Big Ten football misery index: Science shows why Jim Harbaugh, James Franklin share pain

Big Ten football misery can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only change forms – or allegiances, depending on how well your school is playing.

This is the first law of Big Ten-modynamics. (Ok, so we’re borrowing a bit from our pal Isaac Newton and the laws of thermodynamics here, but stick with us.)

The second law, of course, is the misery of any isolated system always increases, which we guess explains why the Big Ten championship game is always indoors in Indianapolis. (Sure, they could play it indoors at Detroit’s Ford Field, but that place has seen enough misery to last a lifetime, and we’re not talking about the Quick Lane Bowl.)

And the third law is the misery of a system approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches absolute zero, which sure explains more than a few January Big Ten hoops games between Wisconsin and Northwestern.

But back to that first law … how else do you explain the sudden shifts in misery on Saturday?

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In Happy Valley/Beaver Stadium/State College/University Park (your dateline may vary), Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh spent three chilly quarters sloughing off all the talk that he couldn’t beat ranked foes on the road as his Wolverines built a 14-6 lead. (And yes, it says something about this U-M defense that eight points can feel insurmountable at times.) But then, in a little under seven minutes, it wasn’t insurmountable at all, and the Nittany Lions reclaimed the lead and handed all that misery back to Harbaugh like a piping hot Maize and Blue potato. And then — blink! —the Wolverines finally got a big play and with 3:29 to play, the misery was all back in James Franklin’s hands for the season.

Or, in a long-term sense, there was the matchup in Bloomington between (mostly) perennial Big Ten cellar dwellers — 2020 feels so, so far away in Indiana — Rutgers and Indiana. The Scarlet Knights never trailed in a 38-3 blasting of the Hoosiers. It’s not so much that Rutgers is good this year — they hadn’t broken 21 points since mid-September — as much as Indiana is baaaaad. Which is sort of as it should be. The Big Ten can handle both Rutgers and Indiana being bad. But both of them being good — something that we almost expected back in August — could be disastrous. Heck, since Rutgers joined the conference in 2014, the two have both finished a season within three games of .500 just once: 2020, and the Big Ten barely finished out the season. And so, of course, the Scarlet Knights dropped all their misery off with the Hoosiers, to keep it safe for 2022.

Then again, some teams seem immune to the misery, like that school down in Columbus, left for dead in September only to rise up and pound Purdue in November. How do they do it? How do they fight off the natural laws of the Big Ten? Sacrifices, perhaps. Terrible, terrible sacrifices, such as sending The Sweater Vest, Jim Tressel, out on a tattoo-powered raft to the seas of Youngstown State, never to be heard from again. Or sending Urban Meyer away to “Jacksonville, Florida,” wherever that is. When will the sacrifice come for current coach Ryan Day? Perhaps he has a self-portrait hidden somewhere in Columbus, slowly growing more hideous as his Buckeyes refuse to lose to a Big Ten foe.

Or, there’s whatever the shirtless dudes were doing in Bloomington during the Rutgers/Indiana game. Sure, the Hoosiers still lost, but they managed to kick a field goal while the Bare Bro Convention was gathering in the stands. Shirtless in an Indiana November? Terrible sacrifices indeed.

[ Big Ten football standings: Where each team sits in conference ]

But the Big Ten is a conference of science, not rank superstition — at least until it comes down to three-team tiebreakers for division titles. So while we work on applying some science to figure those out, let’s run through the Misery Index, from least miserable to most:

14. Michigan: W, 21-17, over Penn State

Record: 9-1, 6-1. Last week: 10.

Saturday was still only Harbaugh’s third road win against a top-25 Big Ten foe in his seven seasons in Ann Arbor. The others? Oct. 24, 2020, against Minnesota and Oct. 20, 2018, against No. 24 Michigan State. But it still counts.

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13. Iowa: W, 27-22, over Minnesota

Record: 8-2, 5-2. Last week: 7.

We were already pretty sure coach Kirk Ferentz cares about two things in life: Holding onto the “Floyd of Rosedale” trophy and embarrassing P.J. Fleck. We just didn’t realize how far he’d go to do both for the fifth year in a row. Letting Minnesota run 83 plays, hold the ball for more than 40 minutes and then to finish things by starting at the Minnesota 3, burning 97 seconds and then kicking a field goal? That’s cold.

12. Wisconsin: W, 35-7, over Northwestern

Record: 7-3, 5-2. Last week: 12.

Running back Braelon Allen rushed 25 times for 173 yards Saturday against the Wildcats in his first career start, though it was his sixth straight game with at least 100 yards. He also won’t turn 18 until January.

11. Rutgers: W, 38-3, over Indiana

Record: 5-5, 2-5. Last week: 2.

Not only are the Scarlet Knights just one win from bowl eligibility, this season is their first FIVE-WIN campaign since 2014, when they went 8-5 in their first year in the Big Ten. Of course, back then, the conference only had an eight-game schedule, allowing Rutgers to schedule patsies such as Howard, Tulane, Washington State and Indiana.

10. Illinois: DNP

Record: 4-6, 3-4. Last week: 13.

