Penn State vs. Wisconsin: Is the Big Ten in for a Brutal Bowl Season Again?

What does the Big Ten conference have to do to be successful in both the regular season and the postseason bowl games?

If you look back to just the second day of this year, you will see that the Big Ten didn’t play up to their reputation in the traditional New Year’s Day bowl games. The league went 0-5, a first for the conference since 2002.

In the most updated bowl projections for the Big Ten, the champion will likely get matched up with the high-octane offense of the Pac-12's Oregon Ducks in the annual Rose Bowl.

The prediction for the Big Ten champion at this moment seems to be split between the Michigan State Spartans and the Wisconsin Badgers. From there, it seems like no one has any faith in Penn State and their Happy Valley showdown with the Badgers on Saturday afternoon.

In the Capital One Bowl matchup in Orlando, the second team selected from the league will be facing a team from the SEC; a conference the Big Ten has had no luck with in recent years. The projected matchup for this bowl game would be between the aforementioned Big Ten teams and the SEC East division winner, Georgia.

The new conference member Nebraska has likely locked up their invite to the Outback after their 20-7 win over the Iowa Hawkeyes in their regular-season finale on Friday in Lincoln. This bowl gets to pick the third team from the SEC, which currently points to the old ball coach Steve Spurrier and his South Carolina Gamecocks to be the Cornhuskers' competition on January 2.

In the classic Gator Bowl game, Penn State and Florida will be battling for the title in sunny Jacksonville on January 2—the second straight bowl game between the two schools, as they met in the 2010 Outback Bowl.

The Insight Bowl will feature Big Ten member Iowa traveling to the desert of Arizona to take on a team from the Big 12 conference—Bob Stoops and the Oklahoma Sooners.

On the final day of 2011, the Meineke Car Care of Texas Bowl (I know, really?) will feature the Northwestern Wildcats taking on another Big 12 team, either the SEC defectors Missouri or Texas A&M.

We go back to January 2 for the next Big Ten bowl game as Purdue will make the trip to Dallas to face a home-field disadvantage of sorts, since Conference USA’s SMU will likely be the Boilermakers' opponent for the game.

In the final bowl game of the postseason, Urban Meyer’s new team, Ohio State, will be the final choice from the league and will make the trip north to Detroit to face off with the MAC champion Ohio Bobcats: An all-Ohio bowl game in Michigan, which must be a Michigan native’s worst nightmare.

While these games might not play out the way the projections look at this time, can the Big Ten improve upon their dismal record of 2-5 in last season’s bowl season? Let me hear what you think in the comments section about the Big Ten’s chances this season.