Michigan's bad Big 10 scheduling luck

It's decent analysis, but unfortunately it's complicated by the fact that there are two teams that don't get played each season.

Well, OSU and Michigan have one the championship outright twice each. That leaves 12 championships left for others to take.

I’ve been thinking this for years. The percentage with psu is crazy.

Nice research.

"In addition, our game with Penn State is like a de facto protected rivalry".

Well, we didn't miss them in the first 10 years when they joined the conference, but we missed them in 2003 & 2004 and will miss them again in 2010 & 1011. So maybe the BigTen scheduling is starting to change with Penn State, which stinks, as I like playing the quality teams like Penn State.

Wow those are some interesting numbers.

Is the schedule just randomized? or like the OSU game is there 2-3 teams that UM always plays year in year out to keep the rivalries going

Northwestern and Minnesota inexplicably sucking? I think it's actually pretty explicable. They frequently suck.

I have to axe ya: Is Illinois REALLY at .094 in years they don't play Michigan? Horrible.

avoid Michigan *and* Ohio State in consecutive years.

Iowa did last year, IIRC,; and seem to recall Purdue a few years back.

Oddly, those teams don't do as well overall. Perhaps they're not as motivated over the summer and in practice. It's wierd.

From you stats, it looks like Northwestern is headed for a below average year while Minnesota should have an above average year for themselves, if the historical averages bear out.

I too have had this in the back of my mind for years.

..that UM once again has to play Wisky the week before OSU. At least OSU has to play Iowa this time. Usually, it seems like UM plays Wisky and OSU plays NW or some other easy school.

Hopefully, Wisky has lost that physical edge that allowed them to threaten the structural integrity of the Big Three and little eight under Alvarez. I want to see a healthy UM play OSU this year.

Just like a few others I always knew without any real data that we were on the short end of the stick over this period of time. Thanks for crunching the numbers and proving so.

I've always thought about this, I have just never really done research on it. Nice job though, I think Minessota will have a decent team this year but I think Nothwestern is going to have a big drop-off from last year.

Iowa last year?

With Notre Dame being our supposedly big nonconference opponent now, this doesn't bother me.

I gave Joey B a point back. It's won, Joey, not one. A+ for content.

Three sets of two Make it hard. MSU followed by Iowa(both on the road!), PSU Followed by going to Illinois, and at WIS(always tough at home even if it is a down year), Followed by OSU. Wouldn't everyone be more Comfortable if it looked like this. I know I would.

WMU
ND
EMU
@MSU
IND
@Iowa
Del St.
PSU
@Ill
@Wis
Purdue
OSU

This still gives 3 Home games to start and get Tate comfortable before we go on the road and breaks up some of the pairs. IMO I would rather go to ILL and WIS back to back weeks and get Purdue(which should be awful) before OSU. Rather than play MSU and Iowa back to back as it is in reality. Just a Theory not that theorys do anything!

I was thinking nobody got tougher locked down rivals than us, except then I noticed Ohio plays MICHIGAN and PENN STATE every year.

I guess now we have a good response if a Smart Buckeye ever comes at us with "we play Penn State, you play Michigan State," which, like, okay, I think anyone not named Xerxes would rather play Michigan State than Penn State in any given year. On the other hand, serendipity duked us in the fart box in saving the Lions' and Illini's bad years for when we don't play them.

I would bet, however, that Ohio State generally feels a similar effect. In college football, talent acquisition is through recruiting, and recruiting is helped by wins, so wins tend to create more future wins. For any college football team, wins are more precious any year you play Michigan or Ohio State or Penn State. Remember, the difference one loss makes in recruiting is huge, the fewer total losses, the more so.

A prolonged series of years in which a team faces the monsters, then, will negatively effect recruiting. For teams that rotate away, it is understandable if they have an off year afterward.

CASE IN POINT

The years we got off from Penn State we also had off of Wisconsin. This was for 2003 and 2004. I remember that succinctly for two reasons:

1. NCAA 2004, which I played for like 10 seasons, had the very annoying feature of never changing M's Big Ten schedule, i.e. I never played PSU or Wis (except PSU once in a bowl game).

2. I have a college football 2003 preview that has hung around my bathroom for six years, and it claims M has it easy not having to face those monsters.

Anyway, here's the Big Ten Standings for those seasons:

2003

2004

You see a Penn State in the dumps, right? And Wisconsin took an uncharacteristic tumble to the middle in 2003. Both improved markedly after that year, the first year off from Michigan since 1992.

Let's look at that run:

vs. Michigan

So without Michigan on their schedules, Wisconsin and Penn State were able to (re-) load in 1991 and 1992, and came out swinging in the mid-'90s. However, from 1997 to the next break, both teams suffered annual losses to the Wolverines. They also suffered loss of recruits to Michigan in that period. Think of all the top PA (PSU's stomping grounds) and Western MI (normally strong for WI) recruits that Carr hauled in during and just after that time. They couldn't beat us, and their high school kids knew it.

I bet this looks similar for any program that gets a much-needed break from Ohio State or Michigan: the decade of playing the boys eventually wears a program out. Rotating away may cause the final collapse, but it's a purging fire in a way, too. It's during those between years that those teams were able to recruit players that beat us. And lo and behold, we've had a tough time against both of those teams since they came back on the schedule in 2005. As we play them more and more often, and our coaches get used to facing each other, I think the balance will swing toward Michigan once again.

It's the nature of these things.

I think. Really, I'm just musing.

Wisconsin has had it better than anyone in this department. It helps when the big 3 are the most opponents rotated off your schedule.

THE BADGERS...

*didn't have to face Michigan (10-2) in 1991.
*didn't have to face Michigan (9-0-3) in 1992.
*didn't have to face Penn State (10-2) in 1993.
*didn't have to face Penn State (12-0) in 1994.
*didn't have to face Michigan (9-4) in 1995.
*didn't have to face Michigan (9-3) in 1996.
*didn't have to face Ohio State (10-3) in 1997.
*didn't have to face Ohio State (11-1) in 1998.
*didn't have to play Penn State (10-3) in 1999.
*didn't have to play Illinois (8-4) in 1999.
*didn't have to play Michigan (10-3) in 2003.
*didn't have to play Michigan (9-3) in 2004.
*didn't have to play Ohio State (10-2) in 2005.
*didn't have to play Ohio State (12-1) in 2006.

Should all the tie-in teams be removed from the statistical analysis? Our opponents winning percentage whilst having us on their schedule would drop significantly if you take out OSU's winning percentage from the analysis, considering they play us every season and obviously had a high-winning percentage over the last 16 years.

I think this is a phenomena that many Michigan fans have suspected for years, but had no comprehensive proof of other than their own observations. Kudos on a very throrough and informative look at what we all know in the back of our minds...A tie in rivalry with Indiana would help.

I don't care to do the significance calculations, but it's worth noting that the winning percentage difference in Big Ten play is only about 1 game (0.494-0.371 = 0.123, 1/8 = 0.125). In fact, it's actually more like half a game since any win is actually +1 win and -1 loss (and since winning percentage is a ratio, you get numerator/denominator things happening there). Assuming that UM is better than most of the teams in the Big Ten, you could just pencil in a loss for those teams and you've more or less arrived at the numbers you've tallied in your post.

The aggregate numbers being considered, I'm genuinely curious about the outliers (Illinois and Penn State). I know from watching the games that they've been all over the map in the past decade, but those numbers are really crazy.

"A real man makes his own luck." Billy Zane, Titanic.