I was curious about purdoodoo's "easy" road to a Big 1.o regular season conference championship so I did some digging.
Head to head: 2-0 (IU)
Same opponent, same location: 8-3 (pu) - 6-5 (IU)
Teams: Iowa, @Maryland, @Michigan, @Northwestern, Michigan State x2, Rutger, @Penn State, Nebraska, Ohio State, @Minny
Combining these two categories and we're tied with purdoodoo at 8-5.
They have Illinois at home as the last remaining same opponent, same location data point. We won that game. At best, pu can tie us at 9-5 against same opponent, same location.
Same opponent, different location: 6-0 (pu) - 2-3 (IU)
pu: Maryland, Penn State, @Wiscy, @Nebraska, @Ohio State, Minny
IU: @Iowa, @Illinois, Northwestern, @Rutger, Wiscy
Purdoodoo feasted in the same opponent, different location category going 6-0. Two of these wins came against the bottom dwellers OSU and Minny who were circling the drain for much of the Big 1.o season. Only 1 of their unique games came against a team with an above .500 record in Big 1.o play while 5 of our 6 will come against teams with a better than .500 conference record.
Conclusion:
I believe we could have at least tied purdoodoo, with a real possibility of winning it outright, given the same schedule. Such is life in the Big 1.o, we still could have pushed for a conference crown had we not shat all over ourselves for that three game stretch or curled into the fetal position on several other occasions.