Justify Your Existence, Big Ten

I think the Big Ten is getting out coached.

writes for the Trib, not the Sun-Times. Just sayin.

I'm not buying any of these wimpy excuses. Win on the field. The rest is just crybaby stuff. Can you imagine Bo saying any of this mush mouth trash? Never ever. Win or shut up.

This topic has come up before, and I think Brian encapsulated the arguments pretty succinctly. The Big 10 is down, at least in part, because the top teams have been down, or at the very least there has not been as much depth across the board. It used to be that even when OSU and UM were dominating the conference, teams like Wisconsin, Purdue, and Iowa were always nipping at their heels, top-25 teams with decent talent who could go 10-2 or 9-3 most seasons. This year - MSU was the #3 team in the conference by record, yet was absolutely destroyed whenever they played a halfway-decent team. That's just not good for the conference, and that has been the case for a few years now.

I do think people are overlooking the bowl matchups, but as I stated in an earlier diary I don't really think the bowls mean much. It's all about goofy matchups across conferences, where the #2 Pac-10 team plays the #3 team in the Big 12 30+ days after either of them stepped on a football field. It's an exhibition game with a corporate sponsor, so people really shouldn't read much into it. If you look at the out-of-conference for each conference (except for the bowl games), you'll see that the Big 10 is consistently the second or third best conference out there, and while that may be an incomplete snapshot on each conference's strength, it certainly is better than just bowl records.

As for population - sure, it probably helps the Pac-10 that they can recruit such a fertile state such as California, but football has been a national (some would global) sport for decades now, and while I agree that some kids probably don't like the weather found in the north, the elite programs don't seem to have too tough of a problem recruiting kids. Sure, USC can bowl kids over with beautiful weather, attractive co-eds, and $25k suits, but OSU and UM have their own recruiting "tricks" that have blown up in their faces, and so the playing field is not nearly as stacked against certain teams as some people want to believe. I do believe that certain conferences benefit from more lax academic standards than others (looking at you, SEC and Big 12), but not to a significant enough degree as to fundamentally alter recruiting.

Honestly, the reason the Big 10 is down is because the teams at the top have been mediocre in big games despite having a great deal of talent. Call it bad matchups, call it bad luck, or call it mediocrity, but UM and OSU have laid eggs during many of their more recent "big games", and for the vast majority of people that is the only interaction they have with the Big 10. It's kind of like how most peoples' interactions with the SEC are during the bowl season and those in-game look-ins on ESPN when idiots on both sides start fighting because someone stepped on someone else's logo. The Big 10 is down NOW, but rest assured it will be at the top sometime soon.

The population argument is overblown. Pennsylvania (12.5 million), Illinois (12.5M), Ohio (11.5M) and Michigan (10M) are the nation's fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth-most populous states, respectively. Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin each have over five million residents themselves. Only Iowa is really a small state. Yes, the rate of population growth in the region is lower than elsewhere, but that doesn't change the fact that it is still pretty densely-populated. I think the conference's problems have a lot more to do with outdated mentalities, notably (as Brian points out) among the conference powers.

creationists *are* expanding their boundries...

B10 wrestling is great, but keep in mind that there are only like 4 conferences and the B12 & B10 are the only to power conferences, IIRC.

Let's see, you are a 17-18 year old. You could go play football in a location that is sunny, warm, with co-eds in bikinis OR cloudy, cold, and co-eds in 3 layers of coats!!

Plus, it is a lot easier to use wide open passing offenses when you don't have to deal with snow, cold rain, etc.

I get most of the points, but only Michigan has been poor in bowls over the last 5 years (one tossup loss, two upset losses, one upset win, one aargh where's my bowl). Penn State has a BCS win, two regular wins (one of them a notable upset over Tennessee), and one 14 point loss, which matches what Michigan has done and is equal to or better than Ohio State's record over the two championship games.

It's a mistake to say that Penn State has been down, when calling it one of the three powers in the Big Ten would have been stupid in 2004 and an exaggeration in 2005-2007. JoePa has made a fair amount of coaching mistakes, but over the past 4 years he's done well.

Hell, even from 2004 on Penn State has been about equal to Michigan. 2003 on back is the part where Michigan pulls ahead.

