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2010 Big Ten Football Discussion

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2011 Rose Bowl

I was watching TV the other day and I have to say that I hate it that analysts always assume that the Buckeyes are always going to end up in the Rose Bowl every year. I think that its going to be Oregon and Michigan State in the Rose Bowl this year. I think that the success of Michigan State this year will keep us out of a bowl game this year.
 
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The Big Ten has become a full out mess in terms of the tiebreakers to go to the Rose Bowl. Here are the scenarios that I came up with:




#1 If Sparty, Wiscy and OSU run the table there would be a 3 way tie.

Because all of these schools have the same record both in conference and OOC, and because MSU and tOSU did not play, the tiebreaker would come down to the BCS standings. There is no tiebreaker advantage for MSU because the Big Ten doesn't follow any transitive property bs (MSU beating Wiscy, Wiscy beating OSU holds no clout). Wiscy are currently a little bit ahead in the BCS standings, but it would be likely that OSU gains enough ground to pass them by winning @ Iowa, thus sending Ohio State to the Rose Bowl.

Advantage: OSU on BCS rankings. Some might disagree with this, but I think a win at Iowa would give us the traction to hop Wiscy



#2 If Iowa defeats Ohio State, it's a little bit different. An Iowa-Wiscy-MSU tiebreaker becomes tricky because Iowa lost that game OOC they will have a worse record overall, meaning that they would get dropped from the tie and it would revert to a 2 team tiebreaker:

Advantage: MSU on their head to head victory over Wisconsin.



#3 If MSU drops another game, and Ohio State were to defeat Iowa and win out while Wiscy wins out. It reverts to the head to head between Ohio State and Wiscy

Advantage: Wisconsin on the head to head with OSU



#4 If MSU runs the table, Iowa runs the table, defeating OSU and Wiscy drops another game. It goes to the head to head between MSU and Iowa

Advantage: Iowa on head to head with MSU


#5 If MSU runs the table, OSU runs the table, and Wiscy drops another game. OSU and MSU would be left tied at the top

Advantage; OSU on BCS ranking


#6 Both OSU and Iowa lose another game, MSU and Wiscy run the table, effectively end up with the same scenario as #2

Advantage: MSU on the head to head with Wiscy


#7 OSU loses to Iowa, MSU drops another game. Iowa and Wiscy runs the table

Advantage: Wisconsin on head to head with Iowa


So these are all the tiebreaker scenarios that I can come up with:

OSU: favored in 2 of them
MSU: favored in 2 of them
Wiscy: favored in 2 of them
Iowa: favored in 1 of them

Obviously I'm ignoring scenarios where 3 of the 4 teams all crap the bed leaving 1 at the top alone, or all 4 teams completely crap the bed and their left tied with 2 losses a piece. I tried to leave the scenarios within reason.

What sticks out as amusing is that there is no team in the Big Ten that controls their own destiny to get to the Rose Bowl by winning out. Each need certain teams to perform in certain ways

Now personally I'm not OVERLY concerned about the Rose Bowl in that I feel like OSU is a shoe in for a BCS game as long as we win out (Granted it'll be tough going into Iowa City). The Rose Bowl is a preference, but under the condition that we don't play Oregon again in it. I'd just rather play another team..We could either play Oregon again and beat them..being in the same place as last year, or we could lose this time and feel like we've regressed. With Oregon looking to play in the title game, it doesn't appear to be an immediate problem, but you never know. I'd love the opportunity to bring Boise State back to reality in the Rose though.
 
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TimPiotrowski;1800882; said:
I was watching TV the other day and I have to say that I hate it that analysts always assume that the Buckeyes are always going to end up in the Rose Bowl every year. I think that its going to be Oregon and Michigan State in the Rose Bowl this year. I think that the success of Michigan State this year will keep us out of a bowl game this year.
Click to expand...

Well, I like cheese for several reasons.
 
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I just don't see us passing Wiscy. The computers will give us a bump for beating Iowa, but both polls will still put Wiscy ahead of us--only possible way out of this is if Wiscy struggles mightily to win sloppy games down the stretch while we plunger rape everyone in our path. I still say we get an at-large as a 11-1 team, but Wiscy gets to kick the shit out of Boise in the Rose Bowl.
 
