Nebraska Football: Huskers jump back into contention in 2019

Ultimately, I have the Nebraska Cornhuskers rebounding from back-to-back 4-8 seasons to finish 9-3 in 2019 with a conference record of 6-3. That’s a nice little jump in the second year of a new coach’s tenure.

Will it be enough for the Huskers to win the Big 10 West, though?

No. It won’t. Here’s how I’ve got the West shaking out from top to bottom, including tiebreakers:

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1. Northwestern, 8-4 (6-3)
2. Wisconsin, 9-3 (6-3)
3. Minnesota, 9-3 (6-3)
4. Nebraska, 9-3 (6-3)
5. Iowa, 5-7 (3-6)
6. Purdue, 5-7 (3-6)
7. Illinois, 4-8 (1-8)

That’s pretty top heavy. Recall that going into November I had Northwestern at 3-4 (2-3), Wisconsin at 5-3 (2-3), and Minnesota at 8-0 (5-0). So what happened?

First, with Minnesota, they finally run into some real competition, and basically fold, going 1-3 in November with losses against Penn State, Northwestern and Wisconsin.

Wisconsin has four games in November after an open week to start the month, and the Badgers win all four match-ups: versus Iowa, at Nebraska, vs Purdue, and at Minnesota.

Then there’s Northwestern, the only one of these four teams that didn’t sweep their non-conference schedule. The Wildcats have a whopping five games to finish the season in November, and win every single one of them.

Unlike Minnesota, who had an easy first-half of their schedule, Northwestern has a relatively weak end to the year, facing and defeating Indiana, Purdue, UMass, Minnesota and Illinois.

The top tiebreaker for when three teams have the same conference record is kind of a round-robin mini-tournament between those teams. Here, Northwestern and Wisconsin advance because they went 2-1 while Nebraska and Minnesota went 1-2. Then it’s down to head-to-head.

In this scenario, the Big Ten West will be decided on September 28th, when Northwestern steals a road game in Wisconsin.

Nebraska could change all of this with a win one of two weeks: October 12th at Minnesota or November 16th vs Wisconsin. Those will be big games anyway, but according to how I see things turning out, it could mean having a shot at playing in the Rose Bowl.