The Big 10 Is 3-6 vs FBS Teams This Week

Submitted by alum96 on

With Purdue falling to the Thundering Herd the Big 10 posted a stellar 3-6 record vs the FBS pending OSU.  Two of those were over MAC teams.

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AZBlue

September 6th, 2015 at 7:52 PM ^

NW outperformed expectations, PSU underwhelmed, and Neb lost on a Hail Mary. Otherwise everything went EXACTLY as projected by the oddsmakers/experts. Not sure the sky is falling. Middle anyone really think UW or Minny had a chance to win?

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MDot

September 6th, 2015 at 7:58 PM ^

Whether a not a team is competitive vs an out-of-conference team that is considered above, beneath or equal to them is far more indicative of how good a conference is, than just looking at a W-L column...

 

Nebraska lost on a damn Hail Mary. That's not an indictment on the B1G. Both teams were pretty much equal, and one team made one more play. The Penn State game would be more alarming, with the assumption by some that they were going to be decent this year.

 

...but even if, say, PSU won a bunch of games in the B1G, that shouldn't automatically say that the B1G sucks either. It is possible for teams to improve over the course of the season. People need to look at these things with more nuance, instead of building these naratives.

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alum96

September 6th, 2015 at 8:03 PM ^

I think the Big 10s performance aside from 1-2 schools the past decade in the first 4 games of the year (non conf slate) and the bowls has provided the nuance. 

The question is when will the tide turn.  It does not look like this will be the year despite protestations by many this summer.  We remain an extremely top heavy conf.  And with the hires of Neb and PSU the  past few years (meh hires IMO long term), it seems like we are going to be the only real horse to make a push into the upper echelon in the next few years.   

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Eye of the Tiger

September 6th, 2015 at 7:59 PM ^

I've never understood why people care about conference A vs B. In last year's playoff, OSU beat the snot out of the best teams from two supposedly better conferences. All we need to do is take care of business--who cares what anyone else is doing.



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BornSinner

September 6th, 2015 at 8:01 PM ^

In all honesty I think the Pac12 had a pretty bad outing too. WSU lost to an FCS team at home... Oregon allowed Eastern Wash to put up 40 against them... Stanford lost... Washington looks horrible too. Well I guess I meant the pac12 North

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alum96

September 6th, 2015 at 8:05 PM ^

The south took some shots too.  ASU got rocked by A&M and the flying rich rods played very close to the russell Bellomys as Casteel's vaunted defense was a sieve again. 

UCLA looked good with wunderkid rosen.

A good week for ACC and SEC only?

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LSAClassOf2000

September 6th, 2015 at 9:27 PM ^

That might extend to Gaylord Perry as well, whose innovations in ball doctoring used to end in routine hat searches at various points in his career. I suppose we're fortunate that umpires in the MLB don't have court-backed search powers or the MLB Game Of The Week would need to be moved to compete with the late show back in the day. 

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BJNavarre

September 6th, 2015 at 9:05 PM ^

This was also the toughest opening slate for the big ten in at least 10 years. PSU was humiliated. NW surprised. Everything else went more or less as expected. The Big Ten is still weak, but it might be a little deeper than the past couple years.

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BJNavarre

September 6th, 2015 at 9:34 PM ^

No, I didn't give my thoughts as to why I think the conference is deeper. And I actually think the top of the conference is weaker since UW is no longer a top 10-15 program, but they're still decent. So is Michigan, Minny, and maybe NU and Neb. OSU is elite and MSU might be too. So that's 6-7 decent teams. Better than recent years where it felt like there were 4 or 5 decent teams.

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UMxWolverines

September 6th, 2015 at 9:38 PM ^

The only teams worth a shit in this conference right now are OSU and MSU...god what a nightmare. 

And those of you that said ''MSU will regress to the mean after Michigan and Penn State get going...how is that looking? MSU is extremely well coached and will pick it up after this week which they always seem to do after week 1. Penn State looks horribly coached...just horrible. Like Hoke level horrible. I don't see them being successful under Franklin. While that's good for us because it probably means one less team we're competing with...I'm thinking OSU, MSU, and Michigan are going to be fighting for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd a lot. I'd be happy with a 3rd place finish this year to be honest. 

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BJNavarre

September 6th, 2015 at 9:43 PM ^

I think the PAC 12 went 4-4 vs FBS. The highest ranked team they faced was #23 Boise St. They had a 31 pt favorite lose (WSU), and Oregon gave up a ton of non-garbage points to a FCS team. Their 4th best team (ASU) got blown out in prime time to an unranked team. The big ten did not have a good week, but I'd argue the PAC 12's was at least more embarrassing.

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Hotel Putingrad

September 6th, 2015 at 10:37 PM ^

but I'm not sure we don't know anything today we didn't know a week ago. OSU is elite; MSU is very good; Wisconsin, Nebraska, UM and Minnesota are works in progress; and everyone else is not good. And I don't understand how you cannot make the "top-heavy" argument for every single conference. Maybe the SEC is different with a bit more depth, but that's been the case for at least a decade. Inevitably the cream will rise to the top as it always does, and hopefully within 2-3 years, we'll be the cream of the B1G. Personally, I like our chances with O'Korn and a full recruiting class.

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BJNavarre

September 7th, 2015 at 12:14 AM ^

Northwestern might be decent too. They didn't just beat Stanford, they dominated them statstically too. Maybe Stanford's terrible this year though.

You think the big ten will ever be this good again?

http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/113099aab.html

The big ten finished with 6 teams in the top 25, including 2 in the top 5 (MIchigan, UW). OSU was unranked, bowlless and had zero 1st team all big ten players. It was a good year.

The '99 All Big Ten team was very solid, lead by future HOFer Drew Brees, but tucked away in the honorable mention section are at least 2 players with 10+ year NFL careers (James Hall, Akin Ayodele), plus 3 pro bowlers in Matt Light, Chris Chambers and TOM BRADY.

Ah, the glory days...

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BJNavarre

September 7th, 2015 at 12:43 AM ^

...and contrast the 1999 all big ten list to 2006 - a very good year for the B1G, but clearly not as talented as '99:

http://www.bigten.org/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/112106aaa.html

Thomas and Long obviously lead the group, then Woodley had some good years, but not a lot of guys who tore up the NFL. The linebacker group is solid. Skill positions are all journeyman or never made the NFL (ok, and one great return specialist). Henne and Levi Brown were NFL busts, but even then they cannot with the 99 team in that department, which has one of the all time great NFL busts in Courtney Brown.

 

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Silly Goose

September 6th, 2015 at 11:42 PM ^

Considering the SEC only played 4 games against Power 5 teams, and 4 games against FCS teams, let's not talk about conference strength quite yet. There is a lot of football to be played and we don't have a lot of data yet.

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Megatron

September 7th, 2015 at 12:01 AM ^

I don't care OSU ran the table and won the National Championship last year way to early to put a fork in any Conf. And really there are top heavy team every Conf as everyone has said.

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