best DL last year was from Orange County, their best blocker was a TE from Idaho and they had two Stanford and and ASU transfer on their OL.

When USC actually had their shit together under Carroll they ran circles around the Big 10's best teams.