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ORD_Buckeye;1802789; said:
I just don't see us passing Wiscy. The computers will give us a bump for beating Iowa, but both polls will still put Wiscy ahead of us--only possible way out of this is if Wiscy struggles mightily to win sloppy games down the stretch while we plunger rape everyone in our path. I still say we get an at-large as a 11-1 team, but Wiscy gets to kick the [censored] out of Boise in the Rose Bowl.
Click to expand...

Not sure Wiscy would beat Boise in all honesty
 
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Big 10 (and other) rooting interests this week in order to pass Wisconsin in BCS and

Big 10 (and other) rooting interests this week in order to pass Wisconsin in BCS and secure automatic BCS berth (Rose Bowl)

Keep in my mind unless in the unlikely event that Wisconsin loses we need Michigan State to win out for their to be a 3 way tie so Wisconsin doesn't end up with the head to head tiebreaker with the Buckeyes. Next in precedence comes wins from OSU opponents over other Big 10 teams that the Buckeyes don't play. Reciprocally it hurts Wisconsin when teams Wisconsin doesn't play beats teams they do. This should all help in the computers except for any win by MSU over a team we play.

Rooting interest in Bold
Purdue over Wisconin (Come on Purdue don't continue to be Purdue)
Minnesota @ Michigan State Northwestern @ Penn State (We don't play Northwestern, Wiscky doesn't play PSU, dang it we have to root for State Penn)
Illinois @ scUM (Wisky doesn't play Illinois, neutral for us, YAY we don't have to root for scUM!!!)


Out of Conference
Maryland @ Miami (Miami, please stop sucking)
Marshall @ UAB(at least UAB is terrible too)
Arizona St @ USC (ASU is Wiscy's best OOC opponent. Dang it, 2nd week in a row we root for USC)
UNLV @ Brigham Young (UNLV is a Wisky opponent)
Buffalo @ Ohio ( ORD_Buckeye, if you can muster it)
EMU @ WMU(okay, maybe we should just give up on EMU)

In a weird way the Arizona @ Stanford game will likely benefit Ohio State because both are in between Wisconcin and OSU right now meaning the winner would likely jump Wiscy and the loser would fall behind Ohio State narrowing the gap. The Alabama @ LSU game could have a similar effect although LSU is ahead of both in computers. An LSU win though moves Alabama out of between Wiscy and OSU. An Alabama win should leapfrog them in front of both but might send LSU near OSU (the lowest 1 loss in the computers).
 
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I'm not sure how possible it is for OSU to pass Wisconisn in the BCS assuming both win out. I think it is likely that they both stay ahead of MSU. It will be close though. Impressive wins will be needed to impress pollsters who may still not (maybe rightly so) bump OSU over Wiscy because of the head to head result. The computers can still be massaged though, but they currently favor Bucky.

Team Conf WL AND BIL COL MB SE WOL Average

Ohio St B10 8-1 13 14 12 19 18 12 14.7
Wisconsin B10 8-1 14 9 14 9 8 10 10.7


Anderson and Hestor (AND), and the Colley Matrix (COL) already favor the Buckeyes. Wolfe(WOL) will likely follow soon because of how close they already are. Hopefully OSU is able to put some distance between Bucky and themselves in these.

Jeff Sagarin (SE) has a lot of data on his site and it seems that while the raw numbers will favor the Buckeyes because the Badgers OOC was so terrible, Wisconsin may remain ahead of OSU becasue Sagarin seems to favor wins over top 30 and top 10 teams (which can't be assumed from the data he publishes because the top 30 wins he publishes is outside the ELO_CHESS formula used to calculate the BCS. I tried reenginnering the rankings based on his own ratings).

Wisconsin currently has 2: the Buckeyes and Iowa. OSU currently has none with the chance to match the Iowa win. Penn State (40), and tsun(34) will not likely be able to jump into the top 30 with other desireable results (OSU beating them mostly, MSU needing to beat Penn State to remain tied). As for Wisconsin's remaining opponents in Sagarin, Indiana sucks and hurts there average, tsun equals our tsun, while Northwestern is near the average team.

Past oppenants also come into play. Would have been really nice for the Zooker to beat tsun. Even at 5-4 Illinois is 35 in ELO_CHESS. At 6-3 they are really close to if not in the top 30. Screw Illinois and Ron Zook. Though a combination of winning out against Minnesota, @Northwestern, and @Fresno State and the likely falling of some teams ranked between Illinois and the currently 24th ranked Oregon State Beavers could propel the Illiini into the top 30. GO Fighting ZOOKERS!!!!!!!!! (Who of us believe that Zook will get this team to win out? Wow, I think I've just managed to emphasize with OrangeRoughy, it must suck rooting for someone you know will blow it.)

