For the next two weeks, I will be taking a look at the conference teams of the decade for 2000-2009. Factored into my analysis will be conference win %, conference and division titles, bowl games and bowl wins. I will also include BCS bowl wins, final AP rankings and number of national championships for the major conferences. There have been several teams who have changed conferences during that time and I will include them in the analysis for any season(s) they were affiliated with that certain conference. I will also be doing a breakdown of how the conference did in bowl games during the decade and I will emphasis the overall win/loss record, the number of BCS bowl wins, and the records against Non-BCS and ranked bowl teams.

While some conferences may have no-brainers as the top team, other conferences were very competitive over the past decade. Here is the schedule for the upcoming week with the conferences I will be analyzing on each date.

June 28 Sun Belt
June 29 MAC
June 30 WAC
July 1 CUSA
July 2 MWC
July 3-4 Big East
Monday Pac-10
Tuesday ACC
Yesterday Big 12
Today Big 10
Tomorrow SEC
July 10-11 Conference Bowl Records

The Big 10 has now been at 11 teams since 1993 but that will change next year when Nebraska joins the conference. Throughout much of it’s history, Ohio St and Michigan have dominated the conference with the Wolverines having 42 overall titles and the Buckeyes are 2nd with 34. Their combined 76 titles is nearly as many as all the other Big Ten past or present members have combined (89)! So were Michigan and Ohio St clearly the top two teams in the past decade?

Here are my rankings for Big 10 team of the decade for 2000-2009.

Big 10 Rankings 2000-2009

Ohio St was clearly the team of the past decade with six outright or shared titles including five in a row! In 2002, they captured the Big 10's first outright national title since 1968 (Michigan shared in '97). Their 64 wins were 11 more than Michigan and they were the only team to go to 10 straight bowl games. To put into perspective how dominant the Buckeyes were, they were #1 in the conference for each of the ten categories I looked at when ranking the teams! They nearly doubled up the second place finisher in total points.

Coming in at #2 was Michigan who had a good shot at the title but have fallen back the last couple of years. The Wolverines had the 2nd most titles with 3 and they had 7 AP Top 25 finishes. Their four game lead over Iowa in overall wins put them over the top despite having less Top 10 finishes and no BCS Bowl wins.

Kirk Ferentz has done a great job with Iowa and come in at #3 here with 2 titles and an impressive four AP Top 10 finishes including last year when they finished off their season with their Orange Bowl victory over Georgia Tech. Penn St is #4 on the list and had polar opposites parts in the decade. From 2000-04 the Nittany Lions were just 26-33 overall (16-24 in conference play) and had four losing seasons. In 2005, they turned it around and have gone 51-15 overall (29-11 in conference play) and have three AP Top 10 finishes and two Big Ten titles in the last 5 years.

Wisconsin comes in at #5 for 2000-2009 after quite possibly being the Big Ten team of the decade for the 90s with 3 Rose Bowl wins. It is very surprising to me that the Badgers have not won or shared a Big Ten since 1999 but the Badgers did go to nine bowl games and had six finishes in the AP Top 25. Purdue also deserves some mention with an above .500 finish in the decade and made a Rose Bowl appearance in 2000 under former HC Tiller and QB Brees.

Here are the Bowl records for Big Ten teams in the past decade.

Big Ten Bowl Records '00-09

The conference really struggled in bowl games with a 28-41 overall record (40.6%). Big Ten teams were just 19-27 against ranked teams including just 6-11 in BCS games. Some bright spots were Iowa’s 5-3 overall record and Ohio St finished 4-3 in BCS bowl games. To its credit the conference usually plays top-notch competition as evidence of their 3 total bowl games against non-BCS teams.

I will be back tomorrow with a look at the SEC conference which features a very tight race at the top.

Also please check PhilSteele.com everyday to get my FCS Top 25 Countdown, which continues with #13 Illinois St. Thru July 20th, I will post both magazine pages on a new team ranked in the Top 25 and you can get an early look on how I breakdown your favorite FCS team. Remember those magazine pages are available for only 24 hours for you to download as the next team will be posted the following day.

Only 56 Days Until the First College Football Game!!!