Starting with the 2006-07 college football postseason, the Big Ten has been a punching bag of sorts when it came to significant bowl games. In the 2006 regular season, Ohio State & Michigan closed the campaign against each other in a battle of the top two ranked teams in the country, and the game indeed lived up to the hype. But the Wolverines, then Buckeyes, both struggled mightily in their BCS bowl games.

Last year was a bounce-back for the league, starting first and foremost with the Buckeyes winning the national title. Ohio State rallied to beat top seed Alabama, before running away from Oregon in the national championship game. But Michigan State, the other Big Ten team in the New Year’s Six, earned a win over Baylor in the Cotton Bowl. Several other teams had good showings in New Year’s Day bowl games.

This season, 10 of the 14 teams made bowl games. Two of those – Minnesota & Nebraska – made it despite going 5-7 in the season, but the lack of eligible teams from other conferences allowed the Golden Gophers and Cornhuskers to get in. To their credit, both teams took full advantage, winning their games.

Meanwhile, three teams – Iowa, Michigan State, and Ohio State – were selected for New Year’s Six games. The Buckeyes, left out of the playoff after a loss to the Spartans, dominated from start to finish in a 44-28 Fiesta Bowl victory over Notre Dame. In what turned out to be the final collegiate game for many Buckeye stars, closing the year in this fashion provided a nice consolation prize.

The Hawkeyes and Spartans – who faced each other in the Big Ten Championship Game – did not fare as well. League champion Michigan State was shut out convincingly by Alabama in the Cotton Bowl, where the Spartans began 2015 with a win over Baylor. Part of this was the Crimson Tide’s determination to not make the same mistakes they committed in last year’s Sugar Bowl, but the Spartans looked outmatched for much of the contest. Had Connor Cook’s one pass late in the first half gone for a touchdown instead of an interception, would the game have shifted dramatically? Maybe in terms of the final score, but Alabama, behind Heisman winner Derrick Henry, showed they were the better team on the field that given night.

Iowa came agonizingly close to the College Football Playoff, meaning their Rose Bowl matchup with Stanford offered an opportunity for redemption. But on the very first play from scrimmage, Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey caught a touchdown pass on a play that symbolized how the rest of the afternoon would play out. After a perfect regular season, the Hawkeyes’ gut-wrenching end will leave the team asking themselves how to rebuild and get ready for 2016.

The other Big Ten bowl results: Wisconsin edged USC in an exciting Holiday Bowl, while Michigan dominated Florida in the Citrus Bowl in the same manner as Ohio State’s win. On the flip side, Tennessee – one of those teams that in another world would’ve won the SEC with the way their games went – ran over Northwestern in the Outback Bowl. Penn State did lose to Georgia in the TaxSlayer Bowl, but the Nittany Lions nearly pulled off an improbable comeback that gives the team hope for 2016, even with several key players leaving early for the NFL Draft.

So the Big Ten finishes the 2015-16 bowl season 5-5. But the two facts that cannot be overlooked; two blowout losses in New Year’s Six games, one of them a playoff semifinal, coupled with two of the wins coming from 5-7 teams, means it could be a long offseason before the conference gets a chance to repair its image.