Ehh. I don't rank conferences by bowl results. I usually downplay it the years that the B1G does badly, so I'm not exactly going to beat my chest over our results this year.
There's too much noise and not enough signal for my taste. Too many people want to extrapolate out from minimal data sets to prove a point. Bowl results depend on matchup, luck, etc. Too often one team is just rusty after the long layoff while others are more emotionally invested.
As you point out, a few balls bounce the other way and we're 3-5 instead of 7-1. I know that Purdue, to regain the lead late in the 4th quarter against Arizona required:
- After a pair of incompletions, Sindelar has to dump a short pass on 3rd and 10, to DJ Knox who managed to scamper for 21 yards and keep the drive alive. He wasn't untouched. He had to break a tackle to make that gain, or it's 4th down.
- An Arizona DB dropping a sure interception on a Sindelar pass on 1st and 10.
- A 2nd-and-10 play where the shotgun snap was BADLY missed, and instead of falling on the ball like most QBs are taught to do, Sindelar--on a torn ACL, scoops it up, scrambles, gets a pass off and complete for no gain, making it 3rd and long instead of 3rd and completely ridiculous.
- On that 3rd-and-10 play, Sindelar throws a long ball to Anthony Mahoungou [who had dropped numerous passes all through the 3rd quarter], which is VERY well contested by the DB, which Mahoungou has to make a circus catch over him and then wrestle him 4 yards into the end zone. 8 times out of 10 the receiver doesn't catch that ball. Strangely it should have been defensive pass interference, but that *also* wasn't called.
- Then Arizona got the ball back, and after burning our safeties ALL game long, one came up with a critical interception on an overthrown pass to seal it.
As a fan I want to claim that this team just never stopped fighting, and they willed themselves to victory. That Purdue won because Purdue was
the better team.
But I know better. These teams were very evenly matched. If either team was "better" than the other, it was by small margins. Purdue managed to escape with a win.
Are we really going to claim that just because 4 of 7 games decided by a score or less happened to go our way that we're the best conference?
Yes, we are going to claim that 7-1 makes us the best conference. Because sports fans do that sort of thing. But claiming it doesn't make it true.