Shut outs

When OSU scored with 10 seconds left against the Spartans Saturday I tweeted excitedly:

@mpharmd98

WooHoo Michigan still the last team to shut out OSU! #goblue

Since it was also apparent that M was the last team to shut out Minnesota - I thought it would be interesting to see who was the last to shut out each of the boneg teams.

Team	shutter outer	Score	date
Illinois	OSU	30-0	9/26/2009
Indiana	Michigan	58-0	10/14/2000
Iowa	Illinois	31-0	10/14/2000
Michigan	Iowa	26-0	10/20/1984
MSU	Michigan	14-0	10/21/2000
Minnesota	Michigan	58-0	10/1/2011
Nebraska	Arizona St	19-0	9/21/1996
Northwestern	OSU	20-0	9/27/2003
OSU	Michigan	28-0	11/20/1993
Penn St	Michigan	20-0	10/6/2001
Purdue	OSU	49-0	10/23/2010
Wisconsin	Syracuse	34-0	8/24/1997

Michigan leads as the last shutter outer with 5 (including consecutive weeks); OSU is next with 3 then Illinois and Iowa close out the boneg schools with ASU and Syracuse the only non-conference shutter outers.

If you look only for boneg conference shut outs - Wisconsin was shut out by Iowa 31-0 on 11-16-1996.

Nebraska has not been shut out in a conference game since Oklahoma beat them 27-0 on 11/23/1973. But as far as their current conference is concerned, they have not been shut out by a boneg team since Purdue skunked them 28-0 on 9/27/1958.

My final bits are when Michigan was last shut out in a non-conference game: a 25-0 loss to Independent MSU on 9/29/1951. How about against a team not currently in the boneg ? That gets screwed up as well. M (with Gerald Ford) lost to U of Chicago 27-0 on 10/13/1934. But of course that was a conference game...
You have to go back to M's 10-0 loss to Navy on 10/30/1926 for their last loss against a team unrelated to any version of the boneg .

Big Ten Logo, Divisions and Trophies fiasco

The Big Ten issued its new logos, Football Division names and trophies today.

The public opinion is less than favorable.

@StifledChirp Stifled Chirp

Nice division names, there, #BigTen. Sounds like a strip-mall sports bar in Peoria.

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@mpb63088 Matt Brummond

jesus, the #BigTen logo may be worse than the division names.

@ArmadiloRoadkil Dave Presser

Ironic how the #BigTen divisions are labeled "Legends" and "Leaders", neither of which apply to the administrators themselves.

@alexmcohen Alex Cohen

Legends and Leaders? Come on now. I feel like I'm looking at something out of Summer Camp Color War.

@carolynn_b Carolynn Boeh

why the hell is a trophy named after a Univ. of Chicago coach who coached 78 years ago? #bigten fail

@ryanmgray Ryan Gray

does Mich have to remove the line "leaders and best" from The Victors since they are apparently "Legends" and not "Leaders"? #bigten

I haven't heard or read much favorable response to anything announced today.

I understand what they tried to do with the trophy naming - give each school somewhat equal representation. But when M and OSU have won or shared 42 & 35 title respectively (in 115 conference seasons) yet are represented on only 9 of the 36 trophy slots.

Coach of the year - not named for Yost and his 10 titles, Williams or Bierman from Minnesota and their 8 & 7 titles; Illinois Bob Zupke and his 7 titles... but Stagg from Chicago - a school that dropped football in 1939 and Paterno with 3 titles. There are 20 other coaches with 3 or more titles including Gary Moeller, who managed 3 titles in just 5 years (8 total). I get it that he's the all-time leader in victories, but not in the conference. Northwestern has as many conference titles as PSU since they joined the conference in 1993.

Offensive MVP - Otto Graham and Eddie George. Ugh! OK so Graham is fine, I guess, you're looking for another NU representative but Eddie George gets picked over other (IMHO - more deserving) OSU representatives like Hopalong Cassady, Troy Smith or Vic Janowicz. Not to mention players form other schools who aren't on any trophy - Tom Harmon, Bruce Smith or Elroy Hirsch...

The overall by school breakdown has:

OSU 5
Michigan, Wisconsin 4
Illinois, MSU, PSU & Purdue 3 (two of Purdue's 3 are on the same trophy)
Indiana, Iowa, Northwestern 2
Chicago, Nebraska 1

I am totally biased on this, but I think Michigan is under-represented on these lists. I think it is ridiculous that in choosing the stupid Leaders and Legends divisions, they didn't put M in the leaders division...

