Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

My magic shirt is wearable one time.  If you don't wear it early, you can change your mind later.

I agree with the above logic paths.

With any luck, you can hang on to it until the final, but if a fan of your opponent did the same, well, ... we have a disturbance in the force.

The magic shirt is an interesting question for me...

I absolutely HATE losing to IU. Because most seasons (2024 the outlier), we both suck, so it's often that last shining opportunity for something positive.

However, because most seasons we both suck, it's also a game that's attainable to win without needing a magic shirt, so it seems like it could be a waste.

So I'd say probably, in this order:

• Notre Dame: I hate them. I really, really, really hate them. They're typically better than Purdue, so it will usually require a magic shirt to pull that one off. But I love seeing them lose. Of course, we don't play them every year like we used to. But we are in 2025, and it's a road game, so I'd use it without hesitation this year.
• Ohio State: Only because they are so insanely and consistently good... Pretty much any time you can beat Ohio State as Purdue, it's a giant upset win. And giant upset wins are lots of fun.
• Wisconsin: It's been over 20 goddamned years! I just want that monkey off our backs!

So that's my pick.

I think this has always been the case to an extent but the playoff has supercharged it. 

It has always been the case because we've always used H2H as the tiebreaker.  The problem with that, as I see it, is that while the H2H winner obviously has a better win, they also have a worse loss. 

Here is an example from the early 1970s during the famed Ten Year War between Woody and Bo:
In 1972 Ohio State and Michigan both went 7-1 in the league with a one-score road loss:

• Ohio State lost 19-12 in East Lansing to a .500 (5-5-1) Michigan State team
• Michigan lost 14-11 in Columbus to a very good (9-2, finished ranked #9 and was ranked #3 heading into the RoseBowl)

So which was the better team?  Almost every tiebreaking scheme that I've ever seen actually used would put Ohio State in the RoseBowl over Michigan because the Buckeyes won the H2H but does that actually make sense?  Michigan's three point road loss to a top-10 team is a LOT more excusable than Ohio State's six point road loss to a mediocre opponent. 


The problem for Michigan there is a lack of quality wins.  The "Little Eight" were more-or-less hot garbage and their only notable OOC win was over a UCLA squad that finished 8-3.  That is ok, but it is NOWHERE close to Ohio State's quality wins:

• Beat Michigan who finished 10-1 and ranked #6
• Beat North Carolina who finished 11-1 and ranked #12

That said, Ohio State got run off the field in Pasadena.  Maybe Michigan would have done better but given Bo's RB record and the fact that USC went 12-0 and won the NC that year it probably wouldn't have mattered. 

We used to talk about a "bad loss" and in the old days a bad loss might effectively eliminate you from NC contention but I think that the concept of a bad loss has effectively died.  If you look, for example, at 2015 Ohio State had a very excusable loss.  They lost by a FG to a playoff-bound MSU team.  Michigan State's loss to a sub-.500 Nebraska squad was MUCH worse but in the final regular season poll MSU was #3 and tOSU was #7.  The bad loss didn't hurt the Spartans nearly as much as tOSU's "good" loss hurt the Buckeyes. 

my magic shirts lost their magic about 2000