2008 National Champions (NCAAF)

[MyTurn2Raise]

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Iowa in the past has competed for 1 title and has been top 15 in a bunch of years since 2002.

2002-#3 Before the Bowl Season (8th After AP)
2003-#13 Before the Bowl Season (8th after)
2004-#8 Before the Bowl Season (8th after)
2005-Not Ranked
2006-Not Ranked

Not sure what their future prospects are though. Wisconsin your right about but that's saying more than a bunch of other teams you might also consider "contenders" right now.

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yep, is anyone in the Big10 other than Michigan and Ohio State scheduling for the national title

Most of these teams are worried about winning in the conference and padding the win rates and football revenues with the non-conference games.

For those that don't click the link, following is the number of 0-loss and 1-loss big10 seasons respectively from 1996 through this season:
Ohio State 2,3
Michigan 1,4
Wisconsin 0,3
Iowa 1,1
Penn State 0,1
Illinois 0,1
Northwestern 0,1
Purdue 0,0
Michigan State 0,0
Minnesota 0,0
Indiana 0,0


That list is a pretty good approximation of how likely teams are to win the national title in the Big10 from top to bottom over the next 10-15 years. I would probably bump Penn State ahead of Iowa and push Northwestern to the bottom, but that is about it. Realistically, Wisconsin and Iowa are not thinking of scheduling in terms of a national title and they shouldn't be, yet. If they scheduled hard now, those games would happen in 3 to 4 years at best. That could be very detrimental to a team that needs non-conference wins to get a bowl game, such as Iowa's dominating 2-6 Big10 team this year. Until they do it year after year after year, the scheduling philosophy just shouldn't be directed that way.

Other than Ohio State and Michigan, the only schools to have 6 or more big10 wins in back-2-back seasons were Wisconsin in 1998-99 (Ron Dayne era IIRC), Purude in 97-98 (introduction of bball on grass under Tiller with no Michigan and Ohio State on the schedule), and Penn State in 95-96.

Meanwhile, Ohio State had one stretch of 3 years and is now in 4 of the last 5 with 6 or more conference wins. Michigan has only fell short of 6 conference wins twice since '96.