The Big Ten’s just fine. Take any random time period of significant size and compare it to another – they average out the same.

It’s not an issue of skill or quality of football. The fault can also be placed on a higher standard for the Big 10. Over the past five years, they have been regularly matched up with higher-ranked teams – more so than at any other time in conference history.

In the past five years, OSU’s dominance or popularity has drawn it away from bowl affiliations, and the rest of the conference has been bumped up at least one notch as a result.

I have yet to hear one of the talking heads acknowledge this ranking discrepancy as a contributor to the losing record. Nope, it’s just because the Big 10 is slow, or old fashioned. Sigh.

No other conference is sending as many second, third, or fourth place conference finishers to play another conference’s #1.

At the same time, in that five-years USC has been stuck in an odd pattern where they choke away a NC spot, and get rewarded with a home bowl game against the Big 10 #2 or #3.

It’s very, very unlikely that both sets of aberrant coincidences will continue. Shoot, simply ending the pattern of “OSU gets pulled away from Rose to play #1-3 team, USC chokes its way back into Rose to play #10-15 team” would likely improve the postseason numbers alone.

THOSE are the true oddities; and are the primary reasons for the recent spate of Big 10 postseason losses.

And holy cow… combining that reasoning with my “higher standard” statement above… think about what that could mean. The fact that the top half of the Big 10 has been playing above its head for several years now bodes well for how much better they’ll be prepared in the next two/three years if their competition ends up returning to a relative even-strength. It’s like “fine, I’ll play against the PAC 10 #1 for five years… oh holy cow, this year I get to play against their #3? Awesome!!”