Dirty Laundry: The B1G’s most (and least) penalized teams of the College Football Playoff era

Everyone hates penalties. Anytime an official throws that yellow flag onto the field, there’s a collective groan amongst the home crowd. Well, unless that foul is on the opposing team.

Then it’s a pretty big cheer.

One thing coaches harp on this time of year is eliminating mental mistakes. It’s a focal point as teams prepare for the first week of the college football season. Yet, some teams can’t shake the habit, even throughout the course of the year.

Keeping that in mind, we decided to take a look at some of the B1G’s most penalized teams over the College Football Playoff era. Which teams have consistently kept those penalty totals low and which teams continue to make mental mistakes.

Northwestern has been, by far, the best at eliminating those mistakes. Maryland, on the other hand, has had a ton of trouble in that category.

Because some teams have played as many as eight more games than others over the five-year span, we’ve decided to look at the average penalty yards per game category to rank the B1G teams. And, for the most part, the average penalties per game column follows suit, with the exception of a few outliers.

So, here’s a look at which B1G teams have been the most, and the least, penalized over the last five years (2014-2018). The list was compiled thanks to season statistical data from CFBStats.com:

Dustin Schutte

Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB