Big Ten Football: Will the Winner of Each Division Have Two or More Losses?
Talk of the Big Ten not making the College Football Playoff is all a bit premature, especially with the carnage we've seen in the SEC, Big 12 and Pac-12 over the past couple of weeks. But there's one sure-fire way to prove the Big Ten naysayers correct: put a couple of two-loss teams in the Big Ten title game in December.
So what exactly are the chances we'll see one, or possibly even two division winners with two losses in 2014?
Without a single undefeated team left, and only six one-loss teams remaining—less than half of the conference—it's at least in the realm of possibility to have a pair of two-loss teams meeting in Indianapolis for what used to be a championship game that would at least earn you a trip to the Rose Bowl (which is no longer the case, thanks to the College Football Playoff, but that's a rant for a different day).
We'll take this step-by-step and team-by-team as we weave together a nightmarish tapestry for the Big Ten and its playoff-less future in 2014.
Unless otherwise noted, quotes or references to quotes were obtained firsthand by the writer.
Michigan
1 of 8
Hold on, don't laugh. Yet.
We're including Michigan on our list—even with a big, fat, ugly four in the loss column already—because Brady Hoke still believes Michigan can win the Big Ten title. No, really. He does.
Okay, you can laugh now.
As Tom Fornelli of CBSsports.com correctly pointed out, Brady Hoke might not fully grasp the methodology behind winning championships. But, as a service to Michigan fans and haters alike, we'll go through the math.
Like watching a good science fiction movie, the next few assumptions will require the audience to suspend disbelief for a short time. That being said, let's take a look at the bottom line.
Michigan is currently 3-4 overall with a 1-2 record in the Big Ten. The two losses have come to Minnesota and Rutgers. The Gophers play in the West, so Michigan doesn't have to worry about any tiebreakers there. The Scarlet Knights play in the same East Division as Michigan does, so that loss becomes a bit more problematic.
Rutgers is 1-1 in conference play, so the Wolverines need the Scarlet Knights to lose at least twice more to win a two-way tie. Rutgers has Ohio State, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Michigan State yet to play. Welcome to the Big Ten, indeed, Knights. Ok, two more losses is definitely possible, if not likely, for Rutgers.
Now, let's look at who Michigan has left: Michigan State, Indiana, Northwestern, Maryland and Ohio State. If you were oblivious to everything that has happened thus far in 2014, you might be able to convince yourself that those are winnable games for a Michigan team. Unfortunately, Michigan's "Team 135" isn't very good.
The Wolverines will be massive underdogs against Michigan State and Ohio State, and losing either of those games will all but eliminate the Wolverines from any serious chance of traveling to Indianapolis in December.
Big Ten Championship Game chances: 75-1
Northwestern
2 of 8
If you really want to get people snickering about the Big Ten and its playoff chances, just mention the possibility of Northwestern winning the West Division this season.
Sound impossible? Could the 3-3 Wildcats possibly have a chance at winning the division this season? With a 2-1 conference mark midway through October, yes, there's a chance.
Northwestern, typically pretty stout through its non-conference schedule, fell victim to California and (wait for it) Northern Illinois before getting its first win of the season against FCS Western Illinois is Week 4. But with conference wins over Penn State and early West favorite Wisconsin, the Purple Cats somewhat oddly find themselves in the conversation.
For now, at least.
Northwestern still has games upcoming against Nebraska, Iowa and an improving Michigan team before finishing up with Purdue and Illinois (with a non-conference game against Notre Dame sprinkled in). That's a tall mountain to climb without losing at least one more game.
But depending on who else beats up who and when the Wildcats decide to roll over and take another loss, it's at least conceivable that they could finish with a 8-4, or possibly 7-5, record while still winning the West Division.
Big Ten Championship Game chances: 30-1
Penn State
3 of 8
With NCAA sanctions lifted, Penn State looked like a team possessed early in 2014. Stumbles against Northwestern and Michigan have ended much of the sparkle in Happy Valley, but don't count out the Nittany Lions just yet.
Penn State is 4-2 but carries a 1-2 record in conference play, making an East Division title a bit of a stretch. Still, the bulk of the East still lies in front of the Nittany Lions, including games against front-runner Michigan State (Nov. 29) and next-in-line Ohio State (Oct. 25).
Add in three very winnable games against Maryland, Indiana and Illinois, and it's easy to see Penn State winning at least seven games this season—and being rewarded with a long-awaited bowl trip.
But we still can't get those losses to Northwestern and Michigan out of our heads. Both Ohio State and Michigan State are heads-and-shoulders better than either the Wildcats or Wolverines, so it's hard to envision just how Penn State can make it through both of those Big Ten behemoths without another loss.
