The first regular season of college football’s super-conference era is in the books across Pennsylvania sports betting. With bowl/playoff season on the horizon, PennStakes.com wanted to see which teams in the Big Ten improved the most from last year under the new conference configuration.
Using Sports-Reference.com, we gathered the conference winning percentage and Simple Rating System (SRS), a team strength metric that factors in average point differential and strength of schedule, for all 18 Big Teams from both 2023 and 2024.
We then calculated who in the conference recorded the greatest improvement in each category and averaged the two data points together to create the overall rankings. These are the teams that turned their fortunes around this season.
Rank | Team | Avg. Rank |
1 | Indiana Hoosiers | 1 |
2 | Illinois Fighting Illini | 2 |
3 | Minnesota Golden Gophers | 3 |
T-4 | Rutgers Scarlet Knights | 6 |
T-4 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | 6 |
T-4 | Michigan State Spartans | 6 |
T-7 | Iowa Hawkeyes | 7 |
T-7 | Oregon Ducks | 7 |
9 | Ohio State Buckeyes | 7.5 |
10 | Penn State Nittany Lions | 8 |
A clear top three emerged in this analysis, but one team’s rise stood out markedly above the rest. Coming off of a 3-9 (1-8 in conference) season where they finished with the worst record in the Big Ten and picked 17th in the conference preseason poll this year, Indiana defied all expectations en route to a College Football Playoff berth. The Hoosiers went 11-1 (8-1 in conference), putting up two more wins than any other team in school history, and finished tied for second in the league with Penn State.
First year head coach Curt Cignetti came over from James Madison and overhauled the Indiana roster, adding 31 players in the transfer portal over the offseason, while installing an RPO based spread offense that has fueled the Hoosiers success. Indiana averaged 21.1 more points per game this season under Cignetti, rocketing from 105th to 2nd nationally in scoring offense. Although their schedule was significantly weaker than last year with the elimination of divisions, the Hoosiers led the country in scoring margin, allowing them to jump from a -2.48 SRS last season to a 16.03 SRS this season.
The second most improved team in the Big Ten did not break out like Indiana, but still managed a 4-win turnaround in 2024. Illinois disappointed last year, going 5-7 (3-6 in conference) after finishing with a winning Big Ten record for the first time in 15 seasons in 2022. However, the Fighting Illini recaptured their form this year, ending the regular season 9-3 (6-3 in conference) and matching the program’s best season for wins since 2007.
This led Illinois to rise from a -.041 SRS in 2023 to a 9.07 SRS in 2024 as the team’s offense averaged more points per game than any Illini squad since 2013 this year. Illinois scored 30 or more points seven times this season and won every contest in which they eclipsed 17 points. The Fighting Illini’s schedule was not as affected by realignment as some other members of the Big Ten, but they held their own against the league’s depth, losing only on the road to playoff teams Penn State and Oregon plus a one score home game to Minnesota.
The Golden Gophers orchestrated the third largest bounce back in the conference this season, though nowhere near the magnitude of what Indiana and Illinois accomplished. Minnesota’s record only improved from 6-7 (3-6 in conference) to 7-5 (5-4 in conference), but their rise in SRS was far more pronounced as they went from -.01 to 9.19, a jump of 42 spots nationally. The Golden Gophers biggest advancements came on defense, where they surrendered 9.2 fewer points per game this season, never allowing more than 31 points to an opponent.
As for the rest of the Big Ten, no other team won more than one extra conference game from 2023 to 2024, though seven other schools improved their standing in SRS. Interestingly enough, Penn State was not one of the teams to gain in SRS despite winning 11 regular season games for the first time since 2008 and making the university’s first playoff appearance.
The College Football Playoff features four Big Ten teams, more than any other conference, and will kick off Friday, December 20 when Indiana travels to in-state foe Notre Dame. Look for the best bets on PA sports betting apps here.
USA Today photo by Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times.
Author
Josh Markowitz is a freelance writer for PennStakes.com. He is a lifelong sports fan with an emphasis on basketball, football, baseball and the scouting/evaluation process. A graduate of Elon University's School of Communications, Josh also has experience in television production.
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