Bowl setbacks stain great regular season by Big Ten

The Big Ten was the nation's best conference in the 2016 regular season. There's really not much to dispute about this.

The league had the best nonconference record among the Power 5 conferences, including high-profile wins like Ohio State over Oklahoma, Wisconsin over LSU and Michigan over Colorado. The Big Ten seriously threatened to put multiple teams in the College Football Playoff and finished with four teams in the selection committee's top 8. Late-season matchups like Michigan-Ohio State and Penn State-Wisconsin demanded attention from coast to coast.

The Big Ten had a chance to put an exclamation point on a banner year this postseason. Instead, like in many recent years past, the…