B1G Preseason Hype and Eventual Results

In all fairness, I think Indiana has about as good a chance of winning the B1G as Oklahoma does.

Rick Reilly covers the other B1G teams as Nebraska enters in. I like how he described the Legends division as "Michigan and Iowa and a bunch of twinkies." Glad to see Michigan State get the respect it deserves.

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/6783415/rick-reilly-nebraska-big-ten-...

M typically had a hard time living up to it's preseason expectations and talent level, 2007 come to mind...also 2005.

Ohio State is 5 -1 in the favorite position, Michigan is 2 - 3.

Going back to the pre-RR era level of success would be a welcome improvement, question is whether that is good enough or not.

I find interesting that the only Michigan team pre Rich Rod to not be pre season top 2 was 1997 (they were 3 but still). Penn state was supposed to be awesome that year, IIRC (not that I wasn't 7 then...).

So...because media figures believe we were in the preseason top 3 for the Big Ten Champion, that means we were fielding good teams, or more appropriately we weren't fielding bad teams? I don't think anyone would say we were ever a bad team in the stretch between 1996-2007. You are looking at the wrong stat. Looking at that stretch we were the Big Ten Champion (including shared crowns) 5 times, second to TSIO's 6 times. No other team had more than 2. We currently have 68 players in the NFL (from Wikipedia which includes free agents), which is not a full list from 1996-2007 but has a lot of the players on there. I think we were a good team.

Take a look at the numbers again. In 2005, we were expected to be the Big Ten Champs. We finished tied for second, which at first glance wouldn't be too bad. But then one sees we were 7-5 and 5-3 in the Big Ten. That isn't very impressive. PSU and TSIO were tied for champs. So of the big three teams in the Big Ten, we were the worst of the three and did okay against the remainder of the lukewarm Big Ten competition.

If you look at the bowl record, minus Miss St, we are 6-7 from bowl games during that period. We have a -29 differential from that period. So when matched up with teams of similar caliber or records we have a sub 500 bowl record. Our overall bowl record is 19-21 (19-20 minus RR). Looking at the numbers it isn't that we weren't exactly fielding good teams. We just weren't fielding great ones. Someone started a thread last year asking what program was the most overrated program in the Big Ten. People were throwing out Wisco, Penn St, Iowa, or MSU. I remember after 8 or so posts someone goes: it is probably UofM and then the whole thread exploded with the OP yelling at the guy saying we are the winningest football team, we have tradition, we are consistently rated in the top 25 and among the top in the Big Ten, yada yada yada. Then the guy who mentioned UofM says, ya that is why were are the most overrated.

So point being we have been good, but not great and using that stat to say we have had good teams isn't really true. Also, probably shouldn't exclude the last three years when comparing us against other programs. Other programs make mishires and go through rough patches.