I’m not even going to leave this up for debate. Yes, it has been since 2000 (Michigan State, I refuse to count the Maryland title) since the league has won the national championship. But this year just has a different feeling around the conference.
For example, road games are going to be extremely tough for just about every team. At the moment I am writing this, home teams are 23-4 in conference play. YEESH! Another stat that shows just how deep the conference is, there are only two teams that are below .500 overall. Nebraska is under first year head coach Fred “The Mayor” Hoiberg, and Northwestern probably just stinks.
Now there are a few conferences that can say that they have the same stat of 2 teams with a record below .500 or better. The AAC has 2, ACC 2, Big East 0, MAC 1, MVC 1, PAC 12 1, and the SEC 1. However, the B1G won the ACC-B1G challenge 8-6. While also winning the Gavitt Games (Big East vs. B1G) 5-3.
I understand that they didn’t absolutely go out and destroy the two conferences, I do feel as if it is important to point out that the did win these two though. It had been since 2015 since the Big Ten had won the B1G-ACC challenge. The Gavitt games have ended with the B1G winning the past two, with the first three ending in ties.
This Big Ten season will be the best I think we have seen in sometime. The conference champion will most likely end up with at least 4-5 losses. The most intriguing part of the year though will be to see how they fare in the postseason. If this isn’t the year that they finally end the title drought, I’m not sure that it will ever end.