Since yesterday’s schedule announcement, a lot has been made about the degree of difficulty of the schedule. I know I have felt like we’ve consistently drawn a hard slate with teams like Ohio State. Because of this I decided to look at the W/L of all Big Ten team’s opponents since Nebraska joined the conference.
# Overall W/L
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https://preview.redd.it/brwpatypieo51.png?width=551&format=png&auto=webp&s=067a1846a363a7efaa95f3c569387a7b8438fcc7
[https://twitter.com/arbitanalytics/status/1307431756468047874?s=20](https://twitter.com/arbitanalytics/status/1307431756468047874?s=20)
First I looked at the overall records of all opponents. The three newcomers have had the highest opponent win percentages. Maryland and Rutgers have had tough divisional games against Ohio State and Penn State every year so this made sense. Michigan’s position also made sense having drawn Ohio State as a protected rival in the Legends/Leaders and then also having a tough East division.
# Non Divisional W/L
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https://preview.redd.it/1h1sf2ryieo51.png?width=548&format=png&auto=webp&s=583e834647f46014210d15855bd7577aa75ee247
[https://twitter.com/arbitanalytics/status/1307828678693457926?s=20](https://twitter.com/arbitanalytics/status/1307828678693457926?s=20)
I decided to look at non division, regular season games only for a further analysis. From this point of view, Nebraska does top the chart with its non-divisional opponents winning over 63% of their games. Michigan has done well having also had a tough slate of out of division opponents. Michigan State has had by far the easiest crossover games with their opponents win percentage under 50%.
I did check for statistically significant differences between all pairs of teams and the only statistically significant opponent win percentage difference in the non-division was Nebraska versus MSU. This difference likely stems partially from Nebraska having drawn Penn State as its protected rival and Michigan State getting Indiana (no offense meant to any Hoosiers reading this). Additionally, despite our recent struggles, Nebraska is still a marquee name and the conference pairing it in matchups against Ohio State gets eyeballs on TVs in a way that Iowa cannot (some offense meant this time).
Since 2011, the #Huskers conference opponents have the third highest overall win percentage of any #B1GFootball program. pic.twitter.com/w0jNMqmIEt
— Arbitrary Analytics (@arbitanalytics) September 19, 2020
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