There’s no conference in the country that has dug in the sack like the Big Ten this year. Now, some of this is due to things beyond the league’s control. Ohio State has lived up to expectations, but now has to deal with an injury to its starting quarterback. Oregon stumbled from the start, but the poor start was exacerbated by the month-long absence of Dante Moore.
Yet even with these injuries, there’s no denying that the Big Ten has struggled mightily this season, and the timing is terrible. After all, the league had won three straight national titles with three different teams, and many predicted that Oregon could become the fourth. Even the most ardent SEC enthusiasts have grudgingly admitted that the SEC has lost its grip on the sport.
And the Big Ten blew it throughout the first half of the season. You just have to look at the standings to see it, but the league is not alone. We’ve seen top contenders stumble in every Power Four league so far, but the Big Ten is in a class of its own when it comes to failing to live up to expectations.
From a playing standpoint, Big Ten teams are just 36-44-2 ATS when favored this year. That .450 winning percentage is second-worst in any conference, just ahead of American at .449. However, if the coverage rates are almost identical, the margins are not.
On average, Big Ten favorites fail to cover the spread by 1.82 points per game. The second worst league is once again the Americans, but they fail to cover by 0.44 points per game. Here’s a look at how things break down across all the leagues.
Pac-12 | 56.7% | 4.27 |
C-USA | 71.9% | 3.92 |
Solar belt | 58.0% | 3.24 |
Mountain West | 56.8% | 1.59 |
SECOND | 50.0% | 1.55 |
MAC | 56.3% | 1.50 |
Big 12 | 55.7% | 0.70 |
ACC | 45.2% | 0.56 |
American | 44.9% | -0.44 |
Big ten | 45.0% | -1.82 |
To further drive home the point, the Big Ten favorites are fighting in a season where the favorites cover 52.6% of the time with an average of 1.16 points! The favorites have relatively crushed it all year, but not in the Big Ten.
And it’s not difficult to determine which teams are primarily responsible. The Big Ten had seven teams ranked in the top 20 of the preseason AP Top 25. Ohio State did its job. The other six (Oregon, Indiana, USC, Michigan, Washington and Penn State) are a combined 8-28 ATS as favorites this season and fail to cover with an average of 7.76 points per game. It’s more than a touchdown! This certainly doesn’t make their potency assessment any easier.
Abandoned: Texas Tech, BYU
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