So far in this year's math-driven college football preview, we have explored the historical accuracy of the preseason rankings, looked back at last year, and conducted a thorough analysis of the potential paths for the Michigan State Spartans' season.

In today's installment, the focus shifts to the new, supersized, coast-to-coast Big Ten conference.

The first thing to cover today is the relative strength of schedule for each team. Figure 1 below summarizes my calculations for all 18 teams in the new Big Ten.

There are several different ways to calculate strength of schedule. I use my preseason estimations of power rankings and calculate the number of expected wins that a reference, borderline top-25 team would have if that reference team were to play each team's schedule.

For example, if the reference team were to play Michigan State's schedule, that reference team would have an expected win total of 7.87 games. That grades out to middle of the pack in the Big Ten and No. 29 toughest nationally (as indicated by the label on the bar in Figure 1).

Note that Indiana has the easiest overall schedule (No. 60 nationally) in the Big Ten, while Los Angeles-based newcomers USC and UCLA both have schedules that rank in the top-15. The difference between the easiest and hardest schedule is close to two full games, 1.78 wins out of 12 total.

Also note that of the potential contenders Iowa, Ohio State and Penn State have slightly easier schedules than either Oregon or Michigan.

Figure 2 below gives the same calculation considering only the nine conference games.

Rutgers has a significant advantage over the field with a schedule that is close to half a game (0.39) easier than Iowa's second-easiest conference schedule. Note also that contenders Penn State, Oregon and Michigan all have schedules among the six easiest in the league.

The other two main contenders, Ohio State and USC, have schedules in the middle of the pack, difficulty wise. Michigan State's schedule difficulty (5.20 wins) is just below the conference average of 5.39 wins.

The 2023 national runners up, Washington, draws the truly brutal "welcome the big stage" schedule, which grades out almost a game-and-a-half (1.45) more difficult than Rutgers' schedule.

In the first two installments of this series, I introduced my methodology to simulate the full college football season by assigning power rankings to each team that allows me to assign a victory probably for each game. The results of this simulation allow me to calculate the probability that each team will win any number of the games on their schedule.

Table 1 below gives the full regular season win probability matrix for all 18 Big Ten teams.

The data in this table allows us to answer all sorts of hypothetical questions about odds for any Big Ten to win any total number of games. The most practical application is the odds for each team to win at least six games and qualify for a bowl game. This value for each team is highlighted on the right side of the table.

Based on these bowl odds, roughly 12 of the 18 teams are expected to win at least six games, with only Minnesota (49%), UCLA (46.4%), Illinois (44.3%), Michigan State (41.5%) and Purdue (26.5%) having bowl odds under .500.

The teams are sorted based on total expected number of wins, ranging from Ohio State (9.84 win) down to Purdue (4.27). Michigan State's value of 5.13 wins is only good enough for second to last place.

For reference, Table 2 below also shows the win distribution for just conference games.