Big Ten Conference vs. other BCS conferences

Gee...that was a lot of work! Thanks for doing it.

Big Ten? Meh. I don't really care about the Big Ten. I have no one to heatedly argue with, and wouldn't anyway. Just not worth it.

And I think you have to go back MORE than 50 years to describe the Big Ten as a 'power house'. I think Bump won a Rose Bowl in '64. Bo lost like 7 in a row, and really didn't win one until John Robinson left USC.

Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that the Big 10 regularly gets a second team in the BCS, which forces every other Big 10 bowl team to "play up", giving us some tough matchups. For example, if OSU had not made the BCS this year, they would have been in the Citrus, knocking every other Big 10 team down one rung, and probably getting us a few more wins.

The second item that is important to consider is that bowl games are not necessarily a fair indicator of conference strength. The Big 10 is play a road game in the Rose Bowl every year, along with road games in the Citrus against the SEC and in the Alamo against the Big 12. Even back in the Big 10 glory days, our Rose Bowl records were not too impressive. I think a better indicator is regular season non-conference record against other BCS schools. If you look at those records, I would guess that the numbers come out more equally.

You can't just look at won/loss records and think its an apt comparison, otherwise Utah would be in the national championship game this year and Hawaii would've been in last years and the PAC-10 would be recognized as the strongest conference this year despite only having two teams in the top 25.

Nice post - but looking at just the bowl records can be misleading. As LJ mentioned, it's all about matchups, and the Big 10 tends to play "up" a bit in bowls, while conferences like the Pac-10 have bowl tie-ins that usually have them playing down. What I mean is that the Big 10 usually has its #i team play the other conferences' #i-1 teams. By comparison, the Pac-10 and the Big-12 tend to have their #i teams playing another conference's #i+1 team, or they play a middling MWC or C-USA team. I'm not saying the Big 10 is great by any stretch, but bowl games alone paints an incomplete picture. Now, if you consider the recent pratfalls during OOC, then you have a better argument that the Big 10 is falling behind the other top conferences.

Good work pulling together the numbers in a way that is easy to compare. This does show why the Big Ten has gotten such lousy press for how awful we've been lately.

One of the things that people forget about when looking at coaches' bowl records is that these are supposed to be evenly matched games. So you would expect a large sample to be clustered around 50% winning, which is what we have.

It is surprising, though, that there seems to be a pretty strong bias for the SEC. When you start to look at the Big East and ACC, you have to consider how many teams are making it each year. When you do, the "Best 1 vs. Best Top-to-Bottom" debate ensues. More confusion.

Getting to the specifics of 2008, though, there is another key factor. I went to http://www.bcsguru.com/2008_bcs_standings.htm to see where teams are now. They only go up to a ranking of 42, so several teams are unranked, I assigned all those a ranking of 43* (which in the analysis below is UNfavorable for the Big Ten). Here's the matchups, ranks, and differences:

FSU/Wisc 26/43* -17
Missou/NW 21/23 -2
KU/Minn 34/43* -9
SCar/Iowa 43*/29 +14
Ga/MSU 15/18 -3
USC/PSU 5/8 -3
UT/OSU 3/10 -7

For the seven games, that is an average differential of almost -4 ranking spots. If you take out the South Carolina/Iowa game (the one game that the Big Ten won) the differential is almost -7 spots.

So, surprise, surprise! With 12 games worth of data, the BCS rankings accurately predicted the outcomes of all seven Big Ten matchups. So much for "throwing the rankings out the window."

Now, this doesn't address the fact that the Big Ten teams aren't ranked HIGHER. The two highest Big Ten teams being ranked 8th and 10th is, I guess, at the heart of the issue. But it does confirm what we all expected when the bowl matchups were announced: The Big Ten never had a chance this year.

Let's just show Michigan's record against the SEC. We own that conference. Don't let the talking blow hards spin your head around that the Big 10 is playing at a Division 2 level and the sky is falling. Here are the truths as I see them.

