Wisconsin’s Big Ten title hopes are officially on thin ice after the cancellation of Saturday’s game against Purdue. The Badgers will be ineligible for the Big Ten Championship Game with one more cancellation.

And here’s the thing: As long as Wisconsin can get the rest of its games in and meet the Big Ten’s minimum requirement of playing 6 games, it is actually set up quite well to reach the conference title game. Instead of playing games short-handed, Wisconsin gets to rest and really has the same chance, if not better, than the rest of the West of making it to the league title game.

Is that fair to the rest of the league? I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer.

On the one hand, Wisconsin is playing with fire. Even if it gets its own COVID outbreak under control — it announced Tuesday that it had 27 active cases among players and staff — it is at the mercy of the other 5 teams on its schedule not having some positive tests during a game week and needing to cancel. In fact, I argued that the Badgers should have made every effort to play this week, provided they had no additional positive test results, to avoid a situation like this.

But on the other hand, Wisconsin obviously benefits from not playing, as it avoided playing 2 games with its fourth-string quarterback. There are no consequences to not playing, other than the risk of not meeting the minimum games threshold. I think it’s very likely the Badgers would’ve lost at least one of those games, if not both of them. Now, those games just go down as no contest.

Wisconsin’s path to the Big Ten title game now is down to Michigan, Northwestern, Minnesota, Indiana and Iowa. If it can go 5-1, it has a very reasonable chance of still reaching the title game — especially if that 1 loss isn’t to Northwestern. Head-to-head result is still the tiebreaker to watch, so as long as Wisconsin takes care of business against the Wildcats, it can probably afford a loss to a non-contending West team such as Minnesota or Iowa, or one of the East teams on its schedule, Michigan and Indiana. If Northwestern goes 7-1, with that loss being to a 5-1 Wisconsin team, the Badgers are playing for a Big Ten title. That would be a tough pill for Northwestern to swallow, considering the Badgers likely would  have lost one of their canceled games if they had played the games while shorthanded.

At the same time, though, what is the Big Ten supposed to do about this? Who knows if this is Wisconsin’s fault? Life isn’t fair. Heck, Big Ten schedules are already unfair. Nebraska plays Ohio State and Penn State as its East crossover opponents, while Northwestern gets Maryland and Michigan State. Aside from having a round robin that includes all 14 teams, it will never be fair.

I would understand if other teams in the league, like Nebraska, are frustrated that Wisconsin is having an outbreak and is not penalized for it. So far, there haven’t been many answers as to what led to the outbreak. Was there a breakdown in protocols within the program? Was it bad luck with a false negative?

Maybe the Big Ten should’ve went without divisions just for this season, like the ACC chose to do. That means just the 2 best teams in the Big Ten are playing for the conference title. When there are more data points to go off of in a conference-only schedule, it probably makes sense, and we wouldn’t be fretting about individual matchups for Wisconsin against Northwestern. The entire body of work would mean more.

By the way, this isn’t bad for Purdue, either. The Boilermakers remaining schedule is Northwestern, Minnesota, Rutgers, Nebraska and Indiana. There’s a real chance it could go 6-1. Can you imagine if Purdue has another game canceled down the road and ends up at 6-0, along with Wisconsin? Then it will really turn out to be huge break for Wisconsin to have not played (because the Badgers very well might have lost playing with a shorthanded roster).

I’m not sure what the Big Ten can do at this point to ensure it has a rightful champion in the West. Either going to a division-less format for this season or using its schedule from August that gave each team a few bye weeks would’ve probably helped, but that ship has sailed.

The best the Big Ten can hope for now is that this all sorts itself out on the field. If a one-loss Northwestern or Purdue misses out on a chance to play in the Big Ten title game to a Wisconsin team that only plays 6 games, the league will face a ton of deserved criticism. It’s not fair, but there isn’t much the league can do now without creating another injustice.