“It Stinks.” B1G Bias in Penn State’s Schedule?

For the Nittany Lions, The Road Too Often Traveled To Start Conference Play Has Been On The Road — a Discrepancy Penn State’s New AD  Won’t Let Be Dismissed as a Coincidence Anymore

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This year’s Big Ten Media Days offered Penn State football’s top brass an opportunity to vent.

During James Franklin’s turn at the podium, the Nittany Lions’ head coach took a subtle shot at the frequency with which his team has been scheduled to open conference play on the road (seven straight years counting 2022, and 12 of the last 13). Later on, when a reporter questioned Dr. Pat Kraft about the topic, State’s new athletic director assumed a more direct approach. With a brand of candor uncommon to his profession or employer, Kraft made his view plain: “It stinks.” He went on to describe an appeal to the league office seeking relief.

But how big of a beef do James and his new boss really have?

Penn State fans absolutely love to complain about discriminatory treatment from the Big Ten. Any number of Blue and White backers will insist that what could simply be innocent quirks of a complicated scheduling process, in fact, characterize a pattern of mistreatment that predates the retirement of Bo Schembechler. To these impassioned partisans, their beloved program endures a special and exclusive aggrieved status.

Turns out, at least in this case, they’re right!

Despite whatever general affinity the fanbase at large may have for conference-based conspiracy theories, Penn State has indeed been scheduled to start Big Ten play away from home at a rate surpassing any of its peers. In an effort to bring valuable context to the discussion around this subject, we looked at every Big Ten team’s conference opener dating back to PSU’s inaugural season in 1993. Our thinking was that perhaps this longer view would show the Lions’ recent streak in a less offensive light. Instead, if anything, the final results suggest that Franklin’s and Kraft’s lobbying is long overdue. So tighten your tinfoil hat, and let’s delve into the numbers.

This graph shows the distribution of home and road conference openers from Penn State’s inaugural season in the Big Ten (1993) through this year’s scheduled games. The numbers, as they say, speak for themselves. Pat Kraft wasn’t wrong, Penn State, along with several other schools like Iowa and Minnesota have been put on the road in game one far more often than others in the conference.

And here is that same info visualized year by year for every school. Each dot represents one conference opener for each team over Penn State’s 30 years of Big Ten football: blue for away, orange for home, and this year’s Nebraska-Northwestern opener in Ireland in red.

Before we take a deeper dive into the data, here are a few topline takeaways:

• Fans who believe Penn State has gotten hosed are right. No long-time Big Ten member has had fewer league openers at home than the Nittany Lions, whose current streak of seven straight road games to start conference play is the longest for any team in this 30-year stretch.

• Purdue, Indiana, Ohio State, Illinois, and Wisconsin have played two times or more as many home conference openers as Penn State’s nine, and Michigan has nearly doubled up the Nittany Lions with 17.

• Even the teams that joined the conference this century, who have been famously subject to ritualized hazing via reduced revenue sharing and brutal scheduling, have all, in an admittedly-limited sample size, had a higher percentage of their B1G openers scheduled at home than PSU. So Nebraska, Maryland, and Rutgers are on pace to stay ahead of Penn State.

• There’s enough in this to also satisfy those newcomer Nebraska and Rutgers fans who, as Kirk Ferentz might put it, “smell a rat.” The Huskers, who’ll start out 2022 with a neutral-site game against Northwestern (another loser with 12 of 30 openers at home), tie the Scarlet Knights for second-lowest percentage of home conference openers (ahead of only PSU).

• Speaking of our old pal Kirk, here we find cause for him to get legitimately angry (versus, say, over fake “fake injuries” that only message board cretins and that Kinnick fan who looks like Sandy Barbour believe in). Iowa joins Minnesota in playing only 37% of its Big Ten openers from 1993 to present (11 of 30) at home. They also own the second-longest streak of consecutive road games (again, trailing Penn State) with six.

So let’s look at those streaks, shall we?

Penn State joins a group of seven teams to never exceed three straight B1G openers at home. Looking back to our year-by-year breakdown, we find more damning evidence for Penn State’s uniquely rough road (games). Not only do the Nittany Lions claim sole possession of the crown for most consecutive road games to open Big Ten play (7), they also have other streaks of five (2010-14), four (2004-07), and three (1996-98) straight opening up away from Happy Valley. That five-gamer on its own would tie for third-longest over the last 30 seasons. For further reference, five teams — Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State (of course), Purdue, and Wisconsin — have NEVER, from 1993 to 2022, had to open up the Big Ten on the road in three consecutive years (comparatively, the shortest stretch of PSU’s four road-game streaks).

Poor Rutgers, in only nine years of membership, has already assembled a five-game away opener streak, and the Knights have never started up conference play at home in back-to-back years. Hawkeyes and Gophers fans ought to get pretty grumpy reviewing this data too.

How, you ask, do the Nittany Lions perform in these games, and how does that stack up with their Big Ten brethren? See below.

Overall, Penn State is very middle-of-the-pack in terms of win percentage in Big Ten openers. Oddly, Penn State’s success rate at home is actually a bit lower than on the road, although, as we’ve seen, we’re dealing with a uniquely-small sample. Unfortunately, one of Penn State’s rare streaks of home conference openers coincided with a turn-of-the-century stretch of historic futility — the “Dark Years” teams went 0-3 at Beaver Stadium versus Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota from 2001-03. Other regrettable home starts were a slugfest loss to Wisconsin in 1995 and the miserable 2009 Iowa game, leading to an overall 4-5 record at the Beav.

However, the Nittany Lions persevered to win a majority of those road trips to begin Big Ten play, going 11-9 overall. That list of road wins includes some absolute gems, like the 1994 season opener that kicked off an undefeated campaign, the pivotal 2005 Northwestern game, Saquon Barkley’s masterpiece at Iowa in 2017, and victories over the Badgers at Camp Randall in 1996 and last Fall.

Finally, for fun, here is a look at the frequency with which each Big Ten school has faced every conference member in league openers since 1993. Our old frenemy Iowa features prominently, but no two teams seem to share a cosmic connection like Minnesota and Purdue. When it comes to starting up the Big Ten schedule, they are kismet.

Here’s hoping that a new era for the Big Ten conference combined with an infusion of fresh leadership atop Penn State Athletics will result in the belated introduction of balance in how the conference luminaries see fit to commence future campaigns for our Nittany Lions.

Chris Buchignani hosts The Obligatory PSU Pregame Show, entering its seventh season in Fall 2022, with Brandon Noble, Mike the Mailman, and Kevin Horne.

Nate Wilmot manages the @PSU_Analytics account on Twitter, contributor at ForTheBlogy.com, and is the co-host of the  “Booze, Bets, & Ball” podcast with Alec Whitaker which launched in summer 2022.