Then again, it was hard to envision Navy ever beating Notre Dame or Appalachian State beating Michigan, too.
It's also worth mentioning that even if Penn State won out, the Nittany Lions would still need the winner of the MSU-Ohio State game to slip up one more time in addition to the loss to Penn State. Not very likely, given the schedules.
There's also plenty of doubt about Penn State's ability to beat teams like Indiana.
Big Ten Championship Game chances: 50-1
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Iowa & Minnesota
4 of 8
At the beginning of the season, if you were asked to pick two teams to be front-runners for the West Division in 2014, chances are Iowa and Minnesota wouldn't be your responses. Yet, here we are, midway through October, and the Hawkeyes and Golden Gophers are sitting as the lone unbeatens in conference play in the West Division.
That could last for at least a few more weeks, as the Big Ten schedulers did a fantastic job of setting up the West for an epic November.
Iowa and Minnesota tangle on November 8 while the Gophers meet up with Nebraska and Wisconsin on November 22 and 28, respectively. The Hawkeyes will finish with Wisconsin and Nebraska on the reverse of those two dates.
And the Gophers host Ohio State on November 15, just to make things really exciting.
It's possible—even likely—that both the Hawkeyes and Gophers will enter that November 8 showdown still undefeated in conference play, and the winner will have the inside track to Indy heading into what is essentially a round-robin final three weeks for the West Division crown.
Our odds, then, boil down pretty simply here. The loser of the November 8 contest has almost no shot at winning the division. There's just too much that would need to happen to overcome any late-season loss like that.
So we'll put two sets of odds here; the first set is for the winner of the Iowa-Minnesota game to make the Big Ten Championship Game with the second set being that either Minnesota or Iowa will make the Big Ten title game with at least one more loss on the books (both teams are 5-1 with only conference games remaining).
Bottom line? The Iowa-Minnesota game is a make-or-break affair for both teams.
Iowa-Minnesota winner's Big Ten Championship Game chances: 7-2
Iowa-Minnesota Big Ten Championship Game chances with two losses: 40-1
Rutgers & Maryland
5 of 8
Rutgers and Maryland, like Minnesota and Iowa, have a linked fate this season in the Big Ten, and these two new members will meet on November 29 in the season finale.
With just a single conference loss apiece, both the Scarlet Knights and Terrapins are tied for third place in the East Division behind MSU and Ohio State, who are tied for first.
Ohio State has already defeated Maryland, while Rutgers has yet to play either MSU or Ohio State. It would take something pretty unlikely to get there, but it's still conceivable that either Rutgers or Maryland—and perhaps both—could still be mathematically alive by the time we enter the final week of the season.
That would, of course, mean both teams would need to not only beat Michigan State, but also hope Ohio State slips up at least twice between now and late November. Big Ten tiebreaker rules give the title game nod to the team with the highest ranking when there are more than two teams with identical conference records.
There's little chance that would be either Rutgers or Maryland, given their early losses to unranked opponents.
The only way the loser of the game makes the title game is if utter chaos took hold on the East Division between now and then, with multiple losses by pretty much every other team in the division.
Both Maryland and Rutgers have a solid core of talent. But Big Ten championship talent? Not yet.
Maryland-Rutgers winner's Big Ten Championship Game chances: 20-1
Maryland-Rutgers loser's Big Ten Championship Game chances: 100-1
Wisconsin & Nebraska
6 of 8
There are plenty of reasons to look at both Wisconsin and Nebraska and like the chances of one of these two teams emerging as the eventual West Division champion. There are also some reason to not like either the Badgers or Cornhuskers.
First, the good news. Both teams have one heck of a ground attack. Nebraska's Ameer Abdullah was a strong early candidate for the Heisman Trophy and was perhaps the best running back option we've seen for the prestigious award since Mark Ingram won the award in 2009.
The loss to Michigan State, in which Abdullah was held to just 45 yards on 24 carries, probably hurt his chances quite a bit.
Nebraska has also been up and down a lot this season. Despite nearly knocking off a very good Michigan State squad on the road, Nebraska almost laid an epic egg to FCS McNeese State before Abdullah bailed out the Huskers with less than 30 seconds left in the game.
The Huskers, like the Badgers, are also pretty one-dimensional, relying on a superior running game to mask any deficiencies—real or perceived—in the passing attack.
Speaking of the Badgers, we had all expected them to breeze through the early part of their Big Ten schedule, especially after what was nearly a win against a solid LSU squad in the season opener.
An early loss to Northwestern, however, spoiled that. Now, the Badgers—already with two losses—must beat Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota in three consecutive weeks to end the season in order to win the West with fewer than two conference losses.
