Big Ten losing prestige
Poor bowl, poll performances hurt football's image
By Jason Stein
The Journal Gazette
CHICAGO - Michigan coach Lloyd Carr has a word for the sour taste last year's 45-17 Citrus Bowl loss left in his normally stoic jaw:
"Sickening," Carr says. "Like something terrible that sticks with you for months. Something you just can't forget."
Someone pass the Motrin. With another season on the horizon, the Big Ten still has a New Year's Day hangover the size of the Sugar Bowl, and a self-image problem that is just as achy.
From polls to bowls, the conference that once prided itself as the nation's best is looking for better results.
All this after the league's 11 coaches spent the entire 2001 preseason telling anyone who would listen that the Big Ten was back in business. The only thing that returned? Another 2-4 bowl record, and an abysmal 6-12 record against the five other BCS conferences.
This week, with another set of balanced teams ready to hit late summer camp, with what looks like another balanced season ready to kick off in less than a month, relief looks a long way off. Parity looks more permanent.
Look out below.
"I think the SEC is the best football in the country," Purdue coach Joe Tiller said during two days of Big Ten media day meetings this week in Chicago. "It's hard to run the table in the Big Ten, 'cause the table is just so hard."
In four years of Bowl Championship Series play, the Big Ten has been largely anonymous. No conference team has played in the national title game. No team has been ranked higher than No. 7 in the BCS standings. No one has even come close to seeing national recognition.
Last year, the Big Ten failed to place a team in the Top 10 poll during the final five weeks of the season - the first time since 1984.
The upside? In the last two years, nine different schools have made it to bowl games.
So what's the big deal?
"There's no question this is a balanced, rough, tough conference. We just have to win more bowl games," Carr said. "That's one of the measuring sticks that every conference has."
Said Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez: "We just haven't done well in big games the last few years, and that never helps your image."
And especially when the season's postseason measuring stick has been extended by three days, and a few million dollars, with the BCS title game.
Some say it's cyclical. Some say it was bound to happen with the NCAA's 85-scholarship limit. Some say if you lose 36 players to the NFL the way the Big Ten did this year (just behind the SEC's 47), then lose a few recruiting battles, things are bound to change. The Pac-10 went through it. The Big 12 went through it.
"Now the Big Ten is starting to feel the heat," ESPN analyst and former Ohio State player Kirk Herbstreit said. "There's no question it's a process conferences have to go through. It's down, but not permanently. And it will come back, just not this year."
Then, at this week's Big Ten meetings, there was this: Improve the odds of having a better BCS postseason by finally declaring a champion. Penn State, Ohio State and Michigan all agreed.
The theory is a simple one, if only because it is largely a theory: Add a 12th team to the conference, create two separate divisions, create a league title game, then hope for the best by juicing up the chances for a better BCS option by declaring a true champion. Three of the last six seasons have produced a share for the title at the top - something the BCS is hardly fond of when it comes to sending out postseason invitations.
Easier said than done, some coaches say.
"You guys can prove me wrong, but I don't think tournament champions are guaranteed anything," Tiller said. "Sometimes playing that game won't help one bit. Am I right?"
He's hardly wrong.
All you have to do is go back to last December to find a fiasco. Colorado thought it had done everything right when it knocked off No. 2 Nebraska in the regular season, then No. 3 Texas in the Big 12 Championship game. The Buffaloes' reward? A big-time snub.
Tiller said the same thing could happen in a physical, grueling Big 10 season - especially in a league that hasn't had a team run the table since Michigan did it five years ago. Even then, the Wolverines had to split the national championship with Nebraska.
But, just three years after Notre Dame spurned the Big Ten's plan for expansion, just look who thinks the idea of 12 teams is worthy of consideration again.
"I think we need a 12th school and very badly, in terms of football," Carr said. "You look at the SEC and the Big 12, they'll always have an undisputed champion. We don't. Maybe that creates problems down the line."
Penn State coach Joe Paterno couldn't agree more, for different reasons.
"I would definitely like to see a 12th team. . . . Eleven is not a real good number," said Paterno, whose move into the Big Ten in 1990 gave the conference the strongest individual expansion of the decade, mostly thanks to Penn State's solid fan base.
"A couple of years from now, we're not going to play Michigan. I can tell you right now, that's not going to go over real well with our fans."
Although he favors adding another team to help balance out the football slate, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said Thursday the conference isn't any closer to expansion than it was when it talked to Notre Dame.
"Since then, we really haven't pursued it," he said.
With or without a 12th team - and none of the Big Ten coaches could agree on what school would make an acceptable fit, financially, academically or athletically - what might also not go over well is the continual lack of a national power in the conference that tries to boast it's one of the best.
"And until we win more bowl games than we lose," Tiller said, "we can't quite say that, can we?"
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