Wisconsin's best OOC opponent, ASU (ranked 42, at 4-5 with 2 wins over FCS foes! I think this one of the reasons I hate the computers) will win at best one more game vs UCLA, and likley lose vs. Stanford and @ Arizona. They will not reach the top 30 and will slide.

Meanwhile, Ohio State's best OOC oppenent, Miami (6-3), ranked 37, still has an outside shot at a conference championship and a top 30 ranking. They need Va Tech to lose North Carolina or Virginia besides their game which Miami must win. Miami already holds head to head tiebreaker over UNC. Miami must beat Georgia Tech and also has a chance to get a decent OOC win over South Florida too. A conference championship game would be a nice boon also. Miami could be top 30 even without a conference championship game if they win out. Who likes putting faith in Jacory Harris and/or Randy Shannon to finish strong?

The noncommon Big 10 opponents could help or hurt too. OSU's exclusive opponents are Illinois and PSU. Wisconsin's are Northwestern and MSU. MSU losing automatically loses OSU the tiebreaker so they need to keep winning which unfortunately helps Wisconsin, but only a little since Bucky lost that game (losses seem to be less important than wins generally speaking). Northwestern losing hurts Wisconsin and doesn't hurt us so we cheer Iowa and Illinois, but NU is Wisconsin's final game so we cheer them anyway. Already talked about Illinois, but PSU beating Indiana helps us while we can't cheer for them against MSU. I don't think it will affect much from here on out.

Finally, while generally putrid the rest of the OOC schedules favor the Buckeyes nicely and should continue to do so. Ohio University (that's FredOU, ORD,) are easily the best team left to talk about. OU(currently 73) plays at Temple (47) Tuesday night. A win certainly helps, even in a loss they are nowhere near as bad as the badgers best other OOC (UNLV, 140).

This all means it should be close in the computers. It's just too hard to tell if the Buckeyes make up enough ground in the computers to leap Wisconsin. Of course the Buckeyes pushing past Wisconsin in Sagarin could mean the Buckeyes help Bucky out by providing the Top 10 win. Ugh. I do think that if the Buckeyes do pass Wisconsin in Sagarin, Billingsly follows and Massey won't be far be behind (and likely dropped from both anyway).

Of course Bielema could just throw up during the trip to Ann Arbor and make all of this moot! (So we either have to cheer for tsun or have faith in Ron Zook and Randy Shannon? Really? This is what it comes down. That's cruel. Cruel I tell you.)
 
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Weekly Computers Update

The Buckeyes maintained the lead in in the Anderson and Hestor and the Colley Matrix, and while they didn't leap Wisconsin in the other computers they did make up 3 spots in Billingsly, 5 in Massey, and 3 in Sagarin while staying even in Wolfe.

After Illinois choking the last few weeks I don't actually think that passing Wisconin in Sagarin is possible. The reason I say this is that Boise St by Sagarin's own internal logic by overall opponents rankings and by wins over top 30 Sagarin ranked teams favors Boise St, yet they are one spot behind Wisconsin . So even if Miami beats Virginia Tech and gets into Sagarin's top 30 and we match Wisconsin's Iowa win we don't pass them because the Buckyes will outrank Miami by too much.

Especially if Miami continues to win, and maybe even if they don't because I project Arizona St to keep losing, I do expect Ohio State to flip Billingsly and Wolfe, and maybe Massey and close the gap in Sagarin while extending the lead in Colley and Anderson.

What are probably the most important games to that end this week are other than Ohio State smashing Iowa?
Illinois vs Northwestern (Wrigley Field) (Excusive foes facing off)
Va Tech at Miami Fl
Penn State vs Indiana (hurts Wisconsin)
Arizona St vs UCLA (maybe I ought to reverse expectations on ASU losing out)
Ohio @ Temple
Michigan State vs Purdue (must maintain tie for 3 team tie-breaker)

All that said I'm not sure the Buckeyes can make up enough in the computers to make up for the gap in the human polls. So we're going to have to root for tsun this week. Ugh.
 
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