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SPAM - NCAA Football 2021 - Week 9 - Week 8 Recap

WHERE WE'VE BEEN

WEEK 8 BIG 10 ACTION (RECAP)

Last week, I explained a new statistic I've been looking at, the Sustainability Index, which evaluates how good teams are at sustainable drives. I haven't checked every single team, but Iowa was dead last amongst Top 10 teams going into the idle week, and dead last among other teams that play the field position game well. To give you an idea of how bad Iowa's offense is, Rutgers is 5 points better than Iowa at sustainable offensive drives.

I'm working on running this data back to see how this season compares with prior seasons, but as you're about to find out, SPAM, which I might rebrand to "BizarroMath" soon, does not like Iowa's chances of doing anything meaningful this year.

I won't recap this week's action, since Iowa was idle, other than to note that Penn State's home loss against the last-ranked Big 10 program's backup quarterback in overtime is exactly what that fan base needed.

LOOKING AHEAD TO WEEK 9 - IOWA SEASON PROJECTION UPDATE


Here's the updated SPAM projections for the rest of Iowa's season based on the season to date.

Game by Game


Opponent Margin Win%
Indiana 14.7 W (1-0)
@Iowa State -4.1 W (2-0)
Kent State 11.7 W (3-0)
Colorado State 6.7 W (4-0)
@Maryland 6.9 W (5-0)
Penn State 2.6 W (6-0)
Purdue 5.4 L (6-1)
@Wisconsin 1.9 57.4%
@Northwestern 7.6 69.5%
Minnesota 5.6 65.4%
Illinois 11.8 77.2%
@Nebraska -1.3 43.9%

Record Projection

Record Odds
7-5 5.7%
8-4 20.5%
9-3 35.4%
10-2 28.9%
11-1 8.9%
12-0 n/a

Division Championship Odds

Big 10 West

Team Champ. Odds
Minnesota 47.2%
Iowa 37.4%
Wisconsin 5.8%
Purdue 1.9%


With Minnesota's win and Purdue's loss, the Gilded Rodents are now favored to win the West. This remains the case even though Iowa is favored to beat Minnesota head-to-head. This tells me two things. One, Iowa's odds in that game are not overwhelming, and BizarroMath thinks Minnesota is going to finish stronger than Iowa will. Minnesota's win over Nebraska looms large here, as the Cornhuskers are favored over both Iowa and Wisconsin in BizarroMath. A lot of streaks stand poised to come to an ugly, gut-wrenching end this year, including Iowa's long streaks against both Minnesota and Nebraska.

If Iowa loses to Wisconsin this weekend, you can expect the Hawkeye to drop to 3rd or 4th place and be effectively eliminated from the B1G West hunt. What a difference two weeks can make.

Big 10 East

Team Champ. Odds
Ohio State 50.2%
Michigan 38.6%
Michigan State 6.5%





I don't understand what's going on in the east, I really don't. Last week, Michigan State was in first place, now third. I suspect this has to do with Ohio State's dominant performance (which I cannot overstate, by the way - don't sleep on the Buckeyes for the natty, my projections really like the Buckeyes. This might be a function of who has more wins in the bag and who has games left to play. Ohio State beat Indiana, who was a challenge on paper. Michigan State, I believe, was idle? So Ohio State is a game ahead in schedule. This will all work itself out soon enough.

THIS WEEK'S GAMES

Ok, I'll start putting in SPAM's projections but I'm not checking Vegas odds and stuff. For this coming week, SPAM projects as follows:

  • Michigan over Michigan State by 3.9
  • Maryland over Indiana by 5.8
  • Ohio State over Penn State by 15.2
  • Nebraska over Purdue by 4.8
  • Minnesota over Northwestern by 4.0
  • Iowa over Wisconsin by 1.9


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