Big Ten Adds New Division to Legends and Leaders: It's Called Losers

The Big Ten does it again in bowl season. They lose.

As a fan of the Big Ten, it's not an easy pill to swallow, but it's true. The proud and historic conference that once dominated the college football landscape can't seem to win the big games on the big stages anymore.

January bowl games have particularly been harsh on the Big Ten, but December hasn't been much more merciful.

Taking it back to late-December, Purdue started the conference out right, eeking out a 37-32 victory over Western Michigan in the Little Caesar's Bowl. Iowa couldn't get anything more than one great quarter against Oklahoma, however, as the Hawkeyes lost to the Sooners 31-14 in the Insight Bowl.

Northwestern didn't have enough to get by Texas A&M and they lost 33-22 in the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas.

Illinois managed to get by UCLA 20-14 in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl; it featured two teams with mediocre records (UCLA actually had a losing record) that had fired their head coaches.

Before 2012 officially rang in, the conference was 2-2 in bowl games with all of the big games yet to be played.

Today hasn't been good for the B-1-G.

Ohio State dropped to Florida 24-17 and Nebraska was beat soundly by South Carolina 30-13 in head-to-head match-ups with SEC opponents.

Michigan State needed three overtimes and a blocked kick to pull out a 33-30 win over Georgia. They were aided by questionable play-calling on the part of Mark Richt, who had Aaron Murray take a knee in overtime on second down to set up a 42-yard field goal. Oh yeah, and his kicker had missed 12 field goals on the year.

How about just handing your opponent an extra overtime?

Penn State was out-gunned by Houston 31-14 in a Ticket City Bowl that saw Case Keenum pass for 532 yards and three touchdowns.

In just four January bowl games, the conference is 1-3. Even if Wisconsin manages to get past Oregon in the Rose Bowl, the best the conference can do on the biggest bowl day in college football is 2-3.

At very best, if the conference wins out, they can do no better than 5-5 on the entire bowl season.

Why does the Big Ten stink so much in bowl games?

It's a numbers thing, for the most part. While the match-ups may appear on paper to be "Big Ten No. 3 vs SEC No. 4" (or whatever), that doesn't necessarily mean it's the third best Big Ten team against the fourth best SEC team (or whatever).

What those numbers really mean is that the bowl in question got the third pick of available teams from one conference and fourth pick from the other.

Bowls are about money, not necessarily competition. They have shown time and again that they will go with the bigger sell more than they will go with the most competitive match-up.

We saw Penn State get overlooked for the Insight Bowl in favor of Iowa. We saw Michigan get selected for a BCS bowl despite being out-performed on the field and off by Michigan State.

Northwestern routinely gets passed over for more "interesting" teams.

Why?

The answer is numbers. Iowa travels very well and brings a lot of money into local economies. Michigan has an enormous national following that puts butts in seats and viewers in front of television sets. Penn State is in shambles right now, and Northwestern doesn't have a big enough fan base to offer much support.

Michigan State is a growing program in terms of fan support, but still doesn't stack up favorably with others within the conference.

What the Big Ten often ends up getting is mismatches. Just look at the odds leading into the bowls.

In the ten bowl games the Big Ten was slated to play this year, they were favored in only three.

Purdue were 1.5 point favorites according to VegasInsider.com. Illinois were favored by three and Michigan is favored by three over Virginia Tech.

In every other bowl game played by the Big Ten this year, their teams were underdogs. In essence, they weren't supposed to win.

Can any other major conference claim that they entered bowl season favored to lose virtually all of their games? In a way, if the conference wins even four bowl games, they will have performed better than Vegas expected them to.

It's not a great excuse.

For a league that still wants to tout itself as one of the best in college football, they're not doing their part to prove it on the field. They should be able to take on relatively comparable teams from any conference and come away winning more often than they lose.

Last year, the Big Ten laid a golden goose egg on New Year's Day, going 0-5. This year, they're already 1-3 and could end the day 1-4.

Maybe when the league was busy naming it's new divisions with "L" words, they should have just created a third one—Losers. After all, the only legendary thing the conference is doing lately, or that the conference is leading in, is big time bowl losses.