Huh? So next year when the Gophers have a possible shot at the NCAA tournament, you're still going to cheer for Big Ten teams to lose? Let's say they do lose, and the teams are awful in the non-conference. Because of that, the NCAA gives the Big Ten only 3-4 bids (pretty much what the Pac-12 has been getting for awhile now). The Gophers shock the Big Ten and finish 5th, but now they don't go to the tournament. There just wasn't enough quad 1 victories to be had. If only the Big Ten would've performed better in the non-conference...
If you want the Gopher program to be strong, then you should want the conference to be strong, as it provides more opportunities for resume wins... and greater odds of getting to the NCAA tournament.
I think the obvious counterpoint to this is that winning more games and earning a higher conference finish, or possibly even winning the Big Ten, is easier when the Gophers’ opponents are bad. Who’s to say that the Gopher team that finishes 5th in a year where the Big Ten gets 4 NCAA bids wouldn’t finish 9th in a year where the Big Ten is strong enough to get 8 bids?
When I see a future opponent take a bad loss, that tells me that that game may be more winnable than I originally thought. Take the Indiana football team this year. That looked like one of the tougher games on the schedule this year, a road game against a top 20 team, a game the Gophers would likely be underdogs in, and have a hard time winning. Then they started losing to everyone, and we learned that that game would not be as tough as it first seemed. The Gophers won the game comfortably and got a win more easily than we expected at the start of the season. They went 8-4, but might have only gone 7-5 if Indiana were actually a top 20 team. Granted strength of schedule is practically meaningless for postseason placement in football outside of instances where a bunch of teams with identical records are vying for playoff seeding.
If you look at it from the point of view of “The Gophers are going to finish 5th in the conference regardless of how many big non conference wins their opponents get,” then yes, 5th in a strong conference is better than 5th in a weak conference.
I view it more as “The Gophers appear to be the 5th best team in the conference, but if Michigan, Michigan State, and Purdue are all dropping multiple buy games at home, then I’ll have to reassess my initial projection. The Big Ten is weaker at the top than I thought it was, and Minnesota could actually win it, which is exciting for me as a fan.” Finishing at the top of a weak conference probably feels better than finishing in the middle of a strong one. And having an 800 pound gorilla like Ohio State football at the top isn’t super fun either.
Cheer for who you want to, I generally somewhat cheer for Big Ten teams in the NCAA tournament or bowl games, but I really don’t think it’s clearly and objectively good for Minnesota that our opponents be as strong as possible. A team like 2019-20 Minnesota basketball, which had a top 30 Kenpom ranking, but lost a ton of close games against evenly matched opponents and finished with a 15-16 record, might have been better served playing somewhere like the PAC-12 where they can easily get a winning conference record and maybe make the tournament.
thanks Michigan 
Penn State 
Maryland 