Donald Washington declared for the NFL draft today. OSU is now very thin at CB.

nopeFAIL.

I would love to know the Big East's stats from the table Brian had. I assume the would be by far the lowest but still...

Michigan's and PSU's losses to USC in the Rose Bowl recent years has little to do with location IMO. It has everything to do with the fact that USC is simply more talented right now. And Pete Carroll has a knack of amp'ing his guys up to 'balls out' levels in their bowl game. It's why he is considered by many to be the best coach in college football.

The Big 10 is a basketball conference right now, and a really good one at that. In fact, I think that it will be one of the better conferences in D-I. Better than the Big East and ACC? That will take a while, but for now it will be a very tough conference.

Football needs some work. At least Michigan should be better in coming years, OSU's recruiting is as good as ever, and Penn St has had two great seasons recently. The rest? All of the other schools have recently had successful seasons that were improvements over prior ones (Wisco 12-1 in 06, Indiana reaching a bowl game, Purdue going to the Rose Bowl, Illinois 9-4, etc.), but it's hard to tell if they can consistently maintain the success that they've had and continue to be decent. Northwestern and Iowa had really good seasons this year, but will they go the way of Illinois and Wisconsin from this past season? Iowa has already shown that it can be quite inconsistent. Plus, the Big 10's performance in bowl games and especially BCS games has been pretty awful lately.

Don't a substantial percentage of the top-shelf players at Oregon, Washington, ASU, etc. come from California? Or Samoa?

All the excuses of venue, distance, time off, etc are lame. Once upon a time, the B10 regularly whipped the P-10/P-8's ass in Rose Bowls. Plate tectonics notwithstanding, I think the distance between the Midwest and Pasadena hasn't changed much.

It's talent pure and simple, as a byproduct of population changes. California is the source for a large share of the P10's top talent, and CA's population mushroomed from the 50s through the 90s. By contrast, many of the Midwest's largest cities have been losing population during that time. Large swaths of the rural Midwest are becoming literally empty of people.

One can argue that even though the team has to travel, half the stadium is Big Ten fans, so it shouldn't matter anyway. However, it matters a lot because of the types of fans that can afford to actually be in the stadium (particularly in this era of economic uncertainty yadda). When LSU plays the Sugar Bowl, any insanely hollerin' fan who can get his hands on tickets can easily attend, let the bourbon wear off during the game, drive home and sleep in their bed. The Penn State fans at the Rose Bowl all required the necessary necessary means to get their asses out to LA. The more wealthy people just aren't going to compete with the average fans in terms of noise and support.

The FedEx Championship game was a prime example. In the 3rd quarter when both teams had momentum swings, you could barely hear any Oklahoma cheering over the TV, but whenever Florida did something good, it was like Fox had invited a dozen mullet-headed yokels into your living room. So it does matter.

When Missouri plays Northwestern in San Antonio, it's a wash.

The Big Ten used to win more bowl games. That the conference has been down the last two years is plainly obvious. The bigger question is, what does it need to do to bounce back? Uhhhh, Michigan is the most crucial player in this debate, actually.

The Big Ten needs to have their season end in early December. Sprinkle some bye weeks in there if need be. The teams will be better rested, probably not as beat up, nor as rusty for their bowl games. Lloyd seemed almost moved to tears by the fact that the kids are done by Thankgiving so they could go home and eat turkey with their family. Whatevs, but FINE! Make Thanksgiving week a bye week for every team every year. Come back rested and better prepared to kick ass the last 1 or 2 games of the season against, in many cases, your archrival (M/OSU, Pur/Ind, NW/ILL, Iowa/Minn, etc.)

penn state is 3 for 4 in their last set of bowls. I can't really agree with the notion that they don't bring it during the holidays. Joe Pa has the most bowl wins of any coach in history...yadda yadda yadda, age, all that

"All that's quite a hurdle to overcome, though it's not enough to excuse the Big Ten's recently dismal record."

This is all that need be read to understand the status of Big 10 football currently. These things are cyclical, but by any metric the Big 10 is DOWN right now.

I mean, think of how many Big 10 teams lost to MAC teams this year, and the MAC looked like worst conference in the country during bowl season.