How good is the Big Ten this year?

I saw a post today and I just had to respond because the Ozone board seemed to be pretty much in agreement with the post.  The writers comment was: 

The Big Ten is loaded this year. The best conference in the country, no doubt. 

OSU, Wisconsin, MSU, and Iowa are top 10 teams, bottom line. Illinois and Northwestern could beat anybody on any given day. Michigan and Penn State are young, but will get better. Nobody beats themselves. The Big Ten will butcher the rest of the country, including the SEC, in the bowls this year.

Hopefully Boise plays TCU for the national title and bowl season turns in to a SEC - Big Ten showdown. Or the Buckeyes (or Wisconsin - gag) get better defensively and face an SEC team for the national title. It sure would be nice to give the south some comeuppance. 

My response:  Love the Big Ten but no way can you say they are the undisputed #1 conference.

I think all of the Big 4 conferences are pretty close this year. Using the polls to determine the best conference is flawed because the Big Ten's top 4 teams have only played twice up to this week. No way do I see Iowa as a top ten team as they just got a loss and I think they will have at least one more this year.

I think the best way to compare conferences is to look at the non conference schedule and especially BCS vs BCS games. In those, the SEC and Big 12 are 8-4, the Pac 10 is 10-4, and the Big Ten is 7-5. Of the Big Ten's 7 wins only Ohio State's victory vs Miami could really be called a decisive win and even that got a bit tainted with the Florida State smackdown of the U.

What will these results mean for our bowl chances? Probably not much. Still, the results thus far make it impossible to say the Big Ten is best conference in the nation. I do hope they prove otherwise in January.

I'm  sure I will get the normal Ozone pile-on treatment but it really surprises me how hard it can be for a large portion of the posters to be openminded.  It usually comes down to the fact that the scores in the Big Ten are so much lower than the rest of the country which is taken to mean that the rest of the country can't play defense.  While there is truth in that comment, the Big Ten fans should also note that many teams in the rest of the country have much better offenses than we usually see.  I do have high hopes that the Big Ten will have a 6-2 bowl season but using the polls as a basis for that expectation is just a recipe for disappointment.