I think the conference has given too much lee-way to Penn State over the years and they continued in this effort - you could argue the new logo uses their colors! Ted Kwalick on the best TE trophy? His record against Big Ten schools was 0-1. I doubt he could have made that much of an impression in a 42-8 loss to Michigan State...

Conference championship games 1993-2009

Using the determined divisions, I went back and looked at which schools would have won the respective divisions each season and determined the Big1T2en championship game match-up (where possible - Nebraska is often a variable)

Here goes:

year	Bo	Woody
2009	Iowa/Neb	OSU
2008	MSU	PSU
2007	M	OSU
2006	M	OSU
2005	M	PSU
2004	M	Wis
2003	M	OSU
2002	Iowa	OSU
2001	Neb	Ill
2000	NU/Neb	PU
1999	Neb/MSU	Wis
1998	M	Wis/OSU
1997	M/Neb	PSU(OSU/PU)
1996	NU/Neb	OSU
1995	NU/Neb	OSU
1994	Neb	PSU
1993	Neb	Wis/OSU

3 possibly 4 times since PSU joined the conference M and OSU would have met the next week. Doesn't appear that there would have been any other next week repeats. And only a few other definite repeats. Only Minnesota and Indiana failed to show up at all in the championship game.

I don't really have a problem with how the divisions came out. Nothing would be perfect, supposedly they based it on the records since 1993.

Divisions are supposedly in

WDFN via some Lansing reporter:

Michigan - MSU - Nebraska - Iowa - Minnesota - Northwestern

OSU - PSU - Wisconsin - Purdue - Indiana - Illinois

It seems like they tried to split the rivalries, but PU and IU are both in the one division and Iowa and Minnesota in the other. Seems like they should swapped one each of those to keep all these inter-divisional rivalry games as the season finale.

It would seem that the Michigan division might have more depth while the OSU division has a tougher high end.

Big1T2en re-nonalignment

My theory is none of the other sports will need divisions in the new Big1T2en, why does football need them. I'll ignore the obvious answer that you can't/don't want to play all the conference teams during a football season.

Why not keep/assign rivalries, fill out the rest of the schedule rotationally and then whichever two teams end up with the best records, they play in the conference championship. Wouldn't the BCS have preferred that Oklahoma play Texas (or Texas Tech) in the Big 12 championship a couple years ago instead of Missouri?

Here's my rivalry table

Team	Rivalry 1	Rivalry 2	Rivalry 3
Illinois	N'Western	Purdue	OSU
Indiana	Purdue	N'western	MSU
Iowa	Minnesota	Wisconsin	Nebraska
Michigan	OSU	MSU	Minnesota
MSU	Michigan	PSU	Indiana
Minn	Wisconsin	Michigan	Iowa
Nebraska	Iowa	PSU	Wisconsin
N'Western	Illinois	Indiana	Purdue
OSU	Michigan	PSU	Illinois
Penn St	OSU	MSU	Nebraska
Purdue	Indiana	Illinois	N'Western
Wisconsin	Minnesota	Iowa	Nebraska

Nothing would be perfect of course. In fact there is quite a disparity in the quality of each teams trios of rivals. Looking at the past 10 years winning percentage and ordinal ranking of those winning percentages of the trios:

Team	rivalry %	Riv rank	Ordinal	Ord rank
Illinois	0.600766667	6	6.00	6.5
Indiana	0.519536667	10	8.33	10
Iowa	0.62547	4	4.67	4
Michigan	0.608326667	5	6.00	6.5
MSU	0.548256667	9	7.00	9
Minn	0.64852	2	4.17	2
Nebraska	0.638716667	3	4.50	3
N'Western	0.42925	11	10.00	11
OSU	0.572173333	8	6.67	8
Penn St	0.663706667	1	3.83	1
Purdue	0.408276667	12	11.00	12
Wisconsin	0.59705	7	5.83	5

Funny how PSU fans always think they're getting the shaft from the conference. Looks like they would have the toughest trio. However since the teams would only have 3 rivals every year instead of the 5 they would have in a divisional system, I think it would be more likely the differences would balance out in the remaining 5 or 6 conferences games.

This way you would have had a UM - OSU championship game in 2006 for instance, instead of a geographical OSU vs - Wisconsin(?) or Penn St.