I found a good way to kill some time today

Through The Wizard of Odds, I was lead to this fun little site that wasted a good two hours of my day: What If Sports.

Basically, the site gives you a chance to simulate matchups between sports teams. I'm not sure how they determine these outcomes, but it gets pretty addicting. You can pick current or past rosters, home or neutral sites, and even adjust the depth chart. With the football sims, you can even pick weather conditions and choose a basic playbook.

My curiosities got the best of me, so I started going through simulations to see "what if" the Gophers football team scheduled some bigger cupcakes last season. The reason is that the nonconference schedule, while filled with four games against smaller schools, was still filled with quality teams. Here they are, in case you forgot the horror that was last season:

Bowling Green - We lost to BGU 32-31 in OT at the Metrodome. They went on to have a solid season, finishing 6-2 and on top of the MAC East Division. This earned them a trip to Mobile, AL, for the GMAC Bowl.

Miami (OH) - We won after two rounds of OT, 41-35. Miami struggled against a tough nonconference slate of Colorado, Vanderbilt, and Cincinnati, but still finished a respectable 5-2 in the MAC.

Florida Atlantic - Despite the close score, this 39-42 loss was the worst game I believe I've ever witnessed. Thank god it was on ESPN 360, so nobody really saw it. The Owls went on to win the Sun Belt conference and beat Memphis in the New Orleans Bowl.

NDSU - We lost this one 21-27 to a Division 1-AA team, although it was a Division 1-AA team that spent the majority of the season ranked #1 in the D1AA polls.

Sure, these teams shouldn't be beating us. But when you are bring in a new coaching staff, install new defensive and offensive systems, break in a freshman quarterback, and lose your best defensive player from a defense that was terrible to begin with, maybe you should look to soften up that schedule even more.

I went through every small conference team and a few other BCS bottom feeders and matched them up with the Gophers. Here are my controls for this highly sensitive scientific experiment:

• Gophers are always the home team. This is usually the case with most nonconference games anyhow.
• Playbooks are set to default. The playbooks give you four options: Balanced, Favor Run, Favor Pass, and West Coast. The Gophers' default playbook was West Coast.
• Rosters and depth charts are left at default settings. There may have been injuries or other roster changes during the season, but I left it the way it is to make it simpler.

Here are my findings:

• We won some games! The following opponents would have been defeated by the Gophers if we had invited them to the Metrodome last season: Army, Buffalo, Colorado State, Duke, Eastern Michigan, Florida International, Louisiana-Monroe, Marshall, Ole Miss, North Texas, Temple, Troy, Alabama-Birmingham, UNLV, Utah State, UTEP, and Wyoming.
• If A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, than A is greater than C...except in sports. We beat UL-Monroe, who beat the Crimson Tide of Alabama. Wanting to test the transitive property, I simulated a match-up between Minnesota and Alabama. Alabama won 51-3.
• Suck it SEC! Minnesota, the worst team in the Big Ten, beat Ole Miss, the worst team in the SEC. How's that for your SEC speed, ass-hats?
• Notable losses: Notre Dame, Iowa State, Idaho, Northern Illinois, Fresno State in 4 OTs, and a 90-24 thrashing by Ohio (not Ohio State, just Ohio).

Again, I'm not sure what they are really using to generate these simulated scores. After seeing a score where the Gophers edged Wyoming in a double OT battle, I hit the "Play Again" button and they beat us by about 30 points. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this entire experiment has been a waste of time, and you are all now dumber for having read this post. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.