The Illini picked up a win without even playing this week when Blake Hayes, our favorite Australian special teamer/mime, was named as one of the 10 semifinalists for the Ray Guy Award (given annually to, yep, the nation’s best collegiate punter). He’s actually one of five Big Ten punters to make the list — along with Rutgers' Adam Korsak, Michigan’s Brad Robbins, Penn State’s Jordan Stout and Iowa’s Tony Taylor — which is oh so on-brand. (The SEC has zero semifinalists, in case you were wondering.)

9. Michigan State: W, 40-21, over Maryland

Record: 9-1, 6-1. Last week: 3.

Forget worrying about whether Kenneth Walker III will get snubbed in Heisman Trophy voting; let’s get mad over the Ray Guy Award snubbing Bryce Baringer. He averaged 53 yards per punt Saturday to bring his average this year to 49.4 yards; that’s more than a yard and a half better than MSU’s school record for a season, 47.9, set by Brandon Fields in 2004. (Honestly, with an Iowa man heading the College Football Playoff committee again, we thought punting ability would factor into the rankings a lot more.)

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8. Ohio State: W, 59-31, over Purdue

Record: 9-1, 7-0. Last week: 9.

Freshman quarterback C.J. Stroud, in case you were hoping the Big Ten packs the Heisman Trophy ceremony next month, had nearly as many touchdowns Saturday (five) as incompletions (seven) while attempting 38 passes.

7. Nebraska: DNP

Record: 3-7, 1-6. Last week: 8.

The Cornhuskers took away the only suspense their fans had left this season when they renegotiated coach Scott Frost’s contract with a cut in his base pay and his buyout (as long as they wait at least six games into the 2022 season to fire him). Then again, it's good to know Frost can beat Harbaugh somewhere in the Midwest, even if it’s just taking a mere 20% pay cut vs. Harbs’ 50%.

6. Purdue: L, 59-31, to Ohio State

Record: 6-4, 4-3. Last week: 14.

It wasn’t all bad for Purdue footballers on Saturday — the women’s soccer team advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament with a 1-0 win in overtime. (And the Ohio State women already lost.)

5. Maryland: L, 40-21, to Michigan State

Record: 5-5, 2-5. Last week: 6.

Seriously, though, with the Terps facing Michigan this week and the Scarlet Knights facing some motivated Nittany Lions, the odds are good that Maryland and Rutgers will go into their season finales against each other needing a win for bowl eligibility. It’s like the Big Ten scheduled a Quick Lane Bowl play-in game!

4. Minnesota: L, 27-22, to Iowa

Record: 6-4, 4-3. Last week: 1

How long has it been since the Gophers left Kinnick Stadium with “Floyd of Rosedale”? Minnesota’s last road win over the Hawkeyes came in 1999, when Ferentz was in his first season in charge in Iowa City and Fleck was in his first season … as a player at Northern Illinois.

3. Northwestern: L, 35-7, to Wisconsin

Record: 3-7, 1-6. Last week: 4.

Coach Pat Fitzgerald just keeps cycling back to the Wildcats’ QB room to see who’s there — Andrew Marty going 10-for-18 for 100 yards, then Ryan Hilinski going 3-for-8 for 25 yards and a pick — like I do with my refrigerator at 3 a.m. even though I haven’t been grocery shopping in two weeks. Sometimes you just have to eat a mustard sandwich, coach.

2. Indiana: L, 38-3, to Rutgers

Record: 2-8, 0-7. Last week: 5.

We’re not saying the Hoosiers have fallen back to their old ways too quickly, but after the botched a handoff on the first play from scrimmage, resulting in a fumble and a Rutgers touchdown four plays later, 18-year-old freshman quarterback Donoven McCulley told the media, "That just set the tone for the rest of the game and it was hard to come back from that." Buddy, you were playing Rutgers; most years you could fumble on the last play of the game and still have a shot at a comeback.

1. Penn State: L, 21-17, to Michigan

Record: 6-4, 3-4. Last week: 11.

They say “dress for the job you want, not for the one you have,” but coach James Franklin sure is wearing a lot of L’s these days. Hey, maybe he is a candidate for the Southern Cal job after all!

BIG TEN MISERY INDEX RECAP

WEEK 0: Look out, Michigan and MSU — there's a new team atop the Big Ten

WEEK 1: Why Michigan football's worst loss ever is a little better

WEEK 2: Why Michigan State is still conference's king of Columbus

WEEK 3: Another team has beef with Notre Dame

WEEK 4: Michigan and Michigan State prove 'stats are for losers'

WEEK 5: Michigan made a jump, but can it dim Nebraska's lights?

WEEK 6: Wolverines, Spartans step onto CFP tightrope

WEEK 7: Boiling up chaos for Michigan, Michigan State

WEEK 8: 9 OTs shift the balance of the East

WEEK 9: Need a costume? Try an MSU Heisman finalist, or just go Bo

WEEK 10: Michigan and Michigan State turn back the clock

Contact Ryan Ford at rford@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @theford.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Big Ten football misery index: Jim Harbaugh, James Franklin share pain