A better bowl season for the Big Ten?

The Big Ten has been, how should I put this, challenged in bowls recently. The past five seasons have seen the conference put up middling bowl records of 3-5 (2007-08), 1-6 (2008-09), 4-3 (2009-10), 3-5[1] (2010-11), 4-6 (2011-12). This season presents the additional challenge of two of the conference’s top teams sitting out under NCAA bowl bans.

Ohio State is the best team in the conference. The Buckeyes ran the table to finish 12-0 and played 3 of the top 4 teams in the opposite division, missing only the mighty Northwestern Wildcats. Penn State recovered from their initial losses to Ohio and Virginia to put together an 8-2 finish to the season including wins over Northwestern and Wisconsin. Neither Ohio State nor Penn State will be playing in bowls this year – the Nittany Lions won’t be back in a bowl until 2016-17 at the earliest.

Strength of Schedule

The bowl schedule for the Big Ten does no favors to the remaining teams. The tie-ins arranged by the conference ensure that teams will be meeting stiff competition in unfavorable locations.

1 – Rose Bowl – Pac 12 #1 –Even when the team is not one of the local powers, USC or UCLA, the LA area guarantees a significant base of alumni for most other schools in the conference.

2 – Capital One Bowl – SEC #2 – The SEC is better than the Big Ten.

3 – Outback Bowl – SEC #3-4 (Eastern Div) – See #2, plus they’ll be out of the East.

4 – Gator Bowl – SEC #6 – At least this one has the possibility of being fair, except location.

5 – Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl – Big 12 #4 – The Big 12 is better than the Big Ten (at least this year).

6 – Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas – Big 12 #6 – Pretty fair except for the location (Houston).

7 – Heart of Dallas Bowl – Big 12 #8 – The first non-SEC mismatch in the Big Ten’s favor.

8 – Little Caesar’s Pizza Bowl – MAC #1 – The 8^th (or really 9^th when two Big Ten teams make the BCS) Big Ten team is pretty typical for the kind of team that loses to a good MAC team.

At best there are two favorable mismatches and one of those is the Outback Bowl, in which the Big Ten is 5-5 in the last 10 years (the other recently changed alignments).

Predicting Outcomes

Jeff Sagarin is widely known for his eponymous rankings across multiple sports. College football fans may know him as the creator of one of the six computer rankings that combine to make up 1/3 of a team’s BCS ranking. The universities involved in the BCS, however, decided that they did not want to encourage teams to run up the score and directed computer rankings to remove margin of victory from their rankings. Sagarin complied and added a rating system that ignores margin of victory. A quick visit to his website makes it clear that his preference remains a system that includes margin of victory.

He notes that his “Predictor” rankings are the best predictor of future games. The rankings range from 99.10 for Alabama to 12.34 for Campbell University. This means that if the two teams played on a neutral field the Crimson Tide would be favored by 99.10 minus 12.34 or 86.76 over the Fighting Camels. Using these rankings we can put together a look at what the Big Ten can expect this year – and what they might have seen had all of their teams been available.

Actual Matchups

Rose	Wisconsin	83.3	Stanford	88.6
Capital One	Nebraska	80.0	Georgia	90.9
Outback	Michigan	82.0	South Carolina	87.9
Gator	Northwestern	78.1	Mississippi St	77.5
Buffalo Wild Wings	Michigan St	76.9	TCU	81.2
Meineke Car Care	Minnesota	66.5	Texas Tech	81.3
Heart of Dallas	Purdue	69.6	Oklahoma St	87.8
Little Caesar’s	WKU (no Big Ten avail.)		Central Mich	55.1

Big Ten projected margin of victory (defeat) according to Sagarin projections

This is bleak. The Big Ten is favored in precisely one matchup and they are favored by less than a point. These lines don’t even consider the possible home field advantage enjoyed by Stanford, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State. Collectively, the Big Ten is an underdog by 59 points in 7 games.

Hypothetical Matchups

This requires a little massaging since bowls are not required to take the 2^nd best team when they have the #2 pick, but I will assume that Ohio State takes the Rose Bowl slot while Penn State moves into the Outback Bowl. Everything else moves down in order with Wisconsin dropping to the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl.

Big Ten projected margin of victory (defeat) according to Sagarin projections

Rose	Ohio State	82.0	Stanford	88.6
Capital One	Nebraska (-)	80.0	Georgia	90.9
Outback	Michigan (-)	82.0	South Carolina	87.9
Gator	Penn State	79.1	Mississippi St	77.5
Buffalo Wild Wings	Wisconsin (-4)	83.3	TCU	81.2
Meineke Car Care	Northwestern (-2)	78.1	Texas Tech	81.3
Heart of Dallas	Michigan St (-2)	76.9	Oklahoma St	87.8
Little Caesar’s	Minnesota (-2)	66.5	Central Mich	55.1

**Purdue was bumped out of the conference lineup, but would likely find a home in one of the slots left unfilled by another conference

The Big Ten is still not looking at a winning bowl season, but these look like good matchups. The conference dropped from three to two teams losing by 10 or more and picked up 2 additional expected wins. Given the love that the model has for teams like Georgia, Stanford, South Carolina and Oklahoma State – all would be favored by 4 points or more against Wisconsin, the Big Ten’s strongest team after their dominant win over Nebraska – getting over .500 is impossible. Moving Michigan down to the Meineke Car Care Bowl, however, could get the conference up to break-even expectation.

The bowl season is frequently unpredictable, as teams that have not played significant out-of-conference opponents face their stiffest test of the season. Sometimes a conference is unexpectedly strong, but I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for this set of teams from the Big Ten. It’s going to be a long December.

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[1] Ohio State vacated their 31-26 win over Arkansas, counted here as a win