There has been significant discussion of how balanced the new Big10 divisions are. I have been using win/loss margin (WLM) to analyze turnovers and decided to use WLM to compare the relative strength of each division. (As a reminder, WLM is just wins minus losses. A WLM of 0 would be a 6-6 record, WLM of +4 would be an 8-4 record, and WLM of -4 would be a 4-8 record, etc.)

I selected data for the past decade (2000 – 2009) as a reasonable indication of the relative strength of each team. In an earlier thread, someone suggested using the past 5 years. Five years is a relatively small sample and the last five years have seen several teams (um, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Penn State come to mind) that have had significant swings when compared to past data. Only time will tell.

Here are the WLM for the past 10 years and 5 years.

	10 Year WLM	5 Year WLM
Michigan	3.80	1.60
Nebraska	4.00	3.40
IOWA	3.40	3.00
Northwestern	0.10	1.20
Michigan State	(0.30)	0.00
Minnesota	(0.10)	(1.80)
Total	10.90	7.40
ohio state	7.90	8.80
Wisconsin	4.20	6.20
Penn State	2.90	7.60
Purdue	1.20	(0.40)
Illinois	(2.70)	(3.60)
Indiana	(3.90)	(2.80)
Total	9.60	15.80
Total	20.50	23.20

As you can see, the divisions are well balanced based on 10 year WLM but are certainly NOT balanced based on the 5 year WLM.

Bonus Feature – Schedule Strength Based on WLM – Since I had the data, I also decided to look at schedule strength for this year plus 2011/2012. For schedule strength, I used 5 year WLM Databecause it should be a better indicator of short term performance.

The Table below provides 5 Year WLM for the Conference games, OOC games, and Total for All Games and the relative rank of the schedule strength. For all FCS games, I decided to use minus -8 WLM because “all” FCS teams are worst than any FBS team and the worst FBS team has a WLM of -7.9. There are just 15 out of 48 OOC games that opponents have a winning record.

 

 

2010 5 YEAR WLM	Conf	Rank		OOC	Rank		ALL Games	Rank
Michigan	18.80	4		(5.00)	3		13.80	2
Nebraska	12.40	7		(22.00)	12		(9.60)	12
IOWA	20.80	3		(11.60)	9		9.20	4
Northwestern	8.20	10		(9.80)	7		(1.60)	9
Michigan State	13.80	6		(6.20)	4		7.60	6
Minnesota	22.80	2		0.20	1		23.00	1
Total	96.80			(54.40)			42.40
ohio state	9.80	11		(7.40)	5		2.40	7
Penn State	6.40	12		(10.40)	8		(4.00)	10
Wisconsin	9.60	8		(14.60)	10		(5.00)	11
Purdue	9.60	8		(8.00)	6		1.60	8
Illinois	14.20	5		(2.60)	2		11.60	3
Indiana	24.40	1		(16.00)	11		8.40	5
Total	74.00			(59.00)			15.00
Total	170.80			(113.40)			57.40

Here is the data for Conference Only Games for 2011/2012

2011/2012
5 YEAR WLM	2011/2012	Rank
Michigan	10.60	10
Nebraska	26.60	1
IOWA	8.80	11
Northwestern	7.40	12
Michigan State	19.60	4
Minnesota	11.40	8
Total	84.40
ohio state	12.00	7
Penn State	15.80	6
Wisconsin	11.20	9
Purdue	19.00	5
Illinois	20.40	3
Indiana	22.80	2
Total	101.20
Total	185.60

 A couple of points are worth noting for all this data:

1. Holy crap, did Nebraska ever get the toughest schedule! (Wonder if they know this?) The only teams they don’t play are 3 of the 4 worst teams – Yikes!
2. In 2010, every team in the new “Bo” Division plays PSU, and Wisc. And, every team except Northwestern also plays osu. This is obviously not true for 2011/2012. That is the reason the overall schedule strength flips from 2010 to 2011/2012.
3. The better teams in any conference will have a lower SOS (no matter how it is calculated) because they don’t play themselves.
4. The not so good teams in any conference will have higher SOS for the same reason.