Recruiting in college football is downright nasty. It is a cutthroat, cannibalistic big business that is microscopically analyzed by fans, administrators and media members alike. The Big Ten's recruiting trail is chalked full of intriguing storylines.

Preseason prognosticators like Athlon Sports — the most accurate college football preview magazine on newsstands — use many things to predict what the coming football season will look like. Returning starters, scheduling, historic trends, coaching, pending off-the-field issues and, of course, recruiting rankings all help Athlon editors predict the future of college football.

National Signing Day 2013 is right around the corner and Athlon Sports is releasing its position-by-position rankings for the Class of 2013 based on the Athlon Consensus 100. Who is left on the board? Who has the best class at one position? Who had positional needs to fill?

The early entry deadline to the NFL Draft is always a nervous time for many coaches in college football. Even though most coaches have an idea of which players will be back for the next season, there’s always a few surprises. And of course, it’s never easy to replace a potential first-round pick with an unproven player.

The Big Ten had a year to forget in 2012. Two of the conference’s best teams (Ohio State and Penn State) were ineligible to compete for the postseason, while Michigan State underachieved and finished with a 7-6 mark.

The bowl game in Tempe will be a last chance to build any sort of momentum for both Michigan State and TCU into 2013.

The Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl (formerly the Insight Bowl) puts together two teams that have not won back-to-back games since September. For Michigan State and TCU, the season has not gone entirely as planned.

The merits of recruiting rankings are debated in every sports bar and around every water cooler in the nation. Athlon continues its look at how each all-conference team ranked as high school recruits with the first-team All-Big Ten team.

Related: College Football's 2012 All-American Team as Recruits

2012 Offensive All-Big Ten Team as Recruits

Each year a unique set of prospects enters the professional ranks with a chance to make an immediate impact on the country's most powerful sport. The 2013 NFL Draft, held April 25-27, won’t be any different.

Today, we rank college football's best defensive end prospects:

Which bowls should you tune into? Athlon ranks and previews all of the matchups from the must-see to the ones you can avoid. Although Alabama and Notre Dame is clearly the biggest bowl game, with 34 other contests, there are plenty of other quality pairings to watch this postseason.

Ranking the 35 Bowl Games: Must-Watch to Must-Miss

Bizarre might be the best word to describe the 2012 edition of Big Ten football. The best teams with the best player and the best coach won't be playing for a championship of any kind after finishing the season as one of only two undefeated teams in the nation. The non-conference performance by the league as a whole was fairly atrocious as a road win over Syracuse might be the best out-of-league win this season. What about the emotional roller coaster fans in Happy Valley have been on for over a year?