So far in this year's math-driven college football preview,
we have explored the historical accuracy of the preseason rankings, taken a
look back at last year, and conducted a thorough analysis of the potential
paths for the 2025 Michigan State Spartans' season.
In today's installment, the focus shifts to the Big Ten conference race.
Strengths of Schedule
The first thing to cover today is relative strength of
schedule. Figure 1 below summarizes my calculations for the 18 Big Ten teams' overall schedules.
 |
| Figure 1: Overall strengths of schedule for the 2025 Big Ten conference. The overall FBS rank is shown in each bar. |
There are several different ways to calculate strength of schedule. I use my preseason estimations of power rankings to generate estimated point spreads for all potential college football matchup. I then calculate the number of expected wins that a reference, borderline top 25 team would have if that reference team were to play the schedule in question.
For example, if the reference team were to play Michigan State's schedule, that reference team would have an expected win total of 7.62 games (0.635 win percentage). That grades out to No. 7 amongst Big Ten team and No. 22 toughest nationally (as indicated by the label on the bar in Figure 1). It is slightly easier than the Spartans' schedule in 2024 (7.11 games and No. 15 nationally at the end of the year.)
Note that Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and Nebraska all have schedules outside of the top 50 nationally in difficulty. Ohio State, Iowa, UCLA, Northwestern, and Purdue all have top 20 schedules while Wisconsin overall owns the one of the most difficult schedule in the nation at No. 8. The difference between the easiest and hardest schedule is close to two full games, 1.83 wins out of 12 total.
Figure 2 below gives the same calculation considering only the nine Big Ten conference games.
 |
| Figure 2: 2025 Big Ten football conference strengths of schedule. The horizontal line represents the conference's average difficulty. |
Illinois (5.96) and Michigan (5.93) drew the two easiest conference schedules this year, both of which project to be over a half-game easier than the conference average (5.3). Both teams are considered serious contenders in the Big Ten race this year.
Outside of Michigan, the other three primary contenders are Penn State (5.22), Ohio State (5.36), and Oregon (5.35). Those teams all draw schedules that are within a tenth of a game of the conference average. Penn State nominally has the most difficult schedule of any of the Big Ten contenders.
Outside of Illinois, the other three dark horse contenders are USC (5.69), Indiana (5.55), and Nebraska (5.69). All three of these teams have schedules that grade out slightly easier than the conference average.
The most challenging conference schedules in 2025 belong to Rutgers (4.82), Northwestern (4.8), Michigan State (4.79), and especially Wisconsin (4.63). Note that the teams with the easiest Big Ten schedules (such as Michigan) have over a one game advantage over the set of teams (such as Michigan State) with the hardest schedules.
For reference, Table 1 below summarizes the overall and conference strengths of schedule for the teams with the Top 50 toughest schedules nationally using my calculation method. In this case I have converted the strength of schedule metric to win percentage due to the differing number of conference games played across the country.
 |
| Table 1: 2025 national preseason strengths of schedule rankings both overall and conference schedule strengths |
Wisconsin (No. 8) and Syracuse (No. 12) from the ACC are the only non-SEC teams in the top 15. Big Ten teams then claim eight of the next 11 most difficult schedules. TCU (No. 25) from the Big 12 is the only non-Big Ten and non-SEC team in the top 27 other than Syracuse. The bottom half of the top 50 is populated by a mixture of Big Ten, ACC, and Big 12 teams.
Based on my calculations SEC teams have the 15 of most difficult conference schedules with only Wisconsin preventing the SEC from claiming a top 16 clean sweep.
The Group of Five team with the most challenging schedule is South Florida (0.774) from the American Athletic Conference at No. 67 nationally.
Win Distributions
In the first two installments of this series, I introduced my methodology to simulate the full college football season. The results of this simulation allow me to calculate the probability that each team will win any number of the games on their schedule.
Table 2 below gives the full regular season win probability matrix for all 18 Big Ten teams.
 |
| Table 2: Big Ten full season win probability matrix derived from the results of the 50,000 cycle Monte Carlo simulation, including the known uncertainty in the preseason ranking. |
The data in this table allows us to answer all sorts of hypothetical questions about odds for any Big Ten to win any total number of games. In general, the expected win totals will mirror the preseason power rankings for each team with some minor modification due to strength of schedule.
