All 14 football schedules have been released for the 2020 Big Ten season, with the Michigan Wolverines' slate largely met with favorable reviews. Only one new opponent was added in Northwestern, with the Wildcats having gone 3-9 last year and set to host U-M on Nov. 21 (which also happens to be the final week of the regular-season).
Where does Michigan's new 2020 slate stack up from a numbers perspective? Generally viewed as one of the three or so toughest in the Big Ten every year, that trend has been broken (at least from a statistics standpoint) this time around and now actually ranks as one of the easiest in the league.
While determining strength of schedule, we kept it as basic as possible and simply calculated the combined 2019 opposing winning percentage for all 14 conference teams.
For example, Maryland's 10 2020 opponents went a combined 84-46 (64.6 winning percentage) in 2019, giving the Terrapins the league's toughest slate this fall. One of the few negatives with this method, however, is that it doesn't take into account where the games are played.
If there were ever a year where location didn't matter in college football though, this would be it. Michigan's schedule, meanwhile, ranks 10th in the Big Ten, with its opponents having gone a combined 72-56 in 2019 (56.2 winning percentage).
The only four that check in below U-M's are Penn State's, Ohio State's, Minnesota's and Wisconsin's (in that order). The Badgers' 2020 foes actually compiled a combined losing record in 2019, going 61-64 (48.8 winning percentage) overall.
The three teams Wisconsin won't face this fall — Michigan State, Ohio State and Penn State — went 31-9 last year. Did the Big Ten schedule makers purposely make the path to a conference title in 2020 a bit easier for the big boys, when considering the six easiest schedules in the league all belong to a group that is generally viewed as the Big Ten's six best teams — Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio State, Penn State and Wisconsin?
Or is it simple mathematical logic that the 2019's best squads are inevitably going to rank lower on the list using this formula? The answer is likely somewhere in between, with the clubs who own the eight most difficult schedules below not expected to even remotely challenge for the Big Ten crown in 2020.
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