Big Ten football standings for the 2000s

Hard to believe it's already the final week of the Big Ten regular season. Seems like we were all just downtown for media days and speculating about how great Illinois and Michigan State were going to be.

Anyway, with Saturday's games to go, here's how the 11 Big Ten teams have fared during this decade in league games only. Sorry for the unaligned formatting. That's on my wish list for Blog 2.0.

TEAM RECORD POINT SPREAD
Ohio State 63-16 +1044
Michigan 53-26 +488
Iowa 48-31 +429
Penn State 44-35 +438
Wisconsin 44-35 +207
Purdue 40-39 +89
Northwestern 37-42 -518
Michigan State 32-47 -188
Minnesota 30-49 -283
Illinois 26-54 -607
Indiana 18-61 -1099

As you can see, for the most part the records align with a team's plus/minus in terms of points. Northwestern and Iowa are the biggest outliers. It's amazing the Wildcats are close to .500 despite getting outscored on average by 6.5 points per game. They should be down in the 27-52 or 28-51 range with that scoring deficit.

Now for the other half of the chart...each team's number of bowl appearances and Big Ten titles. I've already added Ohio State's 2009 crown to this chart. If you see an "x" next to the team's bowl number, then I've already added a bowl appearance for this year. Michigan can still add one to its total if it shocks Ohio State on Saturday.

TEAM BOWLS TITLES
Ohio State 10x 6
Michigan 8 3
Iowa 8x 2
Penn State 6x 2
Wisconsin 9x 0
Purdue 7 1
Northwestern 5x 1
Michigan State 5x 0
Minnesota 8x 0
Illinois 2 1
Indiana 1 0

Folks, what jumps out at you on this chart? That's right, it's the ridiculous difference between the number of bowl appearances for Minnesota compared to Illinois. The Gophers have FOUR more Big Ten wins over the last 10 years, yet they're going to have SIX more bowl experiences. Why is that? Non-conference scheduling.

Illinois outdid itself this year with games against Missouri (neutral), No. 5 Cincinnati (road) and Fresno State (home). The Illini weren't helped by the fact it got stuck with the final-week bye on the Big Ten schedule, but Ron Zook didn't help matters with his desire to have a bye in the third week of the season (the week before the Big Ten opener at Ohio State).

Here's Zook's take on how Illinois' schedule should take shape:
How much input should he have?
"As much as the boss allows it, you know? I don't think there's any question...the whole thing here that we're trying to get done is we're trying to get 7 or 8 home games in this stadium. To do that, sometimes you maybe have to do some things that you'd rather not do.

"The schedule is what it is. You've never heard me complain about the schedule. It's just the way it is and we've got to play it, you know?"

This is the third year in a row the Illini have had 6 home games due to the Mizzou series. They had 7 home games in 2000, 2004 and 2006. During this decade, they've played FIFTEEN games against BCS-conference schools...and that doesn't include a 2001 game against No. 25 Louisville before the Cards moved to the Big East.

Minnesota, on the other hand, has enjoyed 7 home games each of the last three years. Prior to this year (when the Gophers upgraded and played Syracuse and California), they played ONE non-conference game against another BCS-conference team in the 2000s.

There has to be a happy medium between Minnesota's underscheduling and Illinois' overscheduling. Otherwise, how else could we label one thing as underscheduling and the other as overscheduling?

LW