CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: medinabuckeye1 on June 05, 2025, 11:01:44 AM
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In another thread @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) brought up Purdue's surprisingly good record against Ohio State and @Brutus Buckeye (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=31) explained it by saying that the Train Horn sound effect was Ohio State's kryptonite. What other series have records that you wouldn't expect?
Here are H2H records from 1993-2023 for the 11 teams that have been in the Big11Ten/B1G for that entire time. Note, this doesn't exactly match up to anything. It isn't conference record because it omits games against UNL, RU, UMD, and the four west coast schools. It also includes CCG match-ups. Anyway, here goes:
(https://i.imgur.com/LQWBAwq.png)
It reads across not down, ie:
- Ohio State is .633 against Michigan
- Ohio State is .742 against Penn State
It is sorted from best overall record at the top/left to worst at the bottom/right. Thus, in theory, each team should have their worst record at the left and their best at the right. For example, Ohio State is only .633 against Michigan that is worse than tOSU is against any of the others and it is at the left while Ohio State is perfect against the Hoosiers and that shows up at the right.
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Vanderbilt.
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Outliers by school:
Ohio State:
The Buckeyes are surprisingly bad against Purdue. Obviously .750 is a winning record but Ohio State's record against Purdue is about the same as their record against PSU and UW and it shouldn't be because PSU and UW have been much better teams. Ohio State is surprisingly good against Iowa and Minnesota.
Michigan:
The Wolverines, like the Buckeyes, are surprisingly bad against Purdue. It isn't as stark of an outlier as it is for Ohio State but they still statistically should be a bit better against the Boilermakers. The Wolverines are surprisingly good against Penn State and Iowa.
Penn State:
The Nittany Lions are surprisingly bad against Iowa and Minnesota. They are surprisingly good against . . . Purdue.
Wisconsin:
The Badgers are surprisingly bad against Penn State while they are surprisingly good against Purdue.
Iowa:
Iowa is surprisingly bad against Ohio State. They are worse than MSU, PU, and IL and they shouldn't be *THAT* bad. They are also not as good as expected against Indiana. They are surprisingly good against PSU.
Michigan State:
The Spartans are surprisingly bad against Indiana and surprisingly good against Michigan and Northwestern.
Northwestern:
The only record out of order for the Wildcats is that they are surprisingly bad against Michigan State. However, their record against Ohio State is also surprisingly bad. They shouldn't be worse against the Buckeyes than Purdue and Illinois yet they are.
Purdue:
Purdue is either surprisingly good against tOSU and M or surprisingly bad against PSU and UW or maybe it is a little of both. They are also either surprisingly good against Illinois or surprisingly bad against Indiana.
Minnesota:
The Gophers are surprisingly bad against Ohio State and, to a lesser extent Michigan. They are surprisingly good against Penn State.
Illinois:
The Illini are surprisingly bad against Michigan State and surprisingly good against Michigan and, to a lesser extent Ohio State.
Indiana:
The Hoosiers are surprisingly good against Iowa.
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I guess Tennessee would be ours, our all-time record against them is dismal (for as little as we've played them for being in the same conference so long). Though I'm not sure if you can call that "kryptonite" because Tennessee has probably been the better overall program, historically.
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Though I'm not sure if you can call that "kryptonite" because Tennessee has probably been the better overall program, historically.
Yeah, I'm not really looking for teams that you are bad against because they are really good. What I'm looking for here is teams that you aren't as good as you "should be" against.
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Purdue:
Purdue is either surprisingly good against tOSU and M or surprisingly bad against PSU and UW or maybe it is a little of both. They are also either surprisingly good against Illinois or surprisingly bad against Indiana.
Purdue is absurdly bad against Wisconsin. Purdue has not beaten Wisconsin since 2003. That's the one that I put up as "L" in Sharpie preseason if I see them on our schedule.
Ever since this, we can't beat Wisconsin.
(https://i.imgur.com/hgRIlMo.jpeg)
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I was there.
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I was there.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9c/36/9e/9c369e24e1b26086a381e51e4365e93f.gif)
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Two things that explain a lot of the statistical outliers here are:
- A lot of them involve match-ups not played all that frequently, and
- Most of them involve uneven match-ups where one team almost always wins.
