Now that the Big Ten bowl season is (thankfully) over, I started thinking about what could have, should have been.  I imagined what the season could have been like for Iowa if the chips would have fallen a little different.  Like stuffing a punter into a little box and sending Bielema back to Madison with another painful reminder of why you can never beat up your Dad.  Then Stanzi not gift wrapping an arm punt directly to Persa with a little bow on top.  Never taking Coker out of the OSU game and shoving it down their throats for a full 60 minutes.  And to cap it off, showing up to a game in which we could have torn more posts down and had extra-marital affairs in bathrooms.  I left the Arizona memory alone for it serves me no good to rehash that shit show.  So anyways we arrive at 11-1 and 8-0 in conference play and our tickerts to Pasadena are punched.  At that point I wondered what this would mean for the rest of the league.  As we would have knocked everyone down a peg on the totem pole.  So I looked at records and concocted a new bowl line up.

Team             Conf     Overall       Bowl Opp          Result

Iowa               8-0       11-1            TCU                  W - given Iowa's recent bowl performance I say win (maybe DJK could have been sent to jail for the first 5 games next year)

MSU               7-1       11-1            Arkansas         L - MSU got to 11 wins with smoke and mirrors, Mallet would be a sure fire first round pick after that game.

Wisco            6-2        10-2           Alabama           L - It would have at least been more competitive, I hope.

OSU               6-2        10-2           Florida              W - Gator-chomp curb-stomped

PSU                4-4        7-5            MIss St              W - Its a toss up, but I choose defense

UM                  3-5        7-5            Mizzou                L - Teams combine for over 1000 yards in offense, of course Mizzou has 600 of them.

Illinois            4-4        6-6            Texas Tech       W - illinois looked good.  To bad one of thier coordinators wasn't their coach.

jNW                2-6       6-6             Baylor                  L - jNW win a bowl game, NEVER!

I went with Wisconsin over OSU based on the head to head but I know that the teams could be flipped.  If that were the case i think OSU could beat Alabama and the leagues record would be even better.  I know that this is all one man's opinion, and some of the new match-ups could have worse outcomes, but I think overall the Big Ten would be seen in a better light and we would have gone 4-1 on New Years Day.  If Iowa could have performed up to expectations maybe the league would be percieved as a quality conference due to our 4-4 record and our difficult bowl slate.  Of course none of this happened, and I will gladly put it in the faces of other Big Ten fans for the next year about how they sucked and we beat a top 15 team.  In reality, Iowa could have been the reason the Big Ten sucked it up this year.  In other news DickRod has been fired, then not fired yet, and now fired...