View attachment 12236
just to have it here as a point of reference on this topic
Road games are always the most likely source of a loss: Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Penn State, Maryland and Sparty
all but Oklahoma breaking in a new QB
worst case you lose 3 of those, most likely say 2
Home games: BGSU and Tulsa OOC, Rutgers, IU, NU, Corn, tsun
maybe 1 if you squint real hard to try and see a loss
so 8-4 disaster worst case, 9-3 most likely, 10+ best case if you ask me right now
While I get that it's conventional logic... I'm not sure about that road game thing. The 4 losses under Urban Meyer... 2 at home, 1 at neutral Indy, 1 at pseudo-neutral Miami. Undefeated on the road, 2 home losses.... both rather weird games.
It's not like that's just been an Urban Meyer thing either. Tressel's teams seemed to lose most of the marquee OOC games at home (Texas, USC, Miami.. did beat NCState, TTech, and UW fwiw).
And in conference we had 2 at home and 3 on the road... 2005
@PSU. 2007 Illinois at home. 2008 PSU at home. 2009 @Purdue. 2010 @Wiscy.
It's one of the few things that's annoyed me about Ohio State football. There is apparently no home advantage... hasn't been for awhile... and that falls on us fans imo.
Anyway, on topic... I'll go with 10. OU is a big hurdle early. It is interesting that we draw 3 of the better teams from the West. Wiscy is in their division race every year. Corn should be... not sure what to expect after their 5-7 season with wins over Sparty and UCLA. And Northwestern coming off a great year for them... returning QB and RB... but another "what to expect" after beating Stanford, Duke, and Wiscy with hard-nosed defense and getting blown out by scUM and a terrible Tennessee team.
It wouldn't surprise me if we drop one of those cross-division games...
BTW, Iowa's schedule is very manageable. They pulled scUM, Rutgers, and PSU from the East -- with scUM at home. They somehow magically drew all of Wiscy, Corn, and Northwestern at home. Look for Ferentz to repeat as CotY? I'm fine with it though if we can get back to Indy... they'd be setup to be grossly over-rated once again.
Wiscy on the other hand pulled the entire East trifecta: Michigan State, scUM, Ohio State. And to make it worse... back-to-back to start Conference play. Ouch. Throw in a home game with LSU and they could start 2-4
It doesn't get much better for the Badgers either -- on the back of that murders row they have @Iowa, Corn, @Northwestern before finally getting a reprieve with Illinois and Purdont.