Big 10 vs Superior Opponents

I originally posted my blog "The myth of Big Ten inferiority" on the O-Zone forums. Someone thought my comment regarding bowl matchups was backwards. My exact quote was this:

"Matched against superior opponents - The fact that we travel so well means that we get more bowl games but also that we are match against higher ranked teams. Every year Vegas then sets the line so that we are usually underdogs but nobody recognizes this fact."



I wrote this whole post pretty quick and I thought I'd take a moment to expand on the comment. In a perfect world the bowls would match two teams of similar skill. If a league is constantly being matched against superior talent is it any wonder they will lose more often than they win? That doesn't nessisarily mean the league is inferior to other leagues. Let me give you an example:

There are 3 leagues with 4 teams ranked as follows:

1 - Alpha1 (W)
2 - Beta1 (L)
3 - Gamma1 (W)
4 - Beta2 (L)
5 - Gamma 2 (W)
6 - Beta3 (L)
7 - Gamma3 (W)
8 - Beta4 (L)
9 - Gamma4 (W)
10 - Alpha2 (L)
11 - Alpha3 (W)
12 - Alpha4 (L)

Let's assume that the rankings are also the true strength of the team and the higher ranked teams always win. The bowls are calculated as 1vs2, 3vs4, etc. Note that in this case the results would be Gamma (4-0), Alpha (2-2), and Beta (0-4). However the average true strength of the leagues would be Beta (2+4+6+8/4=5), Gamma (3+5+7+9/4=6), and Alpha (1+10+11+12/4=7.5).

What I am trying to show by this simple example is that bowl results aren't always a true measure of league strength if the matchups are unfavorable.

Does this happen in reality?

One way to measure a bowl matchup is by looking at the betting spread. If the bowls are doing a good job of matching teams you'd expect the spread differential to be even over time.

Champs Sports Bowl - Miami +4 over Wisconsin (Wisconsin 20-14)
Insight Bowl - Minnesota +2 over Iowa State (Iowa State 14-13)
Outback Bowl - Auburn +9 over Northwestern (Auburn 38-35)
Citrus Bowl - Penn State +2 over LSU (Penn State 19-17)
Rose Bowl - Oregon +5 over Ohio State (Ohio State 26-17)
Alamo Bowl - Texas Tech +8 over Michigan State
Orange Bowl - Georgia Tech +4 over Iowa

According to the spread the Big 10 should go 2-5 in the bowl games but if that actually happened do you think anyone would acknowledge this fact? Right now the Big Ten is 3-2 in the bowls and are underdogs in the last 2 games. I hope they win at least one so they end with a winning record in bowls this year.

The bottom line is the goal of the bowls isn't to create a good matchup but to fill seats and turn on TVs. The Big 10's ability to do both is normally a blessing and but a curse in the case of getting favorable matchups.