Big Ten Conference Bowl Record All-Time
Looking at the Big Ten Conference's bowl record all-time with Bowl Season just around the corner. Here's how the Big Ten has faired in its bowl games, as well as which teams tend to do best in the postseason.
Looking at the Big Ten Conference’s bowl record all-time with Bowl Season just around the corner. Here’s how the Big Ten has faired in its bowl games, as well as which teams tend to do best in the postseason.
The Big Ten, as a conference, is one of the most successful in the history of college football. It boasts the nation’s all-time winningest program in Michigan, and three other schools ranked in the top 10 with Penn State, Nebraska and Ohio State.
Yet, when it comes to the postseason, the Big Ten as a whole has struggled over it’s 100+ year history. While seven teams from the conference can claim multiple national championships, only three can actually claim a winning record in bowl games. If you take out Rutgers—who has only participated in one bowl game as a member of the Big Ten—only Penn State and Purdue can claim postseason records above the .500 mark.
Overall the conference has the worst all-time win percentage (.459) of any of the Power 5 conferences. The Big Ten also boasts one of the worst postseason performers in the history of the sport in Northwestern. Of teams with 10 or more bowl berths, the Wildcats are last in win percentage (.167) and have won only one bowl game in the last six decades.
The conference has also struggled recently, consistently struggling to finish at or above .500 each year in postseason play. Through the last 10 postseasons, the Big Ten has gone 32-50 and has only once finished Bowl Season above .500 (the conference was 6-5 in the 2014-15 postseason).
Big Ten teams have also failed to live up to expectations when it comes to the conferences biggest bowl games. In the Rose Bowl—traditionally the conference’s most important bowl game—Big Ten representatives have only won in two of their last 10 appearances in Pasadena. If not for the Ohio State’s six wins during the BCS era, and three wins in CFP bowls, the Big Ten would be 8-13 in major bowl games since the beginning of the BCS era.
Below is the bowl record for every current member of the Big Ten Conference, and the conferences record as a whole.
Big Ten Team’s All-Time Bowl Game Records
Note: First record listed is the program’s all-time record, while the record in parenthesis is the team’s mark since joining the Big Ten.
Conference’s Overall Record
124-146-1
Big Ten East
Michigan: 21-23
Penn State: 28-16-2 (10-6)
Michigan State: 11-15
Maryland: 11-13-2 (0-1)
Rutgers: 6-4 (1-0)
Indiana: 3-7
Big Ten West
Wisconsin: 13-14
Nebraska: 26-26 (2-3)
Minnesota: 6-12
Iowa: 14-14-1
Northwestern: 2-10
Purdue: 9-8
Illinois: 8-10
