Watching College Gameday and seeing Corso and company in front of a Big 12, or SEC stadium every week can become aggravating for the fans of teams outside of the two "powerhouse" conferences in College Football.
But can you blame them for camping out on the campus of either conferences schools 10 of the 14 weeks this 2008 season?
The Big 12 is sure to be a high scoring, fun to watch game, that if the other teams defense is able to make a stop on the first drive of the game the game may already be over. Meanwhile the SEC has the great defenses, and of course the "SEC Speed" that was able to hand The Ohio State University, back to back losses in the 2007 and 2008 National Championship games, hence allowing the College Football world label the Big Ten as one of the "weak" conferences. Illinois' blowout loss to USC didn't help the Big Ten's image much either.
Although Ohio State still had a lot to play for coming into this season. Ohio State was a National Championship favorite with a load of talent coming back for their senior year when many could have been drafted high coming out as juniors. And Jim Tressel was able to get the relatively under the radar recruit Terrelle Pryor to sign on as a Buckeye in the off season.
Pryor, of course, was supposed to be the Tim Tebow to Ohio State's Chris Leak; Todd Boeckman. The offense that worked so perfectly in the Gators 06 season, and what was able to dismantle the Troy "Mr. Heisman" Smith lead Buckeyes in the 07 National Championship Game, was what Tressel was going to use to get back to the National Championship for a third time in three seasons.
Then came the trip to USC for the Buckeyes that spoiled all plans for Ohio State's championship run with an embarrassing 35-3 loss, furthering the idea that the Big Ten was weak.
In the midst of Ohio State falling flat in the past two National Championship Games, there was another losing trend going on to an overwhelming favorite the same two years. Oklahoma lost 43-42 to the undefeated, non-BCS conference "BCS Buster" Boise State in a stunning thriller game in 2007, and in 2008 proceeded to lose 48-28 to West Virginia. Somehow this has failed to not be brought up much during the Big 12's successful year.
Could it be due to the fact that the Big 12 plays a tough out of conference schedule? Hardly. The Big 12's premier out of conference games this year were Cincinnati's match-up at Oklahoma, and Missouri's game against Illinois on a neutral field. Cincinnati representing the Big East conference was crushed by the Sooners 52-26.
But Illinois representing the conference that was in much question after its best team was destroyed in back-to-back Title games only lost to the Heisman Favorite, Chase Daniel lead Big 12 North/Big 12 favorites 52-42. At the time that score seemed about right, but as the season unfolded Illinois showed many signs of missing the 2007 Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year, Rashard Mendenhall who bolted early for the draft, and ended the season 5-7.
So does this mean that I'm saying the Big Ten is under-rated? It's definitely is not over-rated! But what I'm getting at is how naive the media and pollsters are. 61-41, 45-35, 58-35, do they actually have defense in the Big 12? They may as well not even waste the scholarships on defensive players!
3 comments Last one added 6 months ago — Leave a Comment
Kristofer Green 7 months ago
Not to mention Oklahoma's back to back failures in the National Title game, one of which was a 55-19 loss to USC.
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Benjy Miller 7 months ago
Great article, Dan! Although the Big 12 has a weaker out of conference schedule, they play incredibly hard in conference games.
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James Colt 6 months ago
I don't think there's really been any shortage of people pointing out that OU has been terrible in bowl games. I think people forgive them this year because of their points, which is ridiculous. Also, the Big 12 doesn't take quite as hard a hit because OU is the only one losing their BCS games. Kansas won their game last year, and Texas has never lost a BCS game. The Big Ten, however, the last two years is 0-4 in their BCS games. I'm surprised that OU got to jump Texas due to their inept nature in the BCS games, but one might suspect that the voters in the Southeast are aware of this, and so they voted OU over Texas believing OU would be easier for the SEC champ to beat.
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