If the Shoe Fits: Are Ohio State's Eight Home Games an Unfair Advantage?

Over the last eight seasons of play, the Ohio State Buckeyes have lost just five games by a total of 31 points in the friendly confines of Ohio Stadium—or, as it’s better known throughout the college football world—the Horseshoe.

With over 100,000 screaming fans packed in on game day, the Shoe is certainly one of the most intimidating places in all of college football for an opponent to step foot. When the band gets going, the fans get rowdy, the team feeds off the energy, and it usually means lights out for the opposing team.

The boys out in Las Vegas, who know a thing or two about sports, realize what a rough place the Shoe can be, and have established OSU as home underdogs just four times in the Jim Tressel era. And you can be sure that great gambling announcer Brent Musburger has never bet against the Buckeyes at home.

With all this amazing success on their home field, one has to wonder if the chance to play eight out of their twelve regular season games at home gives Ohio State some sort of advantage this year.

For those unfamiliar with Ohio State’s 2010 Schedule, it breaks down like this:

Week 1: Marshall
Week 2: Miami (Florida)
Week 3: Ohio
Week 4: Eastern Michigan
Week 5: at Illinois
Week 6: Indiana
Week 7: at Wisconsin
Week 8: Purdue
Week 9: at Minnesota
Week 10: Bye Week
Week 11: Penn State
Week 12: at Iowa
Week 13: Michigan
Week 14: Bye Week

Now that’s by no means an easy schedule. I’d say there are at least seven or eight teams that will be bowl eligible on there (although with the 30 plus bowl games we have now, that might not be saying much). In addition, the September 11th clash with Miami is shaping up to be one of the best match ups of September.

Still, eight home games compared to four road games seems like a disproportionate ratio to me.

Maybe this sheds some light on the lack of balance in scheduling that takes place not only in the Big Ten, but in college football overall.

When the NCAA introduced a 12th regular season game back in 2006, there were many that saw it as a purely financial move that could give teams the opportunity to rake in one more game's worth of revenue by scheduling a cupcake opponent to beat up on.

That notion may not be too far off, and the emerging popularity of profitable neutral site games also throws a bit of a wrench into things as well.

Staying in the Big Ten, let’s look at how the schedules of the other ten conference teams look this season in terms of home and neutral site games.

Iowa Hawkeyes: Seven home games

Wisconsin Badgers: Seven home games

Michigan State Spartans: Seven home games, one neutral site

Michigan Wolverines: Seven home games

Purdue Boilermakers: Seven home games

Minnesota Gophers: Seven home games

Illinois Fighting Illini: Six home games, two neutral site

Penn State Nittany Lions: Six home games, one neutral site

Indiana Hoosiers: Six home games, one neutral site

Northwestern Wildcats: Five home games, one neutral site

When you do the math, you’ll see that exactly zero teams in the conference play the same number of home games as they do road games. Northwestern actually gets the shaft by only getting to play five games at home, even though their neutral site game takes place just down the road in Chicago, at Wrigley Field.

So with all things considered, Ohio State’s eight home games can surely be categorized as an advantage, but as compared to the rest of the conference landscape, it’s a slight one at best.