that's true. but conferences had uneven schedules all the way into the late 70's if i remember right. maybe 80's. i know bama won an sec title in 70's due to having played 1 more game than rest of conference (also was undefeated and only other team with argument was on probation, so not controversial, but could have been). i'm sure there were come controversial ones.
socon split from even bigger siaa conference, which was a bumbling mess of a conference that couldn't decide if it wanted to exist or not.
I think (could be wrong) that most conferences had at least some semblance of scheduling uniformity long before the SoCon did.
In the early days of the B1G, there were oddities and that was actually one of the driving forces behind Michigan's ten year hiatus. They wanted to play more games and specifically more OOC games because they were at a point where they were at least trying to be competitive with the major East Coast powers (which were the major powers of the day) and the league was reigning in the number of games and specifically the number of OOC games so Michigan left.
For what became the B1G, it started with very unequal numbers of games:
1896:
Wisconsin won with a record of 2-0-1 which counted as a 1.000 percentage because at the time ties basically didn't count so they were effectively 2-0. In a modern system ties are treated as 1/2 of a win so that 2-0-1 would have been .833 still good enough to win. Chicago played five league games, Northwestern played four, and the other five members played three each.
1906 was the last year before Michigan's hiatus:
- 4 games: Chicago, Illinois
- 3 games: Wisconsin, Purdue
- 2 games: Minnesota, Indiana
- 1 game: Michigan, Iowa
1913 was Ohio State's first year in:
- 7 games: Chicago
- 6 games: Indiana, Northwestern
- 5 games: Purdue, Illinois
- 4 games: Wisconsin
- 3 games: Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio State
1917 was Michigan's first year back and consequently the first time that what became the B1G had 10 members:
- 5 games: Northwestern, Wisconsin, Illinois, Chicago
- 4 games: Ohio State, Minnesota, Purdue
- 3 games: Indiana
- 2 games: Iowa
- 1 game: Michigan
It seems that by roughly the end of WWII schedules were pretty uniform. For example, in 1947 all nine teams (Chicago was out by then and MSU wasn't in yet) played six league games.
One exception that REALLY hurt Ohio State was the BigTen's experiment with nine league games in the early 1980's:
It started in the late 1970's with a few teams playing nine league games. Then in 1981 all except tOSU and Iowa played nine league games. Ohio State and Iowa did not play each other and were league co-Champions at 6-2. Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin were tied for 3rd/4th/5th at 6-3. If Ohio State and Iowa had played, the winner would have been outright champion at 7-2 while the loser would have tied Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin for second at 6-3. Iowa went to the Rose Bowl because at the time the tiebreaker was whoever hadn't been for the longest (the Longest Loser rule) so they went to the RoseBowl because they hadn't been in a long time while Ohio State had gone as outright champions two years earlier.
The next year (1982) Michigan won the league outright at 8-1 with Ohio State finishing second at 7-1 and Iowa third at 6-2. Ohio State's loss was to Wisconsin in their conference opener and they beat Michigan H2H. If they had played (and beaten) Iowa, they'd have tied Michigan at 8-1 and won the H2H tiebreaker for the RoseBowl.
Trivia:
In 1983 all ten teams played a full 9-game round-robin and Illinois became the (still) only team to ever beat EVERY other B1G team in a single season with their 9-0 record.
- 9-0 Illinois beat everybody
- 8-1 Michigan lost only to IL
- 7-2 Iowa lost only to IL and M
- 6-3 Ohio State lost only to IL, M, and IA
- 5-4 Wisconsin lost only to IL, M, IA, and tOSU
- 3-5-1 Purdue lost only to IL, M, IA, tOSU, and UW (tied MSU)
- 2-6-1 Michigan State lost only to IL, M, IA, tOSU, UW, and NU (tied PU)
- 2-7 Indiana beat only MN and NU
- 2-7 NU beat only MN and MSU
- 0-9 Minnesota lost to everybody
They stuck with nine games through 1984 then reverted to eight in 1985.