That's tough enough for any team, much less one ranked 121st in the nation in passing offense.
Perhaps the most difficult part about figuring odds on these two teams is the fact that Nebraska doesn't have two losses yet (which is why the Huskers' chances are still pretty high to make the title game), and figuring out who the Huskers will lose to while still winning the West requires some contortions to logic that seem pretty silly.
Wisconsin, on the other hand, looks far less likely to win the West nowadays, given the Badgers could only manage 14 points against Northwestern.
Nebraska's Big Ten Championship Game chances: 3-2
Wisconsin's Big Ten Championship Game chances: 15-1
Michigan State & Ohio State
7 of 8
Seriously, who didn't think the East Division would come down to Michigan State and Ohio State this season?
Anyone? Ok, anyone who didn't live or go to college in Ann Arbor?
As if to kick Michigan fans when they're down, the Big Ten and national press seemed to anoint the Spartans and Buckeyes—arguably Michigan's two top rivals—before a single snap had taken place this season. Turns out the media wasn't far off.
With Ohio State's Braxton Miller going down to a season-ending injury before Week 1 even got underway, and the Buckeyes' eventual loss to unranked Virginia Tech, the Big Ten seemed to be MSU's to lose.
But just when you thought the Buckeyes were down and out, Ohio State rattled off three solid wins by a combined total of 168-52.
Against Kent State, Cincinnati and Maryland.
Michigan State, meanwhile, has beaten Eastern Michigan, Wyoming and Purdue since a Week 2 loss to then-No. 2 Oregon, but a win over a ranked Nebraska team while limiting Heisman hopeful Ameer Abdullah to 45 rushing yards—his lowest total since 2012—is at least worth something (although Sparty nearly gave it away after most of the fans had bailed on a once-lopsided game).
After all of that, we're still left with Michigan State and Ohio State as the lone unbeatens in conference play in the East Division. And as expected, November 8 could, and most likely will, decide the East Division champion.
Michigan State still has Connor Cook and the emergence of Ohio State's dynamic J.T. Barrett sets this game up as a duel between two quarterbacks with vastly different styles. Barrett, like Miller before him, is your typical modern, dual-threat kind of guy. Cook, more of the prototypical Big Ten pocket passer, is about as dangerous as they come these days when throwing the ball.
Even better, both teams have solid defenses, each giving up fewer than 315 yards per game. Just how close are these two defenses to each other this season? MSU is giving up 305.8 yards per game (fourth in the Big Ten, 12th nationally) to Ohio State's 313.6 yards per game (fifth in the Big Ten, 14th nationally).
It doesn't get too much closer than that.
We'll go ahead and give you the odds of the winner of the Spartans-Buckeyes showdown reaches the Big Ten title game (spoiler alert: the odds are very good). But since we are talking about the odds of a two-loss Big Ten team winning its respective division, we're adding that to the mix, as well.
MSU-Ohio State winner's Big Ten Championship Game chances: 5-3
MSU or Ohio State's Big Ten Championship Game chances as a two-loss team: 20-1
The Bottom Line
8 of 8
As things stand now, no team is mathematically eliminated from reaching the Big Ten Championship Game. The programs we didn't mention—Indiana, Purdue and Illinois—are epic long shots, at best.
Michigan State and Ohio State reign as the favorites in the East while, despite early conference losses, Wisconsin and Nebraska are the most likely to overcome brutal November schedules to earn a West Division title.
But those predictions aside, let's boil it down to our two-loss division champions premise.
To put it bluntly, the odds aren't great for either division to produce a two-loss champion. We'd be willing to bet big on Ohio State or MSU in the East, and with the exception of the head-to-head game between Sparty and the Buckeyes, there isn't much left on either schedule that should—should—create too many problems for either team.
That means the winner of that game will likely end the season with just one loss heading into the Big Ten title game.
On the West's side, the chances are a little better if for no other reason than the division seems to have a little more parity at the top. Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa all have legitimate shots, and Northwestern is worth talking about at 2-1. Of those five teams, two (Wisconsin and Northwestern) already have at least two losses.
Still, we expect the ultimate West Division champion to emerge as a favorite by the end of October, and the team that ends up winning the division may very well be one of the preseason suspects: Nebraska.
If the Huskers win out as we suspect they can, they'll not only earn a trip to Indy with just a single loss for a possible rematch with MSU, but Bo Pelini will have guaranteed himself his first season at Nebraska with fewer than four losses.
Big Ten Championship Game Prediction: Michigan State vs. Nebraska
Chances of a two-loss East Division champion: 20-1
Chances of a two-loss West Division champion: 12-1
Chances of both division having a two-loss champion: 240-1
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