It got lost in the weekend shuffle, but Hawkeyes won another Big Ten West *title

For the third time in the last four years, Iowa is the champion of the Big Ten’s West division in football.

This year’s title apparently comes with an asterisk since the conference no longer has divisions and whatnot. That’s not our problem.

So, here are the final West standings:

Iowa 6-3

Illinois 6-3

Minnesota 5-4

Nebraska 3-6

Wisconsin 3-6

Northwestern 2-7

Purdue 0-9

The division was 13 games under .500 against the rest of the conference, but that’s irrelevant here.

The tiebreaker? No matter how you determine it, it goes to Iowa. It was obvious what the lone factor was when two teams tied before this season. Namely, head-to-head results. Teams always played everyone else in their divisions before the four Pac-12 refugees gained entrance and the divisions were abolished.

After all, why have divisions in an 18-team conference. (A better question is why not?)

Alas, Iowa and Illinois didn’t meet. So you can choose between the following:

Record against next-highest finisher in the West: Iowa beat Minnesota. Illinois did not.

Record inside the division: Iowa was 4-0, Illinois 3-1.

Record against the league’s four probable playoff teams: Iowa was 0-1, Illinois 0-2.

Congratulations to the Hawkeyes on another West crown. And congrats to Illinois, which is surely headed to the Citrus Bowl while Iowa is going to the next bowl on the Big Ten’s pecking order, or the one after that.