For example, No. 30 Nebraska (7.64) has a slightly higher expected win total than No. 25 USC (7.64) due to the strength of schedule advantage shown in Figure 1. For the same reason, No. 58 Michigan State (5.26) has a slightly higher expected win total compared to No. 53 UCLA (5.15)
My simulation projects that Penn State (9.93), Ohio State (9.39), and Oregon (9.33) will likely win the most total games in 2025 while Maryland (4.89), Northwestern (4.53), and Purdue (3.13) are likely to accumulate the fewest wins.
As for Michigan State, the data shown above are identical to that shown in Figure 3 in the previous installment of this series. The Spartans expected win total is 5.25 plus-or-minus 2.07 wins. Note that the average standard deviation in total wins for the conference is right around 2.0. This value is consistent with the typical variance between the preseason predictions and actual win totals as explained in Part One of this series.
One practical application of this data set is that it provides an early indicator of which Big Ten teams are more or less likely to qualify for a bowl game by winning at least six games (as indicated by the third column from the left of the table). The results show that 12 of the 18 conference teams have over a 50% chance to become bowl eligible, and the expected number of bowl eligible teams is 12.15.
Michigan State (43%) is one of the teams along with Wisconsin, UCLA, Maryland, Northwestern, and Purdue with sub .500 bowl odds in the preseason.
For reference, Table 3 below also shows the win distribution for just conference games.
 |
| Table 3: Big Ten conference win probability matrix derived from the results of the 50,000 cycle Monte Carlo simulation, including the known uncertainty in the preseason ranking |
Note that the order of the teams in Table 4 differs from that in Table 2 due to the conference strength of schedule information shown in Figure 2. For example, No. 12 Michigan (6.59) has a slightly higher conference expected win total than No. 8 Oregon (6.47), and No. 42 Minnesota (4.48) has a higher total than No. 36 Washington (4.41), No. 32 Iowa (4.28), and No. 41 Wisconsin (3.51).
As for Michigan State, the Spartans' conference expected win total is just 2.82. The data in the table suggests that just two or three conference wins are most likely and there is only an 18% chance that Michigan State will finish over .500 in conference play.
Conference Odds
From a broader point of view, Table 4 below shows the more detailed results of my preseason simulation of the entire Big Ten race, including the consensus preseason rank of each team (i.e. the main simulation input), the strength of schedule data summarized above, and the odds for each team to make and win the Big Ten Championship game and to make and win the 12-team playoff.
 |
| Table 4: Summary of the preseason projections for the Big Ten conference, based on the consensus preseason rankings and a 50,000 cycle Monte Carlo simulation of the full college football season. |
Table 4 also provides two sets of projected records. The "most likely" outcome represents the situation where the projected favorites win all games. The more interesting "disruptive" outcome is one where a historically accurate number of road upsets occur. These scenarios provide some insight into how the Big Ten race is likely to play out.
For Michigan State, both the most likely and disruption scenarios have the Spartans finishing 5-7 overall and 2-7 in Big Ten play. As the No. 15 ranked team in the conference with the second hardest schedule, this is reasonable.
The simulation also gives the odds for a few more optimistic scenarios. The Spartans have a 2% chance to make the playoffs, a 1% chance to make the Big Ten Championship Game, a 1-in-316 (0.32%) chance to win the Big Ten, and a 1-in-3,150 (0.034%) chance to win the National Title.
Overall, the simulation suggests that there are four primary Big Ten contenders, all of which have at least a 10% chance to win the conference and a 30% chance to make the playoffs. No. 2 Penn State (25%) has slightly better odds than No. 3 Ohio State (23%) to win the conference. No. 8 Oregon (15%) and No. 12 Michigan (12%) are the other two primary contenders.
There is a 1-in-4 chance that a team other than the four teams listed above will wind up claiming the Big Ten title. The most likely dark horse contenders are No. 21 Illinois (6%), No. 22 Indiana (4.3%), No. 25 USC (4%), and No. 30 Nebraska (3%). The remaining 10 conference teams combined have less than an 8% chance to win the conference.
Two other tidbits from Table 4 are that the expected number of Big Ten teams to earn a playoff bid is 2.74 teams and the odds for a Big Ten team to win the National Title is 28%.
Big Ten Championship Scenarios
Table 4 provides the raw odds for Big Ten glory, but more insight can be gained by exploring some of the most likely scenarios that will likely impact the Big Ten race. First, let's look at the set of Big Ten games where one of the primary contenders has a game with one of the other four primary contenders. It turns out there are only three of these games in the 2025 Big Ten regular season:
- 9/27: Oregon at Penn State (-7.5)
- 11/1: Penn State at Ohio State (-3)
- 11/29: Ohio State at Michigan (+2)
Interestingly, the projected two best teams in the Big Ten (Penn State and Ohio State) both have two games against the other primary contenders, including a game against each other on November 1. The other primary contenders (Oregon and Michigan) each only play only one of the other primary contenders.
