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We’ve gone through all the Group of 5 conferences, and it’s been a rather depressing look at the current state of Kansas football. Is there any hope for the Jayhawks in one of these watered-down megaconferences? I’m interested to take a look.
As always, we’ll use the F+ ratings available at FootballOutsiders.com. If you read up, the two components of F+ (S&P+ and FEI) both adjust for opponents and strength of schedule, so this should theoretically give us a pretty good idea of how well Kansas would fare outside of the Big 12.
For 2018, the Big 10 will be a 14-team league divided into two divisions, obviously with a conference title game at the end. As usual, we’ll do our best to ignore the divisions for this exercise.
Kansas in the B10
| School | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| School | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 |
| KANSAS | 123 | 108 | 127 | 99 | 101 |
| Indiana | 55 | 60 | 61 | 88 | 56 |
| Maryland | 107 | 96 | 76 | 62 | 63 |
| Michigan | 30 | 4 | 8 | 54 | 37 |
| Michigan State | 23 | 62 | 9 | 11 | 6 |
| Ohio State | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 9 |
| Penn State | 5 | 10 | 47 | 45 | 61 |
| Rutgers | 113 | 117 | 101 | 81 | 91 |
| Illinois | 119 | 103 | 65 | 78 | 71 |
| Iowa | 31 | 37 | 38 | 63 | 29 |
| Minnesota | 93 | 42 | 55 | 37 | 55 |
| Nebraska | 101 | 55 | 36 | 30 | 39 |
| Northwestern | 42 | 45 | 52 | 71 | 59 |
| Purdue | 34 | 110 | 93 | 84 | 114 |
| Wisconsin | 7 | 9 | 32 | 25 | 19 |
By the numbers, if KU was in the Big 10, they would have three conference wins over the last five seasons. Sure, Illinois, Purdue, and Rutgers have been bad, but not Kansas bad, and that’s pretty sobering.
KU hasn’t had a lot of head-to-head matchups with the Big 10 (after all, they prefer to lose to MAC schools). In fact, the only matchup over the past five years was in 2015, when Kansas (127) traveled to Rutgers (101) and lost a 27-14 affair that the Jayhawks never really threatened to win. Prior to that you have to go all the way back to the 2008 Insight Bowl, where Kansas (28) mauled Minnesota (67), 42-21.
It is kinda hilarious to see Nebraska in triple figures there in 2017, but overall, it looks like the Jayhawks would struggle just as much in the Big 10 as they current are in the Big 12.