The bidding begins at 7.5 wins in 2024

The first set of 2024 win totals arrived with the oddsmakers showing some bullishness towards Nebraska, but there's important context to all of these numbers.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

The new Big Ten is basically the Kentucky Derby. Even though I’m just now getting used to writing out all 18 teams in the notebooks I keep, this theory didn’t hit me until I was confronted with a graphic listing each of them, with their various colors and logos, during my weekly Saturday morning radio spot.

The Derby has a few traits that make it unique. It’s a race for young horses (3-year-olds only), and many of them will be running a mile-and-a-quarter (10 furlongs) for the first time. It takes talent to make the field, but it often takes talent and endurance to win the race. The endurance part of the equation is often an unknown variable.

It also takes a bit of good fortune to win America’s bi ggest race because it has the biggest field. Since 1975, the Derby has been capped at 20 entries and it almost always fills up due to the prestige of “having a Derby horse.” A horse has likely never faced a field that big entering the race and probably never will again. The result is something close to chaos. Great horses don’t get a favorable trip—they get blocked off or have to go wide—and lose. Huge longshots get just the pace or track conditions they need and win. Some horses just freak out because, “holy crap there are a lot of other horses here.” It’s a race full of variables, and the favorite has won it about 35% of the time since 1908.

I’m guessing the Big Ten favorites will fare a bit better, even in an expanded league, as college football’s structure—or lack thereof in some cases—has always favored favorites more. We don’t know yet if an 18-team conference reduces the favorites’ edges, but we can be sure right now there are more variables at this size. Like the Derby, we may not know which team is truly up for it until the race is run.

But that won’t stop anyone from trying to handicap the Big Ten. FanDuel released its regular-season win totals for the power conferences over the weekend.  Ohio State and Oregon led the way in the Big Ten with an over/under at 10.5 wins, Michigan and Penn State were next at 9.5 and then there were five teams at 7.5 wins.

Nebraska opened at 7.5 wins, so I guess the bidding can literally start there for 2024. But there’s more to these numbers than just the win totals.