Conference Races

Every league

The favorite in each, and how often the last berth in the title game is level on conference percentage — which is to say, how often a tiebreaker decides who plays for the trophy rather than the standings deciding it outright.

Big Ten standings, projected

Title game and title are different questions, and the gap between them is how often a team is expected to get there and lose. The projected conference record is the mean across all 50,000 seasons, so it carries fractions a real record cannot.

The title games it stages most often

Every pairing the simulation produced, most common first. A championship game is two teams surviving twelve weeks apiece, so even the likeliest is a small number — the shape of this list says more than its top row.

• Indiana vs Ohio State15%
• Ohio State vs Penn State13%
• Ohio State vs Oregon9.8%
• Indiana vs Oregon9.3%
• Indiana vs Penn State8.8%
• Oregon vs Penn State5.8%

Since preseason

The Big Ten’s best title odds, week by week, on a shared 0–100% scale. Earlier weeks are replayed with the current model rather than recorded at the time, so they say what today’s simulation makes of that week.

35%Ohio State+0.122%Indiana+3.317%Oregon−8.112%Penn State+7.14.1%Iowa+1.32.7%USC−0.7

Who moved

Change in title probability from preseason to week 1. A league is zero-sum — every point one team gains came off the rest of them.

• Penn State5.0% → 12%+7.1
• Indiana19% → 22%+3.3
• Iowa2.8% → 4.1%+1.3
• UCLA0.3% → 1.0%+0.7
• Illinois1.1% → 0.5%-0.6
• USC3.5% → 2.7%-0.7
• Washington3.1% → 2.0%-1.1
• Michigan2.8% → 0.9%-1.9
• Oregon25% → 17%-8.1

What a conference loss costs

How often each team still wins the Big Ten having lost exactly that many league games. Affords is the most it can take and stay better than even — blank for a team that is not better than even unbeaten.

Share of simulated seasons a team makes the field, given it finishes with exactly that many losses. ⚠ These are raw conditionals: a team that reaches 9–3 against a brutal schedule is a better team than one that reaches 9–3 against an easy one, and some of the spread below is that rather than the committee rewarding a résumé.

Team	0L	1L	2L	3L	4L	5L	6L	7L	8L	9L	Affords
Ohio State	75	53	12	0	0	0	0	—	—	—	1
Indiana	59	37	9	0	0	0	0	—	—	—	0
Oregon	60	32	5	0	0	0	0	0	—	—	0
Penn State	39	22	4	0	0	0	0	0	—	—	—
Iowa	40	20	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	—	—
USC	50	34	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	—	—
Washington	42	26	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	—
Michigan	45	27	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	—
UCLA	29	10	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	—
Nebraska	—	26	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	—
Illinois	—	17	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	—
Minnesota	—	17	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	—

What decides it

The remaining league games ranked by how much the title race is reshaped depending on who wins — measured across every team’s odds at once, not just the favorite’s. Early in a season the front-runner’s own schedule dominates this list, which is not a quirk of the method: it is what a one-team league looks like in September.

• wk7Ohio State at Indianamoves Ohio State35.8
• wk10Oregon at Ohio Statemoves Ohio State35.1
• wk5Ohio State at Iowamoves Ohio State29.9
• wk4Illinois at Ohio Statemoves Ohio State27.9
• wk9Ohio State at USCmoves Ohio State27.2
• wk6Maryland at Ohio Statemoves Ohio State27.2
• wk11Northwestern at Ohio Statemoves Ohio State27.0
• wk12Ohio State at Nebraskamoves Ohio State27.0