As an example of both, look at Iowa's record against Ohio State. They are only .133 against the Buckeyes which is worse than MSU, PU, and IL despite Iowa being a better team than those three over the past three decades.
Well, Iowa has only played Ohio State 15 times (a little less than every other year) and they are 2-13 but here is the thing:
- With one more win they'd be 3-12 or .200 which would be even with MSU and better than IL.
- With two more wins they'd be 4-11 or .267 which would be second best in the league behind only Michigan.
Over the last ~30 years there have been blowouts both ways but there have also been a few close Ohio State wins including:
- By 3 in 2010 - In this one Iowa led 17-10 until almost mid-way through the 4th quarter and 17-13 until Ohio State scored the winning TD with less than two minutes to go.
- By 3 in 2009 in OT.
My point is that it wouldn't take a humongous change to give Iowa those two wins and then we'd be talking about how Hawkeyes are Ohio State's kryptonite.
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(https://i.imgur.com/ohPRWoc.png)
OR
(https://i.imgur.com/ifyoGII.png)
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Yeah, I'm not really looking for teams that you are bad against because they are really good. What I'm looking for here is teams that you aren't as good as you "should be" against.
They might qualify after all. While they were good historically, we were close to the same level.
All-time win%
UT: .673 (11th)
LSU: .655 (14th)
Conf. Championships
UT: 16
LSU: 16
All-time wins
UT: 886 (10th)
LSU: 852 (12th)
Based on that, you probably wouldn't expect a 10-21-3 record against them, but that's what it is. And that includes an outlier period of 5 straight wins beginning in 2006. So think about this, in the first ~80 years of playing each other, LSU accrued just a 5-20-3 record against them. Not nearly as close as their records might suggest.
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Two things that explain a lot of the statistical outliers here are:
- A lot of them involve match-ups not played all that frequently, and
- Most of them involve uneven match-ups where one team almost always wins.
My point is that it wouldn't take a humongous change to give Iowa those two wins and then we'd be talking about how Hawkeyes are Ohio State's kryptonite.
(https://i.imgur.com/DfLrPTs.png)
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Off the top of my head, I think of Northwestern as Wisconsin's. Probably because I have an outsized view of what Wisconsin football should be, but I feel like there have been way too many inexplicable losses to Northwestern. Penn State is never worse than pretty good. Should the Badgers have a better record against them? Maybe, but losing to Penn State doesn't hurt the way losing to Northwestern does.
I have no idea if the data bears this out, but it always pisses me off. The most embarassed I have ever been for Wisconsin football was in 2023 when Northwestern came to Camp Randall and kicked the snot out of the Badgers. Unreal.
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Off the top of my head, I think of Northwestern as Wisconsin's. Probably because I have an outsized view of what Wisconsin football should be, but I feel like there have been way too many inexplicable losses to Northwestern. Penn State is never worse than pretty good. Should the Badgers have a better record against them? Maybe, but losing to Penn State doesn't hurt the way losing to Northwestern does.
I have no idea if the data bears this out, but it always pisses me off. The most embarassed I have ever been for Wisconsin football was in 2023 when Northwestern came to Camp Randall and kicked the snot out of the Badgers. Unreal.
It's this for me. The trophy case is empty. This cannot be tolerated. All three of these teams absolutely trucked Wisconsin.
(https://i.imgur.com/e984u2C.png)
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(https://i.imgur.com/ohPRWoc.png)
OR
(https://i.imgur.com/ifyoGII.png)
What does that Nebraska-Texas all-time record look like?
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sorry, can't seem to find it
that's OK, it's a Big Ten thang
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Off the top of my head, I think of Northwestern as Wisconsin's. Probably because I have an outsized view of what Wisconsin football should be, but I feel like there have been way too many inexplicable losses to Northwestern. Penn State is never worse than pretty good. Should the Badgers have a better record against them? Maybe, but losing to Penn State doesn't hurt the way losing to Northwestern does.
I have no idea if the data bears this out, but it always pisses me off. The most embarassed I have ever been for Wisconsin football was in 2023 when Northwestern came to Camp Randall and kicked the snot out of the Badgers. Unreal.
Agreed. Knowing what the schools have been for the last ~30 years, I would NOT expect that Wisconsin is only 0.560 against Northwestern.
