Ranking Big Ten football teams by 2023 potential

Most, if not all, Big Ten teams have commenced spring ball, which means while basketball is still extant, eyes are turning back to football and the 2023 season. With a new season upcoming, all slates are wiped clean, and it’s anybody’s game as to who can win the conference.

Or, is it?

There are several key factors that determine whether or not a team can either maintain its dominance or rise up. Whether it’s returning production, recruiting, schedule, an established coach or a new coach, transfers, or anything that could happen any given Saturday, it’s impossible to accurately predict what a team’s overall potential is in a given year. Still, we decided to try and to do so mathematically rather than simply subjectively — though there was one semi-subjective element we did utilize, on top of what ultimately is our subjective methodology.

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Methodology

It’s our view that returning production is the biggest component when it comes to designating future success. However, there is something of a caveat there: the starting quarterback. We used ESPN’s returning production chart to account for what each team will be bringing to the field in 2023. We did not utilize any incoming or outgoing transfer rankings, instead relying solely on this number.

We also used the past four years of recruiting data, by taking an average of each team’s overall score in that period according to the 247Sports Composite. We then made that a factor of 100 by dividing each score by the highest average in the conference (Ohio State at 301.66, thus with a factor of an even 100, the maximum).

Considering that past success is something of an indicator, though not fool-proof, of future success, we also calculated the winning percentage of each team, again with a factor of 100.

We also utilized a subjective plus-minus metric determining a couple of factors: was there a new head coach? What about coordinators? Also a new starting quarterback would be a negative number, regardless of expectation. In some cases, a new head coach netted a plus-three mark, such as at Nebraska with Matt Rhule taking over or at Wisconsin with Luke Fickell. It followed what optically looked to be a hire that could improve the team. Hires such as Ryan Walters taking over for Jeff Brohm at Purdue netted negative-three.

From there, we weighted the three primary categories — returning production at 40%, recruiting rankings at 30%, and 2022 winning percentage at 30%. After getting that number, we added or subtracted the mitigating circumstances.

We did not look at the strength of schedule beause that is a purely subjective measure before the season, instead choosing to focus on pure potential as if all things were even, rather than trying to determine whose schedule may or may not be tougher or easier.

Without further ado, here are our potential rankings, along with the initial scores before they were weighted, and the final score we came up with.

Rankings

Northwestern Wildcats

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Indiana Hoosiers

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Rutgers Scarlet Knights

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Illinois Fighting Illini

Ron Johnson-USA TODAY Sports

Purdue Boilermakers

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Michigan State Spartans

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Iowa Hawkeyes

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Nebraska Cornhuskers

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Minnesota Golden Gophers

Matt Krohn-USA TODAY Sports

Maryland Terrapins

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Wisconsin Badgers

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Penn State Nittany Lions

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Ohio State Buckeyes

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Michigan Wolverines

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Story originally appeared on Wolverines Wire