2013 Big Ten football previews: Advanced profiles of each team, one by one

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

If Louisville is getting a boost from this year’s West Virginia Effect (where you play so well in your bowl that people forget how mediocre you were in November), then Ohio State is feeling this year’s USC Effect (where you were banned from the postseason and didn’t get the chance to play well or poorly). The last impression the Buckeyes left us was a victory over their chief rival in late-November and a pretty 12-0 record. Combined with the fact that Meyer is recruiting like gangbusters, it’s easy to get starry-eyed about the Buckeyes’ prospects. Many are.

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It’s amazing what a couple of nice hires can do. In 1963, Wisconsin began the season seventh in the AP poll after losing the Rose Bowl and finishing second in the country. The Badgers reached as high as second that season but collapsed, losing four of five and finishing 5-4. From 1964-92, nearly three full decades, Wisconsin finished with a winning record just six times and never won more than seven games in a season. (It won seven games for four straight years between 1981-84 but did it just one other time in that span.)

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It just takes two words to describe the incredible job Bill O’Brien did in his first year as Penn State’s head coach. After one of the most awkward, strange, turbulent, and sad coaching transitions of all time, after the NCAA waylaid the program with crippling sanctions, after players were given limitless ability to flee for another team, after the product on the field was overshadowed for months by sub-human crimes committed by a former defensive coordinator ... they improved.

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

That comes from last year’s Nebraska preview. Nebraska has now won either nine or 10 games in each of the last five seasons. The Cornhuskers still have a strong, fun offensive backfield, and they still have a deep, interesting defensive backfield. In 2012, the defense avoided what would have been a third straight year of regression, and the offense took a lovely step forward behind a resurgent line and strong play-calling.

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Michigan State is the kind of team a stat nerd dreams of calling underrated.

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The F/+ chart below basically looks like the climax to a roller coaster, doesn’t it? After limping to a 19-18 record from 2005-07 (following an incredible 31-7 run from 2002-04), Iowa surged to a second peak in the Kirk Ferentz era. It jumped from 6-6 and 70th in the F/+ rankings in 2007 to 9-4 and 12th in 2008, then 11-2 and 11th in 2009. And then came the nearly linear downhill slide. 8-5 and 21st in 2010. 7-6 and 46th in 2011. 4-8 and 7-2nd in 2012.

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

In a way, you doom yourself with too much success, too early. The 2011 Michigan team, Brady Hoke’s first in Ann Arbor, surged in a rather incredible way. The offense held steady despite a complete identity change (from sixth in Off. F/+ in 2010 to ninth in 2011), the defense rallied to an extreme degree (104th in Def. F/+ to 18th), and even special teams got its act together (111th in Special Teams F/+ to 50th).

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

Graphs are useful. Twenty years from now, a progression chart like the one below will pretty clearly tell us, “See right there? That was the peak for Pat Fitzgerald at Northwestern. And that year right there? That was the breakthrough.” But a breakthrough is only a breakthrough until the next one, and a peak is only a peak when you stop rising.