I.e. if you think of Purdue and Northwestern as somewhere near equal (we're a perfect .500 against each other over that span), it makes no sense that Wisconsin is 0.560 against one of us, and 0.827 against the other.
That said, the other schools for Wisconsin in that range are Iowa (0.556) and MSU (0.550). Northwestern actually stands up fairly well against Iowa (0.483), and worse but not deplorable against MSU (0.391).
So maybe I'm unfairly thinking the nerds from Evanston are worse than they actually are.
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NERDS!
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So maybe I'm unfairly thinking the nerds from Evanston are worse than they actually are.
I'm sure I suffer from that, but I don't care. It reminds me of when I went to see a football game at UNLV (I was in Vegas for work and wanted to get away from the Strip). The game was fine (vs TCU, I think--old school Mountain West game (/irony)), but walking out of there, all I could think was that a Power 5 team should never lose to a team with that kind of investment in football.
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(https://media.tenor.com/o0ZkcYukqOgAAAAM/nerds-mad.gif)
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What? Road games.
Who? Mostly Florida, but on occasion Arkansas.
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Off the top of my head, Purdue. Not sure if the record bears it out, but there were some oddly close games in the early 2010s when MSU was at its peak, and Purdue was at its worst, where MSU barely won. In MSU's 2013 season where they went 9-0 in Big Ten play, with all wins by double digits, the nearest miss was needing a scoop and score to turn a 7-0 lead against Purdue into 14-0. I think the CFP team took a 21-0 1st quarter lead, and then needed a 4th quarter stop after Purdue had the ball in MSU territory down just 21-17. Hell, the 2021 Peach Bowl team, which beat Miami, UM and PSU's only bad loss was at Purdue
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Off the top of my head, I think of Northwestern as Wisconsin's. Probably because I have an outsized view of what Wisconsin football should be, but I feel like there have been way too many inexplicable losses to Northwestern. Penn State is never worse than pretty good. Should the Badgers have a better record against them? Maybe, but losing to Penn State doesn't hurt the way losing to Northwestern does.
I have no idea if the data bears this out, but it always pisses me off. The most embarassed I have ever been for Wisconsin football was in 2023 when Northwestern came to Camp Randall and kicked the snot out of the Badgers. Unreal.
The data definitely bears it out and the response I was going to give here was almost exactly what @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) said.
Northwestern (.436) and Purdue (.414) have similar records overall in the games we are looking at here so Wisconsin's record *should* be roughly the same against those two but instead they have flat dominated Purdue (21-4-1) while being barely over .500 against Northwestern (14-11). Also, Wisconsin's .560 winning percentage against Northwestern is very similar to their winning percentage against substantially better MSU (.550) and Iowa (.556) teams.
As per usual, we are really only talking about a couple of games. If you took two Wisconsin wins over PU away and gave UW those wins over NU instead then Wisconsin would be:
- .640 against NU, 16-9 and
- .750 against PU, 19-6-1
That would match roughly what you would expect statistically.
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So maybe I'm unfairly thinking the nerds from Evanston are worse than they actually are.
I don't think you are. When you talk about a range, it is true that NU's winning percentage is next after MSU so they are close to MSU and Iowa in being only just behind them but . . .
The actual percentage gap is huge. In these games:
- Iowa is .542
- MSU is .511
- NU is .436
- PU is .414
- MN is .349
Northwestern is right between MSU and PU but they are a LOT closer to PU than they are to MSU. For that matter, Northwestern is almost as close to Minnesota as they are to MSU.
Not all gaps are the same and the gap between MSU and NU is the second largest behind only the gap between #1 and #2.
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They might qualify after all. While they were good historically, we were close to the same level.
All-time win%
UT: .673 (11th)
LSU: .655 (14th)
Conf. Championships
UT: 16
LSU: 16
All-time wins
UT: 886 (10th)
LSU: 852 (12th)
Based on that, you probably wouldn't expect a 10-21-3 record against them, but that's what it is. And that includes an outlier period of 5 straight wins beginning in 2006. So think about this, in the first ~80 years of playing each other, LSU accrued just a 5-20-3 record against them. Not nearly as close as their records might suggest.
I stand corrected, this IS what I'm looking for here. Tennessee has a slightly better overall history so you would expect them to have a slightly over .500 record against LSU but not 21-10-3.