If the currently projected favorites were to win every Big Ten game, Ohio State would clinch the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Championship game with a 9-0 conference record and wins over Penn State and Michigan.
In this scenario, the Buckeyes would likely face Penn State (8-1) in the Big Ten Championship Game as the Nittany Lions would likely win the tiebreaker with Oregon (8-1) and Michigan (8-1) due to a stronger conference strength of schedule. The tiebreaker would default to the combined conference records of the tied teams' conference opponents and the conference strength of schedule mirrors this data set.
While this is the single most likely scenario, it is also very unlikely that the conference race will play out in this manner. In my disruptive scenario, I assume that there is a historically reasonable number of road upsets overall.
The key assumption in the disruptive scenario is that upsets are most likely to happen when strong teams are narrow favorites on the road against slightly weaker teams. In the list of games above, Ohio State would get upset on the road at Michigan.
In order to look for other potential disruptive games, the list below shows the set of games where the primary contenders face a secondary contender and/or a primary contender has a game with a projected spread under 10 points.
- 9/20: Michigan at Nebraska (+4.5)
- 10/11: Ohio State at Illinois (+6)
- 10/11: Michigan at USC (+2.5)
- 10/18: Indiana at Oregon (-11)
- 10/18: Penn State at Iowa (+11.3)
- 11/8: Oregon at Iowa (+7.5)
- 11/8: Indiana at Penn State (-14.5)
- 11/22: USC at Oregon (-12)
- 11/22: Nebraska at Penn State (-18)
- 11/29: Oregon at Washington (+9)
In the disruptive scenario summarized in Table 4, I also project that Ohio State losses on the road at Illinois and Michigan loses on the road both at Nebraska and at USC.
As a result, but the Buckeyes and the Wolverines finish conference play at 7-2 leaving Penn State and Oregon to share the regular season title with records of 8-1.
Historically, I use the results of my disruptive scenario as my official forecast. So, I predict a Big Ten Championship Game rematch of Oregon versus Penn State. This time, I have Penn State (-3.5) beating the Ducks by just over a field goal.
But there are obviously several other ways in which the Big Ten race could play out. For the four primary contenders, there are various scenarios involving three-way or even a four-way tie for first place.
As mentioned above, the tiebreakers would likely come down to the combined records of each teams' conference opponents. In the preseason, this appears to be an advantage for Penn State and a disadvantage for Michigan with Oregon and Ohio State having almost identical conference strengths of schedule.
However, if Michigan were to finish with an 8-1 record and a win over Ohio State, the Wolverines could potentially own a tiebreaker over Penn State, assuming that the Nittany Lions lose to the Buckeyes on November 1.
Potential Pitfalls for Each Primary Contender
More likely than not, no more than two Big Ten teams will finish conference play with fewer than two loses. So the path to Indianapolis for the primary contenders will involve avoiding potential upsets along the way.
In order to finish at at least 8-1 in conference play, Penn State needs to either beat Oregon (+7.5) at home as a favorite on September 27 or steal an upset win against Ohio State (-3). The biggest potential pitfalls are a road game at Iowa (+11.3) on October 18 and a home game against Indiana (+14.5) on November 8. If the Nittany Lions can win three of those four games, a return trip to Indianapolis is likely.
As mentioned above, Ohio State is the only Big Ten team projected to be favored in all nine Big Ten games. The biggest two roadblocks are expected to be the road game at Michigan (+1.7) and the home game against Penn State (+3). However, road games at Illinois (+6.2), Washington (+12), and Wisconsin (+13.6) over a four-week span could cause trouble.
Oregon would be in a very strong position with an upset win at Penn State (-7.4). Even with a loss the Ducks have a great shot to return to Indianapolis if they can survive road trips to Iowa (+7.5), Washington (+8.9), and a visit from Indiana (+10.8).
The Michigan Wolverines best chance to make the Big Ten Championship Game will be to upset Ohio State (+1.7) in the last weekend of the season. But, in order to put themselves into that position, the Maize and Blue likely need to win at least two of the road games at USC (+2.5), Nebraska (+4.5), and Michigan State (+12.9).
