Big Ten Football: Before and After Penn State

It's that time of year . . . I'm bored.  I started musing about Penn State joining the Big Ten 17 seasons ago amidst rumors of expansion.  I don't want to debate whether the Big Ten has been good/bad for PSU football, or PSU sports in general, or God forbid academics and research.  It is all, um, academic anyway, since PSU is not going anywhere else in the foreseeable future.  But I did wonder, has joining the Big Ten been good for Big Ten football???  After all, a lot of sports rhetoric has focused on the Big Ten being "down" as a conference, fueled by epic out of conference losses and poor bowl game performances.

So I sat down and compared all the Big Ten teams for the past 17 years (1993-2009) versus the previous 17 seasons (1976-1992.)  I used the AP poll since the BCS system was not around for the vast majority of those years.  I chose the AP poll because the data was easy to access.  I looked at how many times teams were ranked in the top 20 and the top 10.  Note:  the AP poll only ranked 20 teams up until the mid-late eighties.This data includes only Top 20 rankings.  (In case you are wondering, only two teams were ranked in the 21-25 slots between 1976 and 1992.  But after 1993, 9 teams were ranked in the 21-25 range.)

I also looked at the average AP rank and how that changed--the Delta.  A negative delta indicates that the team has fallen in rank since PSU joined the conference.  For teams that weren't ranked during either period, a fudge factor of 30 was inserted for comparison purposes, but keep in mind the actual rank could be much worse than that.  This fudge factor of 30 was not included in overal rank comparisons at the bottom of the chart.

Team	Big 10			Big 11
	Top 20	Top10	AVG AP Rank	Top 20	Top 10	AVG AP Rank	Delta
Indiana	2	0	19.5	0	0	30.0	-10.5
Illinois	2	2	10.0	2	0	16.0	-6.0
THEM	15	12	7.8	13	5	11.8	-4.0
Penn State	11	8	6.7	11	6	10.0	-3.3
Purdue	3	1	13.3	3	0	15.3	-2.0
Michigan State	4	1	13.0	1	1	11.5	1.5
Iowa	8	2	14.8	6	4	11.5	3.3
Ohio State	11	4	11.3	14	10	6.9	4.4
Minnesota	0	0	30.0	2	0	19.0	11.0
Northwestern	0	0	30.0	2	1	11.5	18.5
Wisconsin	0	0	30.0	7	4	10.1	19.9
Total	56	30	12.0	61	31	12.4	-0.4

As far as PSU is concerned, entering the conference had little effect--11 appearances either way, but our overall ranking in those 11 polls was slightly LOWER after joining the conference.  Minnesota, Northwestern and Minnesota benefitted the most by virture of the fact that none of them appeared in the AP Top 20 the 17 seasons before PSU joined.  Conversely, Indiana has not been ranked in the final AP poll since PSU joined the conference (and interestingly is the only Big Ten football team not to have ever defeated Penn State.

As a conference, there have been 5 more appearances in the Top 20 and one more Top 10 appearance since PSU joined, but overall, the actual rank has been slightly lower by 0.4.

Of teams that had rankings in both time periods, Ohio State has fared the best, increasing their overall rank by 4.4 places, while THEM has fared the worst, dropping by the same #1 and conceding the most appearances title to the Bucks.

What I found most surprising is that Penn State's numbers--11 appearances in both scenarios--includes the dark years of 2000-01 and 2003-04.  Even those dark years considered, the numbers are surprisingly similar.

I included Penn State's numbers in both pre- and post-joining to keep the number of teams the same.  But if we drop Penn State out of the conference #'s in 1976-1992, the conference had an overall AP ranking of 12.8 and the conference alone without PSU in 1993-2009 ranked an average of 12.6.  Penn State's inclusion in the numbers makes the conferences performance look better in the first 17 years (12.0 vs. 12.8) but had less effect in the last 17 years (12.4 vs 12.6).

Can we conclude much from this?  Probably not.  PSU joining the conference has not seriosuly hurt the overall numbers.  It has certainly helped Big Ten recruiting in the East, and opened up substantial markets for the Big Ten Network.

But none of this data takes into account the changes in college football in general.  For instance, you wouldn't see teams like Utah and Boise State ranked very often if at all in the 1976-1993 period, whereas such rankings are not unusual now.  Parity has affected the landscape of college football in every conference.  In the Big Ten, Northwestern was ranked for the first time in decades.  Is that because Penn State joined?  Probably not.  But it makes it more difficult for teams like Illinois and Indiana to get ranked, and even traditional powers like THEM are feeling the pinch when it comes to rankings.  Iowa has had fewer appearances in the final AP poll since PSU joined, but has made more out of them by being ranked higher.  Does beating PSU year after year make them look better to AP voters?  Who knows?