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I was thinking that a chart might help to visualize this so here it is:
(https://i.imgur.com/V0gNOcF.png)
Ohio State's and Indiana's lines are contiguous. The other nine lines have a break because you don't play yourself.
Start with looking at Ohio State's line. It starts at the left with Ohio State's worst record against any Big11Ten/B1G team which is .633 on 19-11 against Michigan then generally ascends as you move across reaching a peak of 1.000 on 27-0 against Indiana. There are two oddities that jump out to me:
Purdue:
Ohio State is #1 against nine of the 10 teams listed here and the exception is Purdue. It is a BIG exception. Not only is Ohio State not #1 against the Boilermakers, they aren't even in the top-3. The Buckeyes have the fourth best record against Purdue at .750 on 15-5 which trails PSU (.889), Wisconsin (.827), and Michigan (.789). I find it kinda funny that while Purdue is the one team that Michigan did better against than Ohio State, the Wolverines still aren't #1 because they were outdone by PSU and UW.
Illinois:
The Buckeyes are #1 against Illinois but it is REALLY close. If you look at it, all the records against Illinois are bunched up. I *THINK* this is because if you think about Illinois' history they really aren't a consistently moderately bad team. Instead they have tended to be downright awful most of the time and then a title contender once in a while. Consequently, they are better than their peers at beating tOSU and Michigan because when they are good, they tend to be REALLY good but then the rest of the time they just suck so they aren't as good as you might expect at beating Indiana, Minnesota, and especially Purdue. Illinois has the smallest top-to-bottom gap in winning percentage against:
- .818 Ohio State, 18-4
- .813 Michigan State, 13-3
- .796 Wisconsin, 21-5
- .789 Michigan, 15-4
- .783 Penn State, 18-5
- .720 Purdue, 18-7
- .708 Iowa, 17-7
- .613 Northwestern, 19-12
- .577 Minnesota, 15-11
- .455 Indiana, 10-12
The only top-to-bottom gap in winning percentage against that is remotely close to that small is for Ohio State where the best is Michigan's .367 and the worst is Indiana's 0.000.
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OSU is 0-2 vs the Cocks; back to back Outback bowls with two different HCs. :banghead:
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Ya got curbstomped the 1st time and jobbed the 2nd
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Ya got curbstomped the 1st time and jobbed the 2nd
Cock job?
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Traditionally, Georgia.
They had the better program, but UGA is why Florida famously had no SEC titles pre-Spurrier.
Every single time Florida got late into the season in 1st or near 1st in the conference, Georgia would beat us.
From the 60s into the 80s.
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More along the lines of what the question was intended, Auburn.
Multiple Auburn teams that were ranked lower or not ranked beat a #1 or top-5 Florida team.
93, 94, 01, 06, and 07
Those years, Florida was ranked 4, 1, 1, 2, and 4 and lost each time.
The 06 game stands out, as AU won 27-17 without an offensive TD.
FG, safety, FG, FG, blocked punt TD, FG, fumble return for TD (last play)
That was stupid.
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For UGA, it would be South Carolina, their last home loss was to them when Jake Fromm threw four INTs.
Spurrier of course loved to beat UGA, and did. When Spurrier was QB at UF and won the Heisman, their only L was to UGA. USCe can be a 7-5 team buy very dangerous at home, they have pulled off a lot of upsets over the years to teams like Alabama as well.
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They might qualify after all. While they were good historically, we were close to the same level.
All-time win%
UT: .673 (11th)
LSU: .655 (14th)
Conf. Championships
UT: 16
LSU: 16
All-time wins
UT: 886 (10th)
LSU: 852 (12th)
Based on that, you probably wouldn't expect a 10-21-3 record against them, but that's what it is. And that includes an outlier period of 5 straight wins beginning in 2006. So think about this, in the first ~80 years of playing each other, LSU accrued just a 5-20-3 record against them. Not nearly as close as their records might suggest.
Tenn had a couple Dark Ages as of late. One thanks to Bill Battle and the length of time it took Johnny to start getting some players/ Then the fiasco's that followed Phil.
LSU at night is a difficult win. I think that you are one of the teams that Tenn. normally gets up for and your team may overlook them some
They are usually good games though, no matter the sport.