USC is playing at a differnt level than anyone else with their ridiculous recruiting. They have slipped up the last couple of years, but at the end of the year if you are honest with yourself and you had to lay money not very many times are you going to pick against them. So who does the Big Ten draw the last couple of years yes USC playing a virtual home game against the 2nd place Big Ten team twice and Penn St this year. they overwhelm such team which they do regularly to SEC and Big 12 schools during the year and the Big Ten gets piled on since everyone is watching. Bad Press for Big 10, but any conferences 2nd place team that would have gone in there would have likely been sloughtered.

Let's look at the bowls
OSU vs Texas- Game played to virtual tie no diff in talent
Iowa vs Scal- Iowa went in and punched SEC mediocrity in the face
PSU-USC-See above
Wisc-FSU-FSU blows them out but if you watched it FSU's punter was ridiculous it was a close game in middle of 3rd qtr and Wisc melted down with turnovers
NW vs Miss-Game played to OT virtual tie
Georgia vs MSU- Georgia has far superior talent MSU hung tough against disinterested underachieving team
Minn vs Kan-Minn was terrible and lucky and got overmatched.

The facts are the Big 10 is not the best conference, probably 3rd or 4th this year, but we play football competitively with all the other conferences it goes up and down each year. Mich and PSU and Wisc won their bowls last year as underdogs against the mighty SEC and Big Ten.

Myths
Big Ten are neanderthals who play 3 yards and cloud of dust- Idiotic 8 of the 11 work primarily from the spread and the 3 that don't are pretty succesful.

Big Ten has no speed-check an NFL draft board-stupid argument.

I appreciate all the responses. I have no idea if this truly paints the real picture of where each BCS conference lies, but I think it brings to the surface a more reality of where the Big Ten is than where most of us thought we were. I wrote this post mainly because I made the mistake of going to school down south. There are no more annoying fans than the SEC, and it is merely impossible to not get into heated arguments with most of them. I wanted to get some perspective from not only Big Ten fans, but the fans that have the most in common with myself which is the love for Michigan athletics. The one thing that sticks out most to me is that we are not just looking at 5 years here. We are looking at 14 years of bowl records. I thought it was pretty interesting, but could mean absolutely nothing. Thanks for the comments.

that the top 6 conferences, based on win-loss performnace, are to be granted the 6 automatic berths. Any danger of the Big Ten losing their automatic berth if this keep up?
And if so, shouldn't Delaney REFUSE to have his teams matched up against much higher ranked teams in most cases?

If all of the other conferences have winning records over the recent years, it indicates to me that they play a lot of non-BCS schools, while the Big Ten is stuck playing 6 BCS teams every year. This year, there were 6 Bowls between BCS and non-BCS schools, and the BCS schools were 5-1, the only loss being Alabama-Utah The Big Ten did not get one of those wins, because they did not get a matchup. Last year, the BCS was 6-2, the losses being BYU over UCLA in OT and Fresno State over Georgia Tech in Boise. The Big Ten did get the advantage of the Motor City Bowl, where Purdue beat CMU. The Big East and SEC both got two wins each against non-BCS teams. I don't really feel like going back further.

Moral of the story is that the Big Ten only occasionally gets a non-BCS bowl matchup, while other conferences can make up for losses against good BCS teams with relative cupcake bowl wins. It's hard to find year-by-year records, but that should be what accounts for the disparity. If you count bowls which match up BCS teams only, the Big Ten's record would likely be a little better relative to the other teams.

Not to mention, USC has probably deserved to be in the NC game two or three times recently, but instead dropped a game or two during the year and instead got to kick an overmatched Big Ten team's ass in the Rose Bowl, like this year, 2007 and 2004.

It all started with the BCS. This is also a fabrication of the devil urr ESPN. I really don't shiv a git about no stinking conference match up crap. The folks that latch onto that stuff are fans of lower teir teams of that conference. Why the hell am I arguing with some jack ass about a conference, is there a B10 conference all star game vs the SEC conference all stars that I missed. Kill all the conference vs conference talk. Does it really make my team better based on what my conference did? I would say it hurt Utah.

The ACC and Big East are also weak but we don't know it because they're too chicken to play elite teams (and the one time Va Tech played LSU I think they were crushed) and they play against each other in the illegitimate Orange Bowl. As far as talent goes, the Big East is falling into irrelevance. The ACC has some potential but they have a long way to go. Right now, I would place the Big East behind the B10 and the ACC and the B10 together in one group.