Reclaiming national respect an uphill battle for Big Ten

By Chris Preston  |   Tuesday, September 23, 2008  |  Comments( 0 )

College Football
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With all the attention downtrodden BCS leagues like the ACC, Big East and Pac-10 (excluding USC) have been receiving for their poor early season play, the Big Ten has been in the rare position of flying under the radar - with the notable exception of Ohio State's 35-3 debacle at the hands of said mighty Trojans on Sept. 13.

Given the doubts surrounding this once-proud league in recent years thanks in large part to the Buckeyes' streak of thrashings at the hands of SEC powerhouses and USC, under the radar is a good place to be for the Big Ten right now. Outside of Ohio State's well-documented struggles against the big boys, Michigan (1-2) is way down this year under new head coach Rich Rodriguez and the league as a whole is just 3-6 in out-of-conference games against BCS teams not named Duke or Syracuse (against which the Big Ten is a combined 3-0). Wisconsin's narrow road escape at WAC opponent Fresno State qualifies as the conference's biggest scalp to date.

Thus far, Big Ten teams have dropped virtually every other interconference throwdown: Ohio State added a third high-profile no-show to its resume at USC; Illinois gave up 52 points in a neutral-field loss to Missouri; Michigan lost to a Notre Dame squad that won three games last season; Purdue dropped a heart-breaker at home to Oregon. And that doesn't even take into account Michigan's home loss to Utah (which, granted, is an undefeated Top 25 squad) and Indiana's defeat to Ball State.

Like the last few years, the Big Ten has yet to flex its muscle in nonconference games of national importance. Thanks to the ACC and Big East's failure to become anything more than basketball conferences and the Pac-10's inability to beat anyone from the Mountain West (see: BYU 55, UCLA 0), the Big Ten may well be the third-best conference behind the far superior SEC and Big XII. But that doesn't mean it has made vast improvements over recent years; it just means that most of the other conferences have either taken huge steps backward (Pac-10) or remained stuck in the mud (ACC).

No matter what happens during the conference season, the fact is that the only way for the Big Ten to prove it deserves to be held in the high esteem it once was is to do it in late December and early January in its highest-profile bowl games.
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