Other Potential Dark Horse Contenders
While the four primary contenders have the best odds to reach the Big Ten Championship Game, I estimate that there is a 65% chance that at least one team outside of this group will make it to Indianapolis.
No. 21 Illinois, No. 22 Indiana, No. 25 USC, and No. 30 Nebraska are the most likely secondary, dark horse contenders. No. 32 Iowa, No. 36 Washington, and No. 42 Minnesota have lower odds but are all worth consideration.
The bulleted list above highlights several key games involving this list of secondary contenders and the group of four favorites. But in order to have a shot at Big Ten glory, this group of teams will need to find success within their peer group. The list below highlights the game this fall where the dark horse Big Ten contenders square off against one another.
- 9/27: Indiana at Iowa (+0.5)
- 9/27: USC at Illinois (-5.5)
- 10/18: Nebraska at Minnesota (+0.5)
- 10/25: Illinois at Washington (+2.2)
- 11/1: USC at Nebraska (-1.5)
- 11/8: Nebraska at UCLA (+3.5)
- 11/15: Iowa at USC (-6.5)
- 11/22: Illinois at Wisconsin (+4)
- 11/29: Iowa at Nebraska (-4.5)
Based on Table 4, the most interesting potential dark horse contender is Nebraska. The Cornhuskers hold just the eighth best odds to reach the Big Ten Championship Game. However, they are projected to finish with a 7-2 record in both the most likely and disruptive scenarios.
Nebraska is expected to loss decisively at Penn State (-17.8) on November 22, but the remaining eight conference games are all winnable. If the Cornhuskers can upset Michigan (-4.5) on September 20, they project to be favored until the contest in State College.
The games at Minnesota (+0.4), at UCLA (+3.5) and versus USC (+1.7) will be challenging, but if Nebraska is a little better than expected or a little but lucky, a final conference record of 8-1 is certainly possible.
Illinois is currently projected to be favored in seven of the nine Big Ten games. The Fighting Illini own the easiest overall conference schedule and could certainly challenge for a slot in the Big Ten Championship Game.
The toughest games on the schedule for Illinois are the home game against Ohio State (-6.2) on October 11 and the Big Ten opener at Indiana (-3.2). If the Illini can win one of those two games, the biggest remaining hurdles are winnable road games against Washington (+2.2) and Wisconsin (+3.8) and a home game against USC (+5.4)
The path appears to be narrower for the remaining contenders. Indiana will be a heavy underdog on the road at Oregon (-10.8) and at Penn State (-14.5). Even if the Hoosiers can win one of those games they will still likely need to beat Illinois (+3.2) at home and Iowa (+0.4) on the road in order to have a shot to make the title game.
USC has a brutal road schedule including games at Oregon (-12.1), at Illinois (-5.4), and at Nebraska (-1.7) and home games against Michigan (-2.5) and Iowa (+6.4). It is hard to imagine that the Trojans will win more than three of those game unless they are much better than expected.
Iowa has the toughest conference schedule of any of the contender listed above. The Hawkeyes have the advantage of playing both Oregon (-7.5) and Penn State (-11.3) at home, but those games are still mostly likely losses. Even if Iowa were to spring one upset in that pair of games the Hawkeyes would likely need to run the table at USC (-6.4), at Nebraska (-4.4), at Wisconsin (-0.6), and versus Indiana (-0.4).
Washington is the only potential contender that draws three of the four primary contenders on the schedule in 2025. The Huskies draw Ohio State (-12) and Oregon (-8.9) as well as Illinois (-2.2) in Seattle, but it is tough to image getting more than one win in that group of three games. Washington also has road games at Michigan (-13.9) and Wisconsin (-2).
Finally, Minnesota is intriguing, as my analysis of 2024 suggests that the Gophers might be a lot better than expected this year. But road games at Ohio State (-21.2), Oregon (-18.1), and Iowa (-6.9) are going to make it difficult for them to contend.
The remaining seven Big Ten teams are not expected to finish conference play with a winning record, but that does not mean that all hope is lost. In last year's Big Ten preview, the math compelled me to pick Indiana to finish last in the conference with a projected 1-8 record. Similar to the Hoosiers in 2024, one or more Big Ten teams are likely to be much, much better than we currently project.
With this in mind, I noticed that even though No. 73 Maryland projects to go winless in Big Ten play, the Terrapins only play one of the primary contenders (Michigan) and they face the Wolverines at home. The toughest game on the Maryland schedule is at Illinois. If the Terrapins wind up being better than expected, their schedule is very favorable.
Comments
Post a Comment