Given the home team dominance and overall glut of good, not great teams this year, somebody (forget who, sorry, but not going to look) suggested a +/- ranking based on road wins and home losses. I decided to follow up on this a bit and did some investigating.
As it turns out, every non-Nebraska, non-NW member of the Big Ten plays three games against those two teams. Obviously, there is thus a slight edge to teams who play both on the road and get one at home, since it means 9 of their 17 remaining games are at home, and you'd trade a trip to Lincoln or Chicago Evanston for a chance to get 9 home and 8 road games against fellow tourney aspirants. However, this is not a big enough edge to cry "unbalanced schedule."
In the following standings, the only games that count are:
1) Road win vs. one of the other tourney aspirants = W
2) Home loss vs. one of the other tourney aspirants = L
3) ANY loss vs. Nebraska or NW = L
Standings as of all games played through Jan. 19 [Cumulative total record will not equal .500 b/c of Neb/NW element]:
Illinois 1-0
Wisconsin 2-1
MSU, Rut, MD, Ind. Minn, Mich. 0-0
OSU, PSU, Iowa, Pur 0-1
-----
Indiana has 0 games remaining vs. NW/Neb
Pur and Iowa have 1 game remaining vs. NW/Neb
Rut, OSU, MSU, Minn and Ill have 2 games remaining vs. NW/Neb
MD, Mich, PSU, and UW have 3 games remaining vs. NW/Neb
[This is a promoted FanPost and does not represent the editorial opinion of Off Tackle Empire or SBNation; it is one fan's opinion and if you call anyone associated with this website a "journalist" who should be "ashamed", you are doing a disrespect to both real journalists and real shame and ought to take a good, long look at yourself.]
Connect with Off Tackle Empire