Round robin schedule in the previous Big 12 definitely made for a tough conference slate. Gotta feel good to not have that anymore.
In your time window of 2012-2023 you didn't include Wisconsin, and those were some of their best seasons. From 2013-2019 Wisco won 9, 11, 10, 11, 13, 8, and 10 games, had two top-10 finishes, four top-15 finishes. Iowa played them every year.
Wins wise yes but they won 0 B1G titles and with exception to maybe one or two games didn't beat any real good teams that whole stretch, and would tend to drop a game to marginal teams like NW or Illinois.
They were like a step above Iowa.
Also their last Rose Bowl win was 2000 (